Branded Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 3)

by Cari Silverwood

  What?

  “Why?” Ryke snapped.

  “Because there is a simmering anger over a slave being loose here, even if she is under your hand.” Badh smiled, and around his eyes crinkled. “People want her gone, but I can’t do that, so locking her up is my best solution.”

  He’d smiled at her when he’d said that. She hadn’t seen a true smile for so long – Ryke’s were cold as the dirt, six feet under. She didn’t want to be locked up somewhere else but what could she say if he was determined? Nothing.

  “You’ll be safe, just not here.”

  Which didn’t help, at all. She resisted sticking her fingernail in her mouth and chewing.

  “Why not here? I can and will watch her. I’m staying here, Badh. Hiding, I suppose. But I want her with me. I’m in the one place I love. Here feels right.”

  “Feels.” He shook his head, his face fallen to bleakness. “You never feel. Doubt you’ve said that for years. When we were young, I saw you with many women, shared some with you. You put this one out front of me, like this, naked, like you’re taunting me. On display. I think you might want to sort out how you feel about her.” He stood. “I suppose I cannot force you to do this, though I would prefer not to have the Followers riled at me.”

  Ryke snorted. “So that’s why. I thought they’d accepted her?”

  “Me too. They went away and read something in their text and changed their minds. They live on her words, or what she was supposed to have said.” Badh reached into a back pocket and pulled out a thin book with a pale blue cover. “Here. They wanted me to give you this. It’s a copy of the Text of Symaia. Our mother,” he added in aside to Gio. “Take it. Read it or not. They won’t know, but it’ll make them happier to think you did.”

  The noise Ryke made was one of either disgust or something she couldn’t figure out. Not surprising when didn’t agree with this book based on his mother’s life, and his mother had suicided and walked into the Engine Sea when he was a child.

  She almost sympathized with her monster. What child wouldn’t have been traumatized?

  Badh seemed less affected. Growing into being a leader and having friends around him, people he wasn’t supposed to interrogate or execute, would’ve helped. Ryke had been like the hunchback of Notre Dame, locked in his tower room. If not ridiculed, he’d been exiled by where he came from and by what he was told to do.

  “You know...” Badh turned the book in his hand and looked at the cover. “If you ignore their belief that you are something special, the possibility that our mother did discover a way to survive on Aerthe as a normal surface dweller, to be able to live in a house...” He swallowed. “If that were true, it would change everything. We would be free of the landships. Free to live where we pleased.”

  Ryke scoffed. “Apart from the Scavs and grounders wanting to kill us?”

  “There would be ways, treaties, you never know until you try.”

  “A fantasy. A dream.”

  “A dream worth chasing.”

  When Badh came over to hand the book to Ryke, she felt the increased tension in Ryke’s leg where she leaned on him, and she looked up.

  “Here. You take it.” Badh gave it to her. “If the bastard wants it, he can get it off you. I’m done here. Your mechling, the one that looks manlike, it let in a few more mechlings at the door. Try not to take too many. I need them for the repairs. A few have wandered off and we haven’t figured out why or where.”

  “I didn’t know it had done that,” Ryke said. “It’s an old sort. I’ll reinforce what I expect it to do.”

  Badh nodded to both her and Ryke then headed for the door.

  By then she’d looked at the book in her hand.

  “It’s junk.” Ryke nudged her with his leg. “Recollections from a man who probably got it all wrong.”

  An idea popped into her mind. She wasn’t sure where this idea came from but it fit her aims. She could lead them on, distract them. They were short of time and of men. What better way to throw a wrench into their works?

  This book was almost a religion to many. The power in this little book could be huge.

  If the landship slowed, stopped, she could escape. Big if.

  She just needed a way in, a crack.

  “This...” Gio smoothed her fingers over the illustration on the cover. “It’s from my world. How did your mother see a place in my world?”

  “What?” Badh snapped from where he’d halted by the door.

  “What do you mean, girl? That?” Ryke leaned in and tapped the image.

  “Where’d this come from? Who drew it?” She looked to Badh for an answer.

  “It’s a good interpretation of an original sketch our mother did after her return from the lands.”

  “The lands,” Ryke scoffed.

  He might not believe, yet, but she had her ways. He wasn’t the only one who could mindfuck. “It’s a landmark from the world of Earth called the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Well, that changes things.” Slowly Badh returned, his eyes almost aglow. “How could our mother see something from your world? Maybe I should wait for you to look at the rest?”

  “It does...change things.” There was disbelief in Ryke’s tone, but also, she thought, hope.

  She was being an asshole, messing with this. They deserved it, all of them.

  “It does. Remember, she said she saw things, visions, which is like what Gio did. Yes?”

  Hook, line, and sinker.

  This image wasn’t quite the Eiffel Tower and was probably some slim tower their mother had seen here. The swathe of landships did pass towns, though Gio had not looked out as they’d done so. Not the same as the Eiffel but it was perfect for her use. If only lying wasn’t crafting knots in her stomach.

  She had reasons, good ones.

