“What are the other two wanted for?”
Just as I ask the question, we are rejoined by the other two brutal mercenary criminal aliens. Kronos has a swelling around his right eye. Sharp’s robe is ripped and singed. Have they been fighting over me?
“Did you guys just go and have rough sex?” I ask the question before I can stop myself.
The look Kronos gives me is enough to make me quiver in Boss’ arms. I hope he won’t let the cruel god take me again.
“No,” he says. “Sharp thinks I was too harsh with you. I think, given what you just said, I wasn’t nearly harsh enough.”
“She doesn’t owe us respect,” Sharp says. “She doesn’t owe us anything. We lost her. We let her mind be tampered with. She came to harm in our care. I understand she needs to be disciplined, but we have to take responsibility too.”
“She came to harm because she left our care,” Kronos argues. “And I’m going to make damn sure she doesn’t do anything like that again.”
“Will you take me away?” I ask Boss the question quietly. He answers by picking me up and carrying me out of the room. I don’t want to see Kronos right now. He scares me. The things he told me about his feelings toward me have left me with a trickle of fear when I look at him. He’ll do whatever it takes to break me, and that’s fucking terrifying, especially when I think about how he seemed all nice and sweet in the club. It was Sharp who seemed to be the angry one there. I don’t know what to make of any of them yet.
As Boss carries me away, I catch Kronos’ eye over the Minotaur’s big shoulder. I stick my tongue out. Fuck that guy. He thinks he can break me just because he can break me? I’m not going to spend my whole life submitting to him.
“Ow!” I yelp as the collar gives me a pulse of pain.
“Did you forget I installed that?” Kronos asks.
“Yes,” I pout.
He laughs, and Boss carries me away.
“Can you take the collar off me?” I ask Boss. “He can use it to hurt me.”
“I’m not going to undermine Kronos,” he says. “But I can help you avoid him if you want to be a good girl.”
“I don’t want to be a good girl,” I explain. “I want to be a free woman. I don’t know what kind of relationship we had for the year we were together, but I know myself. Even now with no memories. Deep down I know who I am, and what I need, and it’s never going to be letting some big blond alien dude control me.”
Boss rumbles with amusement and sets me down on the bed. “You know, you and Kronos are a lot alike,” he says. “That might be why you have so much trouble behaving for him.”
“I thought Sharp was going to be the mean one.”
“We are all the mean ones in different ways when you need for us to be,” Boss says. “Now, let’s have a cuddle. You look like you need it.”
I curl up with him in bed, enjoying the feeling of his big, heavy body next to me. Nobody is going to be able to hurt me with him guarding me. Looks like Kronos came off second best to Sharp. I don’t think he could do anything to Boss. I think I know where my allies are now.
A few days pass, and I feel better. I thought I was going to be in a worse way after my ordeal on the electric sex thing. I can feel the ache between my legs for a while and my muscles generally feel quite tired, but a few days after it’s the same sort of feeling you get after a big workout. Almost feels good.
I wake up before Boss and go get something to eat. Sharp is already up. He smiles when he sees me, and his usually taciturn expression melts a little.
“Hi,” I say, feeling a little shy.
“How are you feeling, pet?” He asks the question with some real concern.
“Okay,” I say, settling down in a chair that is too big for me, because it is made to the proportions of a much larger alien. I do notice that there’s a smaller one that was probably installed with me in mind, but I don’t sit in that. Like a cat, preferring to sit in the cardboard box the cat tree came in rather than use the cat tree, I decide where I go and what I say is fun.
I wonder how much of life is just a striving to feel independent in some way, clawing at a universe that gives us no real control for little scraps of some sense of being able to direct our fortunes.
Boss comes in after me.
“You were going to get breakfast without me?” He clasps his hands to his chest. “I’m wounded.”
“You were asleep!”
We tease each other for a bit before I ask the real questions.
