Born for Silk (The Cradled Common)

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Rome

She opens her eyes just as the hatch closes. Her head rolls with the gas, seemingly heavier than her neck can handle.

I set her down on the green cushioned bench and ignore the backward glances from the Gunner at the front. This is foolishness. Bringing her into my space. She has already occupied too much of my interest and now I am practically alone with her. This isn’t good.

The first time I saw her at the parlour, she walked backward into me. I thought she was pathetic in that second, a small, insignificant little Common girl who would never be selected for my Collective…

Then she looked up at me.

Those eyes…

She didn’t drop to her knees; she leaned into me, spoke out of turn, and touched me without asking. She rambled about flowers and cities, too many damn spare thoughts, and I wasn’t bored at all, a rare state for me, especially in the company of silly, little girls.

So, intrigued as I was, I felt the need to thank her for that, for making me feel something.

And now I know.

She is bound to the fibres of my last human cells, the parts of me that dwindle from nearly two decades ago when I was an idiotic boy who wanted to be a saviour.

She stares at me as though keen to map my bone structure. Blinking the cloud of gases and dust from the warehouse, my nictitating membrane slides across my cornea. She follows the sweep of the eyelid, seemingly fascinated.

I clench my teeth. Hate it. A shiver rushes the length of my body. The intimacy she presses without knowing is utterly torturous.

“Have you been inside a tank before?” I ask, sliding down the bench, adding space between us. Space that adds a much-needed reprieve from the intoxicating way her scent rouses my cock.

She is slumped backward against the inner wall, barely propped up, and I notice she holds her wrist protectively. “No, my king. Never.”

I frown. “Were you not taught to address me as Sire?”

“Sire.” She swallows, her tongue moving around her mouth in an odd way. “I’m sorry.”

I prefer my king from her lips.

“My king will do.” My forehead tightens further. “Why are you holding your wrist? And your mouth, why are you working your jaw? Are you hurt?”

“I’m sorry.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head over and over. “It was na?ve. I thought about taking off my clothes and pushing them down the drain for The Trade to find but I didn’t want to take them off. The boy… He seemed to hate the tattoo. I let him. It’s my fault. I didn’t fight him.”

“The fuck did he do?”

She smiles at me. “Are you real, Sire?”

She is out of her damn mind.

The tank roars and moves, and she shuffles around, nervous to feel the motion as it speeds up.

“My king,” I correct, somehow cementing a unique relationship with this girl, one that bothers me, but I keep engaging in. She is like a kitten, erratic and endearing. Her energy is odd and entertaining—innocent.

Why do I care?

I can accept this interest as akin to one between an owner and a pet—nothing more. I owe her nothing. She is safe now.

I kept a foolish boy’s word.

Though… Cairo would hate anything outside of the approved sequence of Trade interactions. I smirk. He would hate the conversations we have already had and the way she addresses me so informally.

I like that.

“You don’t think I’m real?” I close the gap between us, inhaling as I catch her scent again. Maybe I should make her moan; she would know how real I am then. Does vulnerability have a damn scent? Well, if it does. This is it— Aster.

I reach out and grab her little wrist to inspect the place she is cradling so carefully. She winces. Fuck. I loosen my hold on her bony wrist, never knowing my strength nor usually caring.

I feel her pulse racing beneath her skin.

A frown tightens my forehead. My mark has been skinned from her, a smooth valley down to the weeping muscles. The raw area pools with white and pink fluids, and tiny beads of blood.

Anger spreads a red mist over my eyes.

“I may be dreaming,” she repeats.

I grip her chin and tilt it upward. “Open your mouth.”

She blinks but does as she is told.

Hesitantly, she spreads her pretty lips, revealing a pink centre but then… Her tongue flashes at me. The middle crease has a long gash, as though she has been sliced with a knife.

“Which one did this to you?”

I release her, but she doesn’t move her chin, still peering up at me like the little kitten Tuscany was gifted the day after her rite. It was an offering to comfort her and bring her back to life. Tuscany was too gentle for this world…

I should have stopped him.

Could have saved her.

The kitten was her sanity manifested.

It was desperate for attention, but Tuscany had nothing left.

She ignored it.

It starved to death over the three weeks that she refused to move from her mattress. The little thing gnawed at the tips of Tuscany’s fingers while she was catatonic. My sister still has tiny scars on each digit from the desperate teething of her sanity.

