Wilder reached his hand out and caressed her cheek. “I don’t want to anger you or make you feel anything but what we have here is real. I want you secure. It’s crazy how much I want you in my life. How much I desire you with every facet of my being. That makes me more possessive, protective. I will extract punishment when you defy the rules laid out to keep you happy and safe.”
“That makes me sound like I’m a prisoner of sorts. Captive like at the immigrant intake center or on the island.”
“No, not like that, but a captive none the less. You’ve captured our desires and we want to capture yours. You will want to agree with us because it’s what makes us work. What makes us compatible makes us draw closer together. But do not mistake our tenderness for our lack of backbone. If you step out of line, on purpose, you will be corrected.”
“I feel your thoughts and emotions, but my brain can’t make sense of it all.”
“Maybe your brain hasn’t felt the love yet. There is a little caveman in all of us and for me it is displayed in some dominant, aggressive ways. Kinky, if you will. When you are ready to make love, your most controlling lover will be—”
“Ethan.”
“Yes. He’s kissed you.”
“Yes. And Finn will be nurturing but demanding in his own way. But what about you, Wilder? What kind of lover are you?”
Charlotte spoke saving Wilder from revealing his style of lovemaking. He preferred showing to telling.
“An outside window has been breached in the House.”
“Breached? Coming. Stay here, Amara.”
“No, if I’m going to do the women any good, I have to learn them. This is a good way to do it.”
He hesitated, but she was right. “Okay, come on.”
Amara
Finn and Ethan met Amara and Wilder on their way to the residents’ wing. Finn grabbed her arm. “Stay here.”
“I can help, whatever the problem.” She felt his fear for her safety and she responded to it, looking into his eyes. “Finn, I know you’re here to protect me if I need it. I promise not to put myself in unnecessary danger, but you have to let me at least try to help.” Finn stared at her, then turned her around and with his arm wrapped around her waist, he led her forward. “If you don’t do as you are told in here, I promise to paddle that delectable rump of yours. Got it?”
She relaxed and grinned, feeling her libido igniting. “Got it.” He grunted his acceptance.
What they saw on entry to the wing was bedlam. Women were screaming, hiding, crying, and Charlotte’s voice, trying to instill order into the chaos, was just annoying.
Finn barked at Charlotte. “Charlotte cease your verbal responses.”
“Ceasing.”
Now all that was left was the rest of the pandemonium. Ethan addressed it as the other three began to separate and comfort women. His booming voice seeming to come from the bowels of the earth. Even Amara shivered.
“Stop, now! Do not speak. Do not touch. Do not move.”
He had to repeat his edicts once to accomplish the expected result but then the room was left with sniffling, crying, heaving women. Amara left the men to handle the ones who were angry or violent and went to one woman who was hiding in what was presumably her room’s closet. As Amara approached, she ached at the woman’s terror behind a wall of shut down emotions clawing to get out. The woman’s will power was valiantly holding them back.
Amara was immediately struck with the familiarity of that terror. It pulled her back into the vortex of her own experiences. She stopped approaching the woman and crouched against the wall refusing to allow the darkness and horror to pull her inside. Fighting the overwhelming fear of the other women in the wing, Amara’s memories emerged.
Without warning, she found herself battling her own sadistic mental captors. The present faded to darkness. She was again in the chamber of horrors, on the island. Her imprisoners were striking her with leather that tore at her skin. The agony was uncontrollable. She tried to swallow her screams, but she couldn’t. Her sounds of tortured anguish were torn from her throat, violently shattering the hold of torment of those suffering her same fate. Now she could only hear her own voice, feel her own nightmarish terror ripping at her psyche.
Then there were arms around her; a voice in her ear joined the devastating voices of pain in her head. “Amara. Listen to me. It’s Ethan. Hear my voice. Find me. You’re safe love. Find my voice. We will keep you safe. Finn has you. He is protecting you. Turn into him. His arms are around you. You’re safe, baby, safe.”
She frantically searched for Finn. For Ethan’s voice. The blackness receded. The rancid smells of old blood and sweat mixed with new, faded. It was replaced with a faint scent of cedar and spice. She heard Ethan’s words but felt Finn’s arms. She sucked in a desperate breath. Again. Turning into Finn’s scent, she allowed Ethan’s calm, soothing words to pull her out of her head and into Finn’s arms. There was cooling liquid dripping from her brow, her chin, but that didn’t matter. She was safe.
“Are you okay, baby? I’m picking you up and taking you out of here. Okay?” Finn.
She could nod and then she crawled towards her protector. No words emerged. She was so tired. Sleeping in Finn’s arms was all she wanted to do.
Amara heard irritated voices. Finn was yelling. No, Finn didn’t yell. She tried to force her eyes open, but they were not complying, so she simply listened to the words swarming around her.
“Fuck no! I will not subject her to flashbacks that terrorize her because I protect, I don’t harm. That shit you just witnessed was not good for her. Not good for any of us. I can’t deal with that happening to her, just so we can connect to the pain of the other women. You two will have to continue as you’ve done until now.”
