Acquired Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 1)

by Cari Silverwood

  Book 1

  THE MACHINERY OF DESIRE

  series

  by

  Cari Silverwood

  Early Praise for Acquired Possession

  “Acquired Possession is like a sexy sneak attack. It rips you out of reality and into a decadently described world. First it makes you angry, then it makes you beg for more, and then it delivers with Cari’s powerful eroticism and a completely unexpected love story!

  Can’t wait for this series to continue!”

  ~ Jennifer Bene, author of the bestselling Thalia series.

  For mature readers only

  This is a dark erotic series and is written to be disturbing.

  This book contains adult language and extreme sexual situations only suitable for adult readers.

  * * *

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  * * *

  Claimed Possession, Book 2 in the Machinery of Desire series,

  releases October 11th, 2017

  PREORDER LINK

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  CLAIMED POSSESSION excerpt

  About Cari Silverwood

  Acknowledgements & Copyright

  Chapter 1

  When waiting in court to see if you are to be declared a slave or free, do not commit an act of violence in front of the judiciary. Emery understood this. A child would grasp this.

  On the other side of the court, Fern had drawn a knife – and god knows where she’d found that – and assaulted a guard. Sliced from navel to neck, blood spreading across the breast of his uniform, he staggered back. Fern climbed onto the front railing of the tiered seating. If she kept climbing, she’d reach the three judges who helped their king to preside over this court.

  Mouth open, Emery gripped the edges of her seat and watched the other woman jump to the railing on the second tier, balancing there like a gymnast. The audience seemed too scared to stop her.

  Emery’s own blood felt as if it’d drained away to nothing. Their future teetered in the balance and now this.

  She was being such a coward. Once upon a time, when everything was normal, she’d been invited to Fern’s wedding. Weddings probably didn’t exist in this crazy world.

  “Where is she going?” asked Mako from where he sat behind her.

  Mako – so appropriate, the same name as a shark. He was security for her patron and protector, Basteer, and she disliked him intensely. However, his question was reasonable.

  “To Omrad, the middle judge.” She raised her arm to point though unhappy with how it shook. The motion drew her eye to the leather-and-steel cuffs on her wrists and she lowered her hand.

  Had it been that bad, that urgent, that Fern must do this? She grimaced at her callous thought. “He raped her.”

  People were shouting and screaming, struggling to get away from Fern. One man who clutched at her was rewarded with a slice to his hand. He stumbled away.

  “Stupid girl.”

  Really? Now that was callous, but what else did she expect from Mako?

  Fern jumped to the next railing, clearly aiming to go up to the three judges. Her brother, Sawyer, was a soldier in the SAS. She’d learned to fight from him, and to stab, apparently. More guards arrived and swarmed up the seating – too many for her to fend off. Though she threw a knife at the judge, they hauled her down, thumping Fern onto the floor on face and stomach. Winded, she was slow, and they pinned her with boot and hand, bound her, then dragged her to a distant corner. Where her heel pulled at the puddle of blood from the first guard, she left a curling trail of red.

  The consequences of this impromptu act might be vast and terrible. Everything in this world of Aerthe seemed vast and terrible. Homesickness swept in. Emery wanted home, her apartment with the trains rattling the walls, and her cat.

  Wanted normal.

  A speck of dirt moved across the floor between her feet, in minuscule jumps. The metal chairs they sat in, and indeed the whole metal room, rocked with the cadence of thousands of terrain-hugging wheels. Least, she assumed there were wheels. No one had said.

  Someone was shouting, someone else was whimpering. Fern maybe. Her friend.

  She hated being a coward.

  Dreading what she’d see, she looked up. They’d had to wrestle down Sawyer too. Five guards stood over him as he was gagged and hogtied. No surprise there – that he’d come to his sister’s defense.

  From her tight throat she pulled some words. Had to know. “Will that harm our case?” Not that she’d had high hopes but there’d been some. If free, she could find a way to get home again. There must be a way back.

  “Your case? No more than before.” The amused amazement in Mako’s voice raised her hackles. “Her? The knife hit the judge. She’ll pay for that.”

  How was her next question. She bit it back. It wouldn’t change anything and talking to Mako bothered her.

  Judge Ormrad was extracting the knife from his shoulder, though he seemed barely discomforted. The court officials, and everyone who wanted to have a say in how to handle this, gathered on the far side of the room around the king.

  Emery didn’t even know how she’d come here.

  For days, she’d prayed it was a dream, but with enough sensory input, enough facts, your brain overloaded and gave in. Enough eating of strange foods, enough touching of dirt and metal.

  Enough perfumes and foul odors, enough of the brush and grab of her body by hands that belonged to men who shouldn’t even exist. Enough of...everything.