  Chapter 29

  “You want me to look inside?” When Ryke nodded, she opened the book.

  “Tell us if anything else seems familiar?” he added.

  “Okay, but...” Gio flicked through the pages. Though this was a slim book, the writing was by hand and very small. Since the Mekkers’ written language had been taught via some forced method when she first came to Aerthe, same as the spoken language, this was far too much to decipher quickly.

  Which only gave her ideas.

  “I need to take my time with this. There are a lot of sketches.”

  “All copies,” Badh said, perching on the armrest of the chair.

  “And some of the words I’m unfamiliar with.” She pointed at a few longer ones. “Is there a place I can go to study this? Where there are language texts?”

  “Nothing in there Ryke or I can’t tell you, though we have a place of study for the children. But I doubt that’s what you meant.” He glanced over her head at Ryke.

  “What if we let her tell the Followers this? Talk to some of them?”

  “After I told you they want her gone?” Badh puffed out his lips. “I don’t –”

  “Let her. I’m staying anyway and this might get them on her side properly. I know they lap up any new interpretation of Mother’s words.”

  “True. You’d have to be careful. It could achieve the reverse of what you want.” His examination of her seemed to strip her naked and she was already nude. Had he seen her lie? “I’ll leave that with you. First, I’ll ask if they want to do this. If you see anything else in the meantime, Gio, tell Ryke.”

  This was progressing faster than she’d thought possible. The Followers had sway. “I will.”

  How far was she willing to go to sabotage this ship? What if she could send them off on an imaginary chase of whatever this book prophesied?

  So many what-ifs.

  “Come. I need to talk to you more.” Without fuss, Ryke unlocked the mask and removed it.

  The relief as air washed over her skin, making it prickle and cool, was exquisite. He patted the sofa and took the book from her fingers.

  “I need to pee. And eat, and drink.” Was she asking too much? Wi
th him she was never sure. Her lust had quietened. No matter how much this bullish mass of masculinity parked on the sofa said sex, sex, sex.

  Okay, maybe her lust was back, just a tad.

  “Go shower and when you come back, we will look at this book together. I’ve never read it before.”

  Never? Wow.

  What had she begun? But she nodded and walked away, aware of his scrutiny of her ass and her body. That he wasn’t coming with her said he was tired perhaps. All that talk of conspiracies and bad things about to happen made her wonder what he’d seen and found. If he hadn’t killed anyone she’d almost be shocked.

  Why was he no longer concerned with her finding a portal mage aka scientist? That’d been his key mission from the king. The conspiracies might have something to do with that. A power struggle was occurring.

  And the Above was hostile yet they relied on the power generated here? She’d always thought the mechlings somehow sucked power from the air here. It was what she’d been told, and though strange, she’d believed it. Perhaps they did both?

  Maybe Aerthe was a planet where the rules of physics were treated like guidelines not laws. Newton and Einstein would’ve had conniptions.

  She showered and returned, still naked. He hadn’t said to dress and it seemed safest.

  He’d put his legs up on the sofa. As she climbed up to sit between his outstretched legs with her knees up to rest the book upon, he rearranged his legs to allow her to fit, and wrapped his arms around her. It stilled her thoughts. She held her breath, to better appreciate being wrapped up in man.

  Nice. How bizarre to like this.

  “Read.” Ryke tapped the cover.

  She opened it, smoothed down the pages. Ivory-colored paper. Black ink. A language that seemed so very wrong and yet her eyes and brain interpreted most of it. It was as if she’d been born here.

  Well, she hadn’t. Hell no. She was a slave here and had best remember that.

  Mekkers were shit.

  “Begin,” he murmured then he bit her ear. A frisson of heat slammed down her body, peaking her nipples, her clit. “Read or I’ll fuck your ass instead.”

  “Oh.” What an incentive.

  “It’s supposed to be my mother’s words but I don’t believe that. I’ve never read this before because it seemed made up.”

  This was going to be an interesting book.

  The story was much as she’d gathered it would be – about a woman being left behind after the landship was breached, alone after her husband died, and having to make her way across the land to where she thought she could meet the swathe again. Tough, determined lady, if true.

  The passage about her watching the ships dwindle in the distance and disappear over the horizon was strangely affecting.

  She put herself there, with Symaia, alone on a world where she knew she would die if she couldn’t move fast, knowing that merely keeping to walking pace was still going to be fatal.

  Except somehow it hadn’t been.

  She read, skipping parts she couldn’t translate, and Ryke didn’t bother to add words. He listened. He tensed. His body heat and stiffness heightened the more she read.

  As if this reading disturbed him.

  Of course it did. These were his mother’s words, or what people thought she’d said...or a fabrication. Who knew which? No one. That was his dilemma.

  He wanted to believe but had rejected this for all his life, until now.

  And here she was planning lies.

  He’d kill her if he knew. Or worse.

  Symaia was taken in by a group of Grounders travelling to a new town to market wares. Even when they saw who she was, they let her stay in their vehicle, in their caravan of trucks