“Finn,” that was Ethan speaking, “I know it looked bad, was bad but I can teach her how to handle those flashbacks and how to control her empathic abilities to benefit her and these other women. She’s going to have these episodes until she manages her abilities. Right now, she’s a slave to them.”
“Fine but until she can do that, no more walking into a pit of emotional despair.”
Wilder spoke. “I get it. I feel the same but Finn, we can’t always control that. People with emotional wreckage are all around us. We cannot do what Karen accused us of and make her live under glass. We have to allow Amara to explore the world when she wants to do so. If she doesn’t have control, doesn’t work through these experiences, she could have one of these episodes while away from us.”
Finn’s voice was broken. “It nearly killed me seeing her in so much pain. I’ve seen it in the military and other women, but this is my woman, our woman. This is Amara and I can’t sit by and allow it.”
The men were silent.
Amara could feel the angst in the room. The fear and love. The emotions were strong and yet, underneath there was anger. She could guess why but needed them to say it.
“Are you angry?” She spoke barely above a whisper. She was immediately scooped up, and she peeked through swollen eyelids. She felt kisses on her face, her eyes, her dry, cracking lips.
“Yes, but not at you, baby.” Finn’s words were hard and yet loving.
“What I did made you angry.”
“No. Angry that you lived through that, pissed that I listened to you, and not my own internal voice that said not to allow you into that pandemonium. Angry at myself.”
“And that I put in the implant.”
She watched Finn look up questioningly at the other two men in the room. Wilder responded.
“Amara, we don’t need to go into that now.”
“But if Finn is angry, I only want him to be upset once.” She turned to sit up and was helped by her Viking. “You know, get it all out of the way.” She reached for her head and found the source of another pain. She sucked air in through her teeth.
“You pounded your head on the wall, honey. I cleaned it up but you’ve an abrasion and a pretty good knot. It’s probably goi
ng to be tender for a while. Do you have a headache?”
“Surprisingly, I don’t have one. The light is difficult though.”
Ethan spoke. “That’s more from the episode than the headbanging. It’ll go away. How do you feel overall?”
“Surreal.”
“Good word for it.” Ethan continued. “Now, what about this implant?”
Silence didn’t deter her men because they seemed to be comfortable with it. “Um, well, I asked Sterling to give me his integration implant. He agreed.”
Ethan leaned forward in his chair, arms propped on his thighs, hands clasped. “Before or after our agreement?”
“After.”
“And yet he was still okay with implanting when we had not all agreed? That doesn’t sound like him.” Ethan stated.
“Because he didn’t know. He asked if he should talk to all of you and I said no. I’m an adult, I can choose my own path.”
“Amara,” Ethan was still talking, his voice had that therapist tone. “No, you don’t need to clear everything with us. You are most definitely an adult, an adult that made an agreement and is expected to honor it.”
“You didn’t ask me if bringing more women for me to ‘read’ was okay with me.”
“Shit.” Sometimes Finn was lacking in sophisticated conversation, but his meaning was communicated quite clearly.
Now it was Wilder’s turn. He spoke while he tried to flash a pin light into her eyes. She closed them. “Amara open your eyes, I need to check.”
“I just told you the light hurts them.”
Finn’s supportive arm around her tightened, his hot breath landed on her cheek, his voice low and gravelly. “Do it. He’s just taking care of you. He’ll be fast. You’re already in hot water, don’t make it worse.”
And just like that, her sex creamed, and her muscles tightened in response, ending in a shiver of arousal. She opened her eyes and tried not to squint too hard when the light flashed across her vision. Wilder held her lid up for a quick flash in each eye.
“Looks good.”
Wilder landed a kiss on her unsuspecting lips. Immediately, she was swamped with his feelings of gentle affection and something else more fundamental. She was tired, and it took energy to do more than troll his emotions. He sat back on his haunches and looked as though he were about to speak but closed his mouth and returned to his chair across from her.
Ethan resumed speaking. “Amara you knew this is what we did for a living. You knew this was one of the things that we thought you could help with, but we never intended on forcing you. If you don’t think you can handle the emotions of these women especially based on your experiences before this, that’s fine. They’re in the other wing anyway, and they don’t come into this part of the house unless we bring them.”
She shook her head. “That isn’t what I mean exactly. Yes, I was overwhelmed with the strength of the thoughts and emotions those women had, and everything was chaotic. And yes, the terror in the one woman’s mind drew out my own past horrors. And I agree that I have to find a way to control my responses because I can’t stop being empathic. But you just told me they were coming. We didn’t discuss anything beforehand, what might happen, or anything. So, as I see it, we’ve both made choices that in hindsight weren’t the best way to go about it. Not if we are working on a relationship.”
Finn, ever the protector, said, “You don’t ever have to go back over there again when we have women and residents. There are plenty of other things for you to do. You’re almost as geeky as I am, so there are security and technology you could work on.”