  Her doubts had crumbled. This place was real. What she did here, this day, counted – even dying.

  Emery studied her palm, ignoring the leather around her wrists. She’d cut herself, once, with a knife soon snatched away, but she’d achieved her purpose – blood had trickled out and she’d felt the pain.

  Real.

  She was on Aerthe, world of the Swathe – the herd of mobile landships of the Mekkers – and who knew what else. The sky was blue, except where it was pink. The grass was green. The animals strange, yet almost of her own world, Earth. Paint a cow a little different and it would fit on the plains of Aerthe.

  This room smelled of oil a
nd poorly cured animal hides. The brown padding of her seat huffed out scents if she moved. Rust decorated the back of the seat before her – sneaked around screw holes in little tendrils that sought cracks and the circles punched in the metal. At the edges, leather thongs stitched padding to the seat.

  The king wore black enamel-like armor and sat on a throne that pulsed with blue lights like a circuit board. His armor had red accents, chunky Mekker writing, and clips to hang weapons. The metal creatures they called mechlings scooted or stalked about, their ornamented bodies imitations of man or animal. They were robots, she supposed?

  High technology. Seats of animal hide and factory-cut metal. The contrasts alarmed her. A society collapsing in disrepair was her first choice.

  From what she’d heard, the Swathe cut its way across the world, chewing up land, mining, and at the cost of destroyed civilizations – decades of war were behind the existence of the Swathe. She suspected decades might be a severe underestimation.

  This world was not hers, and she didn’t know how she’d come here.

  One second on her bed, scrolling through emails, the next something had beckoned – an irresistible siren call. She’d walked a yard and fallen...

  A door? A portal? A rip in the fabric of reality? The terminology escaped her. She’d seen nothing.

  If this was Narnia, she wanted fawns and moralistic heroes who offered you cloaks and sips of warming beverages. Not leather cuffs threaded with steel.

  Emery clenched and unclenched her hands. Her fingernails glittered iridescent and red in the light shafting down from the high, curved holes. Think positive, Fern had once told her, we don’t need to buy nail polish anymore.

  She turned her hands over, hiding the betraying glow that marked all the humans she’d seen.

  At midday, the sun here left pink rings in the sky. They’d let her look out one window, once.

  She’d arrived naked, her clothes vaporized in the transit, yet no one had molested her. She’d been blind after she came through. They’d force-fed her their language somehow, while she was blind, with mutterings of words. She knew Mekkian but English was hers, her secret. It was good to have secrets from these others. Even if this decision came out wrong, she’d contact the other humans and form a spy cell, or whatever the hell you called them.

  Voices droned on in the background. If it was anything like on Earth, this might take all day.

  Clasping her hands tightly, she said softly, as if in prayer. “One step at a time. To get back home, we have to find out how they brought us here.”

  A large hand enveloped Emery’s hair and hauled her backward until her neck was bent uncomfortably in an arc over the seat and she was looking up into Mako’s eyes. When she flung up her hands to stop him, he met them with his other hand. As easily as she might pluck a flower, he gathered them with his fist and fastened her hands to her thigh.

  Dark eyes. Broad face. He brooked no disagreement, even from fellow Mekkers. She’d seen him tip a man upside down and shake him by the leg.

  “You think I don’t understand your English?”

  Oh fuck.

  “I can understand you. I learned it better than you learned ours, maybe.”

  He’d learned English. Why was this asshole so smart?

  “You may want to note that the king just announced that you humans are not of this world. This means you are not people. Therefore you are now slaves. Understand?”

  Slaves. No. This is crazy.

  When had they said that?

  She didn’t look away. He wanted that – to make her fear. “I understand.”

  She hadn’t said anything that startling, had she? Just that she wanted to go home, a home that was going to be so much harder to get to now. The word slave made her stomach go into freefall.

  Rebellion rustled to life.

  A smile played across his mouth. “You have each been declared the property of your patrons, so that means you’re mine.”

  “Then I’m...Basteer’s.” She shut her eyes for a second, disquieted. Wasn’t good to say she was anyone’s but she’d rather remind him he was just an employee and not her damn owner.

  “By proxy, I own you.” He squeezed on her neck, shook her slightly. “One step removed, but he won’t deny me. He never does, because he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.”

  Their patrons were supposed to be their protectors, weren’t they? The lies were adding up. This law had been rolled out casually. She’d blinked, lost track of what they were saying for a minute, and it was done.

  The increased force of his grip made tears fill her eyes. She may as well kick this off on the right footing. “Fuck you, you asshole.”

