Chapter 13 #3
There’s a bed, and there’s a table and chairs, and bathroom presumably, probably. I hope so. I need to be bathed. There is so much semen sticking to my thighs.
Thor sits down in an armchair and cuddles me in his lap while Drako stands before us.
He looks good in that uniform. It highlights the sharpness of his character, and the danger he perpetually represents.
I feel as though I have lived a lifetime in the past hour.
He looks fresh as a daisy, ready to go fuck up another planet at a moment’s notice.
“This is a comfortable room,” he says. “It’ll stay comfortable as long as the two of you behave. We are going to continue voyaging for the foreseeable. So I suggest you get comfortable. You are going to be seeing a lot of these walls.”
Neither Thor nor I say anything. I don’t think I can speak. I think the parts of my mind I use for interaction have been completely disengaged. I curl up into Thor’s arms and I close my eyes.
“You plan to keep us alive then,” Thor says. “Me, I mean. I know you intend to keep her, of course.”
“Yes. You’ll live,” Drako says. “I’ll keep the both of you under my protection.”
I feel Thor flex beneath me as he takes offense to that offer. “I don’t need your protection. I need my freedom.”
“Wrong. Our babies are going to come from this woman’s womb. I cannot live in your world, so you two will have to live in mine. Consider yourselves properly captured. Don’t worry, Golden Boy. Things catch on fire for us too; you’ll be able to ply your trade freely.”
“Live on this ship?”
“On this ship. Off it. On other worlds. In other places. We travel, we explore. We discover new things…”
“And blow them up,” I interject sleepily.
Drako smirks at me. “I would have thought you’d stay quiet for a while yet after all you’ve been through lately. Are you in need of more attention?”
I fall silent.
“I can make the two of you happy,” Drako says. “I know the introduction to our ship was rough, but frankly nothing else would have broken you to it. You are mine, and my men know it. You have a place among my people. You will be respected.”
“That’ll be new,” I mutter.
“I can fuck you again, if you like,” he says, but I think he’s teasing.
“I want you to be my family,” Drako continues. “The both of you. That is why I saved you on that mountain, and that is why I hunted for the pair of you, and that is why I didn’t simply shoot you, Thor, when I had the chance.”
“Why?”
Thor asks a damn good question.
“You’re good with her. You give her something I cannot. And I give her something you can’t. Together, we almost make one half-decent husband for her. I can trust that you will be a good father. And you can trust that I will bring the weight of the Vikar to bear on any threats.”
Thor looks at me, and then at Drako.
“I understand that if we were to leave, you would hunt us down. I know that if we were to make it back to Weltheim, you would…”
“Burn that city to the ground.”
“No,” I say. “My family live there.”
“Then you are best to stay with me, are you not?”
“So we have no choice.”
“Precisely,” he smiles. “I knew you’d get it, because the pair of you are just the smartest little pair of Frayer Vikings I’ve ever encountered.
Now, I need to deal with some ship matters, and I am sure the two of you want to gossip about how fun it is to be all caught up and looked after by a big bad Vikar jarl. ”
Drako leaves us to adapt to captivity. Thor just holds me for a long time.
He doesn’t say anything. I think I fall asleep for a bit.
I have been exhausted for a long time, not only in the last physical ordeal I was made to endure, but in the days in which we tried to survive.
Now that’s all over. We have been captured. There’s nowhere to run anymore.
One of the most melancholy phenomena I ever observed in wild animals was the way prey would sometimes just give up when they could no longer evade a predator. It was beautiful and it was awful, the way they would turn their necks to get it over with faster.
I feel like that now. Like I have turned my neck and Drako has sunk his teeth deep into me and my essence has flowed away from me, and into him.
I stir when I feel Thor move beneath me. I think we both napped.
“Let’s look at the bathroom,” he says. “If there’s a shower…”
I slide off his lap, not exactly invigorated. That would be too strong of a word. But I have more energy than absolutely no energy. And I make my way to the room, fling open the door, and see a unit that looks a whole lot like a shower to me.
When I turn a dial and hot water starts flowing out of the showerhead, I could practically cry.
“Do you know how much I craved one of these when we were in that mud pit?” I ask Thor as I remove whatever scraps of ripped clothing are still on me, and step into the water. A full body shiver runs down me as my aching muscles and tired bones are embraced by a simple luxury.