“No, I mean yes I can work on those things because I do enjoy them but no, that isn’t using my gifts to their greatest potential. I need to find a balance and I can’t do that living without helping others. Ethan is right, I do have to find a way to control my talents and not let them control me. And I have to conquer my history so that I can make my future. And as far as Wilder’s work, I don’t know anything medical but what I do know is how to crawl into a scared mind and reassure it, so they’re not re-traumatized any more than they have to be.”
The room was silent once again before Wilder spoke. “I don’t think we’ve been shy about letting you know what we want with you and that’s a relationship. But what we haven’t done is encourage you to say how you see us. Or even if you see us together at all. I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that I agree with Ethan and Finn. You don’t need to expose yourself to the extreme emotions, if at all possible, until you gain more control of your abilities. You might not have had any trouble in the past, but this is a whole new ballgame and you need to be suited up to play.”
“And I don’t mind saying,” added Finn, “that I don’t know how many more times I can see you in the throes of a flashback without attaching you to my hip for the rest of your life.” He kissed her cheek and hugged her tight. Amara never needed to guess how Finn felt even without her empathic abilities.
“Okay so we make a plan,” said Ethan. “First thing tomorrow morning, I’m adding you to the therapy list. I’ll see you in the morning after breakfast, and if needed, at night before you go to bed. I’ll work up a strategy tonight and we will make it easier for you by putting structure in your day, just like we will for the other women. The difference being you are ours, not someone we expect to be able to send back out into the world. Your life is here with us.”
“Okay, if I agree to that, what about the birth manipulation? I don’t have a lot of time before it starts in earnest. As far back as I could trace before I was detained—no stolen—was that it was in the year 2052. This is the fall of 2051.”
Wilder stood and began a slow pace in the room. “I’ve been thinking about that and I tried to explain a little of it to Amara but here are my thoughts. Ambrose does everything by a steering committee and you know that I’m on this particular one. Each project’s committee must pull in a unanimous agreement to go forward. Sometimes it can be intense, but we have a good chance of changing the future. I can also help direct where the thinking goes.”
“I had thought it was a good idea before, but it will work even better now that we have a defined direction that it cannot go,” agreed Ethan. “We could help here by discussing each one of the issues on the table at the time.”
“But wait, what am I supposed to do?” Amara asked.
“Nothing,” Finn said sternly.
“No, that’s not true,” assured Wilder. “You’re the one who knows how it has turned out if left to progress down its existing pathway. You’ll be our rudder and help us to know and to process each decision based on how things have played out.”
“But you will also stay out of danger. We’ll just do those conversations here behind closed doors. I don’t want Ambrose getting hold of you and finding out that you have these abilities. Ambrose is a good society, but it does sometimes become overzealous with information it gathers. Until we can control everything in our environment and in yours, we are careful. Until we’ve made the changes necessary to rewrite the future, then you don’t go anywhere near them or this project. Understood?” Finn was adamant.
“I’m not a child. I get it.”
“And if your attitude doesn’t change, you are going to get it. It doesn’t work that way. We require obedience when necessary, submission when requested, and safety at all times. Is there anything that you don’t understand about that?” Stern irritation was flowing off Finn in waves that crashed against her psyche.
“No, I understand, it’s just that…” seeing Finn’s face, she could almost hear his exact thoughts. She thought back to the spankings he referred to often. She shut her mouth and leaned back into him.
Finn grinned. “Good. Now I’m starving.”
“Not yet. There is still a little matter of an implant someone agreed to without conversation.” Ethan leaned back in his chair.
“Well if you’ll forget the implant, I’ll forget about the women coming with an expectation of my help wit
hout discussing anything with me beforehand.”
Wilder laughed. “I’m all for that deal.”
“This time, I’ll accept it,” said Ethan.
“Wait,” said Finn, “I was all primed to spank that luscious ass.”
“Next time,” laughed Wilder, “Next time you can have a whack at it.”
“Wait, don’t I get a choice?”
“No!” said three men simultaneously.
Chapter 12
Amara
Finally, after three weeks, the routine felt natural and her head no longer pinged with too much wild interplay with the implant. Amara had complained about getting up early, but now it wasn’t so hard. She hadn’t gotten used to the solitude at night. Only when she had a nightmare and crawled into Finn’s bed did she sleep with anyone and that was to actually sleep. No one touched her sexually other than kisses and caresses. Amara wasn’t sure how to push them into sex without asking them for it and she wasn’t quite ready to be that bold.
Amara’s empathic abilities had become stronger, more focused, and more overwhelming at times. The auras around people were holding more power, she sensed things at times almost tangibly and the physical sharing of others’ pain was still difficult. It wasn’t something she had tried to do before coming here, causing her to be moodier when she was overloaded with too much stimuli. Often going to the garden or further onto the property to clear her head, Amara remembered the other day when she’d tried to leave the dome.
“Where are you going, baby?”
“Finn,” was her startled response. “For a walk. Want to come with me?” She had become good at discerning these men’s moods. Finn was not feeling indulgent.
He shook his head. “I’m in the middle of something but you can’t leave the enclosure.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
“What do you think? It isn’t safe especially while you’re trying to get used to everything.”
Captured Desire Page 13