Fuck. Why am I going there?

Aster pulls me from my dark recall, when she says, “After I convinced the Endigo boy that I was just like him?—”

Clever girl… “How did you do that?”

“I told him that I would survive The Cradle… with him,” she confirms, and I don’t like where this is heading. My muscles tense, and my spine steels in agonising preparation. “I kissed him, and let him touch me and?—"

“You what?”

“The leader said my tongue can’t be trusted anymore, and he started to cut it with a knife, but then, I don’t know…” Her eyelids bat, heavy. “His hand slipped. We both fell. I hit my head. I cannot feel my body right now, my king. Am I dreaming? I feel strange. Can I touch you again so that I know you’re real? Can you touch me again so that I know I am?”

The gas…

Shock, too.

I stare at her, hard. “ You're not afraid of me.”

“Yes, but not for my life.”

“Why?” I ask, thinking about the men I have just killed, their blood still drying on my leather armour and their pleas for mercy still echoing in the dark chamber of my soul. “I could strangle you with one hand.”

“You have no reason to.”

I measure her up, noting the scarlet hue rising beneath her cheeks. I make her blush. “Perhaps I'd enjoy seeing your life leave your eyes, little creature.”

Matching me, she looks through me. I stiffen as her gaze pokes around inside my mind. I fucking hate it. “I don't think you're really like that. Deep down.”

“And how would you know what I'm like?”

“I felt it.” A bead of sweat forms on her brow, but it’s not from nerves. “When you held my hand, you didn't want to hurt me then. Or did you?”

No, I didn’t want to hurt her.

She is right.

“You may touch me,” I say smoothly. “But don't get misguided thoughts about me and kindness. We do not exist together. You’re the property of The Cradle— my property. Your body, your womb, is what matters to me.”

“I understand, my king.”

“More reversing gas, Sire?” the gunner asks, passing the mask back to me.

As she sways with the movement of the tank, I pull her to my lap. I cradle her entire body to my chest. Her little legs dangle over my thighs and her head nests in the crook of my arm on a pillow of her onyx hair.

She is flawless, pure—life.

And I am bloody, bruised—death.

“You’re hurt, my king.” She reaches up and presses her hand above my heart where my armour weeps with blood and a bullet hides deep in my flesh. “You’re bleeding.”

My chest tightens.

I hold the mask over her mouth and nose. My hand covers most of her face, so I part my fingers and watch her eyes flicker as she inhales.

A cruel smile moves across my face. “You let him kiss you, little creature?” Her eyes widen, but she nods into the mask. “And touch you?” I don’t know what those words make me feel, but it burns a path in my muscles. “Where?”

Her eyes close on the answer.

“Show me with your hands, which parts of my property were played with,” I order. “Do it now.”

I gaze down as her arm lifts, her finger touching just below her ribcage, a supple spot. I track her finger as it moves upward, over her expressed ribs to the crease between her breasts. She cups a small, pert mound in her hand, her eyes never leaving mine, and squeezes it. I hiss.

I want to trace each place he touched. Follow her finger. Want to lick it. Want to mark it. Heat expands in my veins. Needing to ease some tension, I crack my neck to the side, then to the other.

So… This is the Silk Girl’s prowess. A potent balance of innocence and interest; that boy didn’t stand a chance to refuse her. This creature in my arms was conditioned from a babe to be what a man wants, as, what is the point of having a breeding vessel who cannot keep a man hard. She wouldn’t even know how subtle the messages in her teachings are or how they consume a man’s mind.

Like now…

With her slow movements.

Touching herself for me.

Slow. Behaved. Sweet.

But unknowingly seductive.

“He touched you there?” I growl, fighting against the pulsing need in my cock. I flex my hard-on against her underside but wish I could squeeze it inside her. Fuck, she’d be tight. Too tight, we’d both be in agony. “Did you like it?”

Slowly, her brows draw in and she shakes her head, trying to shake the mask away. I lower it, revealing her plump red lips. Red lips… too red. Blood has rushed to them…

Her eyes roll backward.

Fuck.

“Aster,” I shake her lightly.

Not now. I look her over again, place the back of my hand on her forehead. Her skin radiates heat; she is burning up. Her perspiration is slick against my knuckles. Clammy. She’s fucked. I part her lips to open her mouth and look at her tongue… Then it dawns on me. Bacteria.

Tetanus.