  “You will cease being disrespectful. You’re a new slave, but I find it best to be clear about things from the beginning. When we are outside the court, I will deal with it.” He released her so she could sit up properly to look at the king and the room, then he gripped her hair again. “We’ll watch this last bit of legal wrangling before I take you back to Basteer.”

  There was nothing in his words to scare her particularly but Emery found herself trembling. She pursed her lips and set a mean frown on her forehead. New slave. She had an inkling that no one was going to use her name much in the future.

  If she couldn’t find out how to return to Earth, this construction, ship, whatever it might be, must have doors, windows. She just had to find them and jump out. And run.

  It might be a long distance to the ground and she wouldn’t know where to go.

  She’d face that when she came to it. When.

  A hatch had been opened in the central area of floor between audience and king. Two mechlings stood beside the hole, jittering, their movements somewhat uncoordinated. One was doglike, small, the other closer to a human – bipedal with a round head. The gems and etchings the Mekkers had used to decorate some of the mechlings lent a surreal prettiness to this scene.

  First one then the other was tipped into the hatch by a guard. Each vanished, sliding somewhere below.

  “They passed a law letting sun-mad mechlings go free,” Mako murmured from near her face.

  Sun-mad? How did anything get sun in here?

  Next, Fern was marched out to stand beside the hatch. Her arms were strapped behind her and a cage tied around her lower face. Did they fear she’d bite them? Her mouth did seem to be stained red. Stupid girl indeed. Emery sighed, fearing for her. Fern’s pink-and-black hair was ruffled and spiked where blood had wet it. Even at this distance, Emery could see that absurd fluorescent-pink glimmer on her hair and fingernails, announcing her humanity.

  Somehow the journey here had brightened the colors of hair and nails, even pubic and armpit hair. Humans were the exotic ones.

  Leaden unease uncurled in Emery’s belly. Were they disposing of Fern down the hatchway?

  The judge she’d aimed to hurt walked down to her, through the seating tiers, carrying the same knife she’d used on him.

  His words were spoken in a cadence that matched his steps. “As per law 829A the injured party may strike the person who assaulted them the same number of times with the same weapon. The criminal must not defend themselves.”

  Not good. Not good. The words looped in her mind, and her eyes refused to blink as the guards held Fern in place.

  “Note that I chose to judge you as a free woman as that was your state at the time of the attack.” Ormrad displayed the knife laid across his palm. “I also choose not to take my one strike yet. I will defer until a time I deem appropriate arrives.” He bowed his head to the king. “Might I be allowed to purchase this slave from her patron?”

  “Hold her face up.” The king shifted, leaning forward to study Fern. “What a dangerous thing. I don’t wish my advisors to be harmed. You may buy her at a price decided by the royal treasurer on the condition you keep her safely restrained at all times. No freedom to walk about. Caged when not attending to whatever tasks you choose to have her do. The final judgment – your single strike wi
th the knife – must be performed within six moon cycles.”

  “Thank you, your serenity.” Ormrad straightened.

  Emery swallowed bile. At least she was alive. How long was six moon cycles?

  “I thought we were valuable?”

  “You are,” Mako said. “Not enough though, to Ormrad. The man values vengeance more. I’m sure he can afford to buy more of you. He is rich and vindictive. He wants her to suffer before he kills her. There’s nothing you or I can do. Rise, we are leaving.”

  This place... Vomiting on the courtroom floor would be so fitting.

  He tapped Emery’s shoulder. “Are you ill?”

  When she couldn’t move, afraid, as well as weak from nausea, he drew her to her feet then hoisted her and cradled her in his arms.

  All she wanted to do was curl up in a shadowed corner and weep in private. Making him expend energy to carry her seemed a valid protest for all of ten seconds. It was too intimate, having him breathe above her. Disgusting man. By the time he reached the door exiting the court, she’d found strength and wriggled until he let her down.

  She’d walk. She had her pride still, even if she possessed nothing else.

  She stepped through the heavy double doors, her long cream dress swishing at her ankles. The wide corridor before her opened out into a square park with shrubs and dead-level mowed grass. A place to soothe the eyes and soul – if these Mekkers had souls. Elsewhere she’d seen food crops. Above, a huge dome split into four quadrants allowed sunlight to filter down through a haze of dust, pollens, and mist. On the far side of the park were bustling markets. People browsed stalls and haggled. Mechlings zoomed about on wheels or walked with precision strides.

  She needed to explore and find the ways out. The one glimpse through a window had shown her sky and distant plains and mountains, places where a human could surely survive.

  And she was a slave.

  But alive. In six moon cycles, Fern wouldn’t have that. If she was stabbed even once, she’d bleed out if not treated.

  Being dead was worse than merely being a slave. Stop with the pity party.

  Maybe her plan, whatever it ended up being, could also free Fern.