Chapter 6 #2
“I’m not an animal,” I said. It came out softer than I’d meant it to.
“No.” He reached out and tucked a damp strand of hair away from my face. His thumb grazed my cheek once, just barely. “You’re mine.”
He held out his hand.
I took it. I told myself it was practical. I told myself the decision had already been made for me, and spending energy fighting it was just waste.
I thought about what it might mean to be kept close.
I followed him out of the bathroom and into the closet.
It was quite extravagant.
He dressed himself first in a black pair of cargo pants.
He pulled on a shirt and stepped up onto a small circular platform.
Immediately, a bright spotlight illuminated him, and I watched in fascination as his outfit transformed into a hard armored sheath.
Light blue digital indicators flashed and when the glow finally dissipated, I shivered with an icy chill as I took in the reigning commander of the alien forces.
Fitted metal plates encased his massive form.
He moved with ease, and I quickly realized that it wasn’t metal, but some other material that shone just like it with enhanced flexibility.
I didn’t know what the capabilities of such armor would be, but I had to guess it was probably bulletproof as well as knife-proof and all the other things you’d expect from battle gear like it.
I wrapped the towel around myself a bit closer, unable to quell how unsettled I felt at the sight.
He offered his hand, and I wasn’t left with any choice but to take it.
“Drop the towel,” he commanded.
Even though he’d already seen me naked several times, it was hard to drop the protective barrier of the soft cloth. He cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes and the image of me over his thighs was enough to make me open my hands and let it fall to the floor.
I felt my face heat as he stepped closer to me.
I could feel his gaze on my body and that only made my flush deepen enough to be more than noticeable.
To his credit, he said nothing as he guided me onto the platform.
The warmth of the light above me was soothing and I trembled a little as it glowed across my skin.
Slowly, threads began to come together and cover my flesh. They were a multitude of colors, but when it started to weave together, I could see that it was a royal blue fabric with silver and gray etching on the edges. It swept and hugged at my body until the light finally dimmed.
“Simply breathtaking,” he praised, and I hazarded a glance in his direction to see if he meant it. Unexpectedly, the expression on his face seemed genuine. There was no wisecrack or mean words that followed and that took me aback.
He approached me and lifted a small round stone to the base of my throat.
His movements were slower than usual. More intentional.
The tips of his fingers brushed against my collarbone as he positioned it, and I felt the warmth of his hands even before the metal touched my skin.
He held it there for a moment, and when I looked up, I found him watching my face rather than his own hands.
His expression gave me pause. It was almost like he was being careful. Maybe even ceremonious.
He tapped the stone once.
A silver band expanded in a smooth, cool ring and settled against the curve of my throat. I reached up immediately, fingers searching for a clasp, a catch, anything really. There was nothing. The metal was seamless and fitted perfectly, as if it had been made just for me.
I supposed it had.
“This will denote to all of my people that you belong to me,” he said. His voice was quieter than it had been all morning. “It will only come off with my permission.”
My fingers stayed pressed against the band. It wasn’t tight. It wasn’t painful. It was smooth, faintly warm from wherever he’d kept it, and impossible to remove.
“What does that mean?” I asked, in spite of myself. “That I belong to you.”
His expression shifted, growing darker, more possessive.
“That you are mine,” he said. “Not the city’s. Mine alone.” A pause. His thumb traced along the outer edge of the band, just above where it met my skin, and my breath caught before I could stop it. “You will want for nothing, Raiza,” he continued, almost as if reassuring me.
I stared up at him as I gritted my teeth.
“I am not a dog,” I scoffed.
A glimmer of amusement moved through his expression.
“No,” he agreed quietly. “You are considerably more difficult than any dog I’ve ever encountered.”
“Then take it off.”
“I’m not going to do that, my pet.”
“You can’t just—”
“You’re mine now, Raiza.” There was a finality to it that cut through the rest of my protest before I could finish forming it. “It’s about time you accepted that.” His hand dropped, dragging down the side of me and just glancing against my ass. The reminder was very clear.
This time, I chose to heed it.
My fingers fell away from the collar. I told myself it was tactical. I told myself it was simply a matter of choosing my battles.
I did not think about the fact that the metal was warm against my skin.
I did not think too hard that something about wearing it felt right.
I tried not to think about how much the words ‘my pet’ lit up a piece of my soul.
He grunted in satisfaction as he led me out of the closet, but he stopped in the hall just outside, then lifted his hand to the base of my throat and tapped the gem at the center of the collar.
A slender chain extended from it. It was silver, fine enough to catch the morning light that cut through the windows at the end of the hall. He took the end and wound it once around his wrist without looking away from my face.
“You said something last night,” I managed. “About showing off your newest acquisition.”
“I did.” He turned, gave the chain a single unhurried pull, and walked.
He didn’t take me toward the elevator.
He took me down.
There was a staircase at the far end of the hall.
It was wide and sweeping, the kind that existed to be descended rather than merely used.
I went down it beside him with my head up, which was pure stubbornness, because my heart was doing something mortifying behind my ribs.
The dress the alien tech had made swept around my legs.
The silver at my throat caught the light every time I moved.
The floor below his penthouse was clearly where his officers gathered in the mornings.
Nine or ten of them, arranged around a long table with several mugs that might have been full of coffee and holographic maps I wasn’t supposed to see. When we came through the door, the conversation stopped the way sound stops when you fall through ice.
They looked at me.
I had spent my entire life being looked through. Raiza Nix: too small for the front lines, too stubborn to die, the girl who drew the joker card and somehow kept breathing after. I was not a person people fell silent for.
They looked at him next, and their faces did something complicated.
One of them had risen slightly from his chair. His eyes moved from my face to the chain in Talyn’s hand and back to my face with an expression I recognized even if I’d never been its cause before.
Envy.
Talyn walked through the room slowly, which was worse than being hurried would have been. He stopped near the long windows that looked out over the city and turned.
I understood what he wanted.
I turned too. My chin came up. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe it was the last scraps of soldier in me, or some other thing that I’d figure out a different day, but I turned, and I stood beside the most powerful man in the city in his dress on his leash, and I let them look.
The room was very quiet.
“Commander,” someone said from the far end of the table. “She’s extraordinary.”
“Yes,” Talyn said.
The rose-gray officer took a step toward us. Just a single one. Like he’d forgotten himself or made a calculation and decided to chance it. His eyes were on me.
Talyn’s hand found the small of my back.
He went still, the sort of particular stillness of someone very dangerous deciding whether to move. The chain in his other hand shortened by a few links. It was just enough for me to notice. I came imperceptibly closer to his side.
The officer stopped.
He looked at Talyn’s face, and he must have found something there to make him take a deliberate step back.
The hand at my back stayed where it was, but his fingers brushed against me.
I breathed carefully and tried to examine what was happening in my chest with any kind of useful neutrality.
He was proud of me.
It wasn’t the way he’d been proud of making me cry over his knee, or proud of wrestling pleasure from a body that should have known better.
This was different. He was standing in front of the men he commanded, and he was proud that I was the one on his leash.
That I was wearing what he’d dressed me in, marked with what he’d marked me with, standing here with my chin level.
Like I was worth showing off.
I hadn’t been worth showing off to anyone in a very long time.
I filed it away next to everything else I wasn’t ready to examine, which was becoming quite a crowded place.
Talyn turned to his men. “Carry on,” he said, and led me away.
By the time we came back upstairs, everything was pristinely clean. There wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere. I spotted an android working in one of the rooms with a duster and an almost silent vacuum, cleaning who knows what.
It was early in the morning by the angle of the sun through the windows. It was a nearly cloudless sunny day, the blue of the sky bright.
Seeing the city in daylight was daunting, however.
The buildings seemed taller, sleeker, and much bigger than they looked the night before. The streets down below were full of alien men and the skies seemed to come alive with flying ships hurtling through the buildings with ease.