Page 32 of Conquer
“We were kept like dolls,” he explains, his tone empty. Lifeless. “Locked into rooms for clients to pick from the way one might select a garment from a rack. Those who couldn’t learn to turn off their pain—perform and endure—didn’t last. But I endured, and Irina? Shethrived.We were both young when we came to him. I might have been thirteen? Fourteen? She wasn’t much older, a beauty from Eastern Europe trafficked by her own family to pay off gambling debts. We were…favorites,of our owner,” he says, his voice hitching over the word.Favorites.He’s used it before I realize, and I suspect that term means more than the superficial definition. It was a shackle.
“The sick bastard used us more than the others. Demanded more from us. He dangled our appeal before his most prized clients, and we did what we could to beat each other at the game. If she could learn political secrets from one powerful dignitary, then I would learn firsthand intelligence from another. If she gained a necklace as a token, then I would cajole a more expensive trinket from my own abuser. We traded knowledge and money and companionship, each of us fighting to cement their role as the better player. The strongest. The coldest. We were just children,” he admits, his voice deepening. “Surviving the only way we knew how. And that way involved backstabbing and intrigue. If Irina were assigned to a client she didn’t like, I would be manipulated to perform in her place. If there were a punishment awaiting her for food she’d stolen, or rules she’d broken, I somehow would be the one to wind up lashed. I let her use me as her scapegoat,” he adds, his voice thickening as if only now can he admit that to himself. “I let her take from me. Toy with me… Abandon me when she saw her own escape.”
And in the process, he learned to mistrust those around him, seeing any and all forms of communication as strictly transactional.
“I never begrudged her then,” he admits, flexing his fingers over my breasts, making me shiver in a tormented mixture of pleasure from his touch and disgust at his words. “But our owner, the Collector… He enjoyed his favorites too much, and so sick a man he was… He aimed to breed us—but not on our own terms, mind you. I don’t even know how advanced the technology was back then, but one by one, we were dragged off to the medical suite. Strapped down. Prodded. Poked. Our liberties and DNA taken as though we were animals in a kennel, matched with the intent for our offspring to be bought and sold. My turn came not long before I escaped,” he adds coldly. “I was sure I’d torched the place to ashes, burning all traces of those experiments.”
“So…you think Irina took your ‘samples’ for Magda?” I don’t know how to say it without sounding foolish. A naïve innocent crudely narrating the darkest details of his past as though they’re a spectacle to gape over.
But if anything, some of the tension from him eases, his lips nuzzling my heated flesh. And for the first time, I reconcile the fact that he’s holding me at all—not staring into place, numbly recounting this like the few other times we’ve broached this topic.
“Irina was always cunning,” he says. “Cunning and calculating. Those times she used me to her own ends? She always had a token on the other end to make up for it, or so she saw them as. For instance, after I’d be whipped for her crimes, she’d sneak a priceless jewel into my chambers. Or a sweet. Though those gifts were always predicated by a desire on her part to use me again. They always carried a price.”
And thus, a brooding, ice-cold transactional man was born from the darkness of such a cruel life.
“If she did manage to get a hold of our ‘samples.’ Have Magdalene… To her, the girl would only ever be a token. A means to an end—and by dangling her before me, eventually, there will be a price to be paid in return.”
But in the case of his daughter, I don’t think he’ll hesitate to pay it, whatever it may be.
“What did she want when she came by the house?” I ask warily.
“Nothing,” he rasps, but his voice is gruff with unease. Unsteady. “Nothing.She told me she ‘missed me,’ then she left. No mention of Magdalene. Not even a fucking confirmation or a threat. Andthatis what…frightens me. She always wants something. Everything is a means to an end.”
“But Magda isn’t a token,” I whisper, matching his apparent protectiveness.
“Nor a toy,” he agrees. “And I am not the same broken little boy she left behind.”
I shiver at the ferocity in his tone, my heart aching for him. Thinking quickly, I resist his grip enough to twist around to face him and loop my arms around his neck. Desperate to distract him, I kiss a path up from his collar bone to his mouth, grinding my hips with every teasing peck.
He lunges into the kiss, pinning me beneath him, easily parting my legs.
And this time, I let him take from me.
Whatever he needs.
All that he can salvage.
Everything.
