Page 19 of Dark Space
Andhe had an incredibly ripped friend.Tall, Dark, and Looming, I decided I’d call him, in lieu of anything better.Hiseyes weren’t kind; his eyes werehungry, and they made my heart race, as if my body would be more than happy to be his feast.
I shook my head. I was imagining things, projecting my own desires onto males I couldn’t evenspeakwith.Head in the clouds, my grandmother would have muttered, sometimes affectionately, and sometimes in censure.Don’t worry about us mortals down here.
Plus, I couldn’t have both of them.
Why choose?Tessa would have said, but I was pretty sure thatchoosingwas the point of marriage.
‘Vesper?’ I said tentatively, but he didn’t answer. For some reason, his silence made me irrationally angry; it wasn’t as ifhe’dput me in this situation, but my temper didn’t care.
‘Fine,’ I snapped crossly, an ache forming in the pit of my stomach. ‘Be like that. This isn’t my fault, you know.’
Since I couldn’t sleeportalk to Vesper, I decided to work out the shower situation. Evidently, Vesper had been right about the wholeharvesting icething, because when I pressed the button, water sprayed out of the wall instead of light – and it washot. I took the opportunity to use the toilet while the water was running, my face burning the entire time, but I relaxed once I was standing under the shower, the heat pounding on the tense muscles of my back.
The Prince wants to claim you.
I thought of Vesper’s shocked expression.
You’re eminently protectable. You’re delicate and beautiful and small.
The butterflies in my stomach fluttered their wings at the notion that Vesper thought I was beautiful.
I ignored them.
‘If I can’t have two, then three is even less likely,’ I told myself, washing my hair with the sweet-smelling liquid left in a pouch by the sink. I had no idea what it was, but it did the trick. ‘And they seem to hate each other, anyway.’
I dried my hair as best I could and dressed in my dirty clothes, resolving to ask if there was anything else I could wear, or at least a way to clean what I had. Despite the hot shower, putting my clean skin back into the clothes I’d cooked – and then been abducted – in made me even more cross, so I got back into bed and pulled the blanket over my head, ignoring Vesper, who had opened his eyes and was watching me from across the cell.
I slipped so gently into sleep that when I dreamed, it seemed as if I were still awake, every detail of the cell vivid, from the stark black walls to the softness of the blankets on my bed. I stretched languidly, enjoying the feeling of the blankets on my skin – skin that was suddenly bare.
It didn’t seem strange when the wall opaqued and Tall, Dark, and Looming was there, waiting, watching. In my dream, I wasn’t scared of the hunger in his eyes, so I arched, letting the blanket fall away and his gaze brand my heated skin from throat to hip. My nipples were hard and aching, so as he watched, I cupped my breasts, rubbing my thumbs across the stiff peaks, at once a pleasure for me and a show for him.
It didn’t seem strange when the wall slid open and he walked inside the cell, nor when I realised that Vesper was freed from his chain, sitting within arm’s length, watching, his eyes glowing gold in the dim light. The black-haired Roth pulled the blanket from my bed so I was naked before them both, bare and waiting.The Roth fell gracefully to his knees next to Vesper, so I spread my own and let them see that I was wet and swollen, then trailed my hand down my stomach to cup between my legs.
It didn’t seem strange when the Roth growled, nor when his shoulders braced against my thighs and he lowered his head. I cried out when his tongue swept over me, when it probed and found my entrance, when it sank inside me while his shoulders held me open for his plunder, the wide stretch an unfamiliar and delicious pleasure-pain. When my head fell to the side I realised that the Prince had joined us, sitting hot-eyed next to Vesper, his chin cupped in one hand as the black-haired Roth licked and sucked me by turn and my hands found his horns and directed him where I needed it most.
It didn’t seem strange at all when my body tightened, then coiled, then was released from its delicious torture in a wave of sensation so strong that my core cramped.
Anna, the Roth between my legs growled, and that wasn’t strange, either; it was a promise, a caress, a prayer.
I woke with a start, the sound of my name on his tongue still echoing in my ears, and I realised that the cramp was real, and pain was radiating from my core, all the way down my thighs.
No, I thought desperately, the heady pleasure of the dream fading before the inconvenience of reality.Oh, please, no.Not now.
After a five-year battle with gynaecologists, I’d finally gotten a begrudging diagnosis just a handful of months previously – adenomyosis. My periods ranged frompainfultodownright excruciating, and the sensation radiating down my thighs was not a good sign. I curled into a ball, then changed position a moment later when that made it worse.
I felt Vesper’s eyes on me. ‘Anna?’
I didn’t answer, trying not to flush as I remembered my dream, rubbing my stomach to try to ease the pain. I got up andwent into the wash corner – I couldn’t call it abathroom– and cleaned myself up, fashioning a pad from the odd sheets of moss provided in place of toilet paper, shivering in the cool air.
‘Anna, what’s wrong?’ Vesper said, after I’d washed my hands and emerged again. ‘You’ve gone a colour you weren’t before. This one isn’t as nice as the pink.’
‘Got my period,’ I said through gritted teeth.
He blinked. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Menstruation?’ I said. ‘Courses? Cycles? Bleeding?’
‘Ah.’ He studied me, frowning. ‘Starlings don’t do that.’