He comes close and helps me wash. We find lotions and oils and soaps and we make liberal use of all of them. First I am cleaned carefully and gently, and then I wrap myself in a towel and I watch Thor wash.
Drako calls him Golden Boy. I think he is closer to a golden god.
He has the most incredible physique of anybody I have ever seen.
He is built broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, and his torso is absolutely trammeled with the musculature of survival.
His legs are long, his thighs are powerful, and his golden hair is a lot like mine, and at a time like this, that makes a difference.
He flashes a smile at me from the water’s embrace. “Are you okay?”
“Never better,” I say. “And I actually mean that. I feel like I’ve been saved by the shower.”
“I know what you mean,” he says. “This has been an ordeal. For you, more than for me. I am sorry I could not prevent that absolute travesty. You deserved more dignity than that.”
Drako isn’t one for allowing dignity. “That’s not really a Vikar thing,” I say.
“No,” Thor agrees. “It isn’t. Are you…” he pauses. “Okay is too bland a word, and I know you are not. But are you…”
“I am going to be okay,” I tell him. “It’s not the first time I’ve been made a spectacle of, remember?”
“Oh?”
“Yes. When you turned me over to the captain, remember?”
“That was not the same thing,” Thor snorts. “He paddled you. Drako just ravaged you in front of his entire crew.”
“I know. Same same.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Are you serious?”
“No,” I grin. I know I am supposed to be traumatized, and I am, probably. But I am also warm, dry, and physically not likely to be eaten by an animal for the first time in ages. We’re safe, and we know it.
Thor gets out of the shower and I watch him dry himself off. I am going to make a habit of showering with him, I think. The sight is enough to restore faith in all sorts of things.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Thor. “I feel like I got you into this. And now you’re captive too. And I’m not the only one who had sex in front of everyone.”
“It’s different,” he says. “Fucking versus being fucked.”
“Is it? Have you tried both?”
He shakes his head at me. “Regardless. Don’t be sorry.
I signed up for the adventure too,” Thor says.
“And though this is not the outcome I planned for, it suits me as well as any other, because it means I have you, and our baby. And not all is lost. Drako is on top for now, but he won’t always be. Fortune favors the patient.”
“Is that how it works? I thought it favored the bold.”
“I think we’ve seen that’s not true,” he says. He wraps a towel around his waist and picks me up again. There’s not really any need, but I think he wants his hands on me. The worst thing that could happen would be for us to be separated now.
Drako’s made some promises, sure, and I think I trust him, but we both know circumstances could change. Thor is counting on it, I think.
When we emerge from the bathroom, we find Drako in the room. But he’s not the most interesting thing. What is interesting is the fact that there’s all kinds of food laid out on the table. He’s got meats and cheeses and fruits.
“Don’t eat too much, or too fast,” he says. “You’ll be ill. You might even die, if you’ve been hungry enough. Start with some nibbles…”
I have shoved half an orange into my mouth. It’s delicious. The sticky juice runs over my tongue and the rich citrus reminds me of sunny days on better planets.
“Yes. Anyway,” he says. “You’ll be fed in your captivity, and looked after as well as any two pets might be.”
He’s needling Thor on purpose, and Thor knows it. I watch him ignore Drako studiously as he picks through the offerings. He must be working so hard to not react, and instead to eat some cheese.
We eat while Drako watches, and there’s a kind of contented silence from Thor and me. Drako has all the cards and all the power, but we’ve had orgasms and showers and now cheese, so I’d say we are doing pretty well.
“Do you not have questions?”
“Do you want us to freak out?” I speak up. “Are you here to gloat?”
“No,” he says. “I was just hoping for some conversation.”
“Fine,” I sigh, knowing this will not go well. “Am I really never going to see home again?”
“Maybe, in a few years, if you prove your loyalty, and you show that you are manageable…”
“Fuck it. Forget it,” I say, throwing my arms up in the air. “Never going to happen. I guess I’m getting gang banged in front of the guys every Tuesday from now until eternity.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. One spectacle should have been enough to prove my conquest of the pair of you.” Drako deadpans the response, ignoring my sarcastic tone.
“So conquered,” I respond. “Oh, my gods, how will I ever handle how conquered I am?”
Drako reaches out and grips the hair at the back of my head in a firm fist. My words die off into a light squeak.
“That’s what I thought,” he says.