It’s not as exotic as Ambrosia, but it suits her. What is amber, after all, other than tree sap hardened by time? Her pussy is sweet like syrup, and suddenly, I find myself wondering what I have to do to get another taste. Somehow thethought of crawling overtop of her and taking it doesn’t feel like the right move. She’d have no choice but to let me—even awake, fully conscious, there’s no way she stands a chance of overpowering me. She wouldn’t want to even if she could. The fact that she’s still in the bed beside me as I’ve crept closer to her, needing to feel her beneath my skin, tells me all I need to.
I’ll play it safe… not because I’m afraid of upsetting her.
I’ll play it safe because I’ve already won over her body. That was mine long before even she knew it.
Now, I just have to do the same with her brain.
19
Amber
The next morning, I’m shocked when I wake up to whispers coming from outside the room.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
For one horrible moment, I wonder whether he drugged me again, whether I don’t remember falling asleep because it was forced on me. But then I remember watching the movie, confessing about Parker, and how I broke my vow to myself not to cry as it felt like every bad thing that’s happened in the last few months fell on me all at once.
But it was Ambrosia who cried for her brother. It was Ambrosia who broke her promise to herself. It’s Ambrosia who is a victim—a survivor, sure, but also a victim.
It’s Amber who’s going to put an end to our suffering.
“You can’t let her go!” A voice hisses, and my chest feels tight when I recognize Dex’s voice. He’s supposed to be the good one, so his words feel like a betrayal.
“I wouldn’t if I could.” Cal says calmly, as if he hadn’t even considered it. “She’s too important to me.”
My heart fuckinghurts, and his words do nothing to ease the ache.
I’m important to him. Is it because he paid for me? Because I belong to him?
“Well, you can’t kill her, so what the fuck are you going to do with her?”
I lie perfectly still, refusing to give up the fact that I’m awake, that I can hear them. I peel my eyes open just the slightest bit and see them through the crack where the door was left open.
Dex is dressed, with a coffee in hand, while Cal looks as though he just rolled out of bed, boxers and bedhead and… is hehard, or is the imprint in his boxers just that big?
“Hopefully fuck her continuously,” Cal says, far too calmly for my liking. “Constantly, keep the beast at bay for as long as I can....”
That, at least, spurs my heart to begin again.
Three days ago, I woke up tied to this fucking bed, naked and in so much pain. When the drugs subsided, I clung to the safety of sleep, begging it to come back and swallow me so I didn’t have to deal with the reality of my situation, of everything that happened.
I feigned sleep as long as I could, and neither of them has done anything to me. But Cal sounds like that’s exactly the plan.
My time in the captivity of Ma’am and her guards feels like a bad dream, the kind that clings to the fabric of your soul, sending your brain back to obsess over it again and again no matter how much you tell yourself to focus on something happy. It also prepared all of us for the reality of our eventual reassignment… the fact that all we amount to is what we can do with our bodies. Or, in my case, what other people can do with my body.
I learned long ago how to use my body to get what I want. It was a crucial progression for me when I discovered that I either used it for my own purpose or someone else would feel entitled to use it for theirs.
Sex isn’t personal to me. It never has been, and it never will be. I learned to rewrite the pain of my earlier experiences and shape them into something that I can benefit from, whether it’s just the power of making a man turn into a pleading mess beneath me or the physical catharsis of using my body howIwant.
I can be a good little whore if this is what I have to do to stay alive…
I don’t even know where the desire to live comes from. I assume it’s innate, biological, something I can’t turn off.
Cal doesn’t begrudge me for not getting out of bed that day, bringing me snacks that I stare at for a long time before I relent enough to munch on them. And when he comes back to bed that night, he puts on the next movie in our series.
It feels like a betrayal of my own common sense, and maybe even my sanity, but my body has already surrendered to Cal after months of physical bonding that I have no memory of. He shaped me, without ever realizing he was doing it, and earned the allegiance of my body. I haven't yet asked him to tell me a date so I can figure out just how long I was his basement captive, to tell me what’s happened in the world when I was unconscious, or to show me any sort of news articles.
In a way, I think my body is protecting my mind from all of the awful things that have happened. It's as if surrendering to him makes everything that's happened to lead us to this point okay. I don't know if it's Pavlovian conditioning or if I'm just considerably more fucked up than I thought I was, but the man I share a bed with every night has stolen my body's loyalty, and I don't know how to contend with that, either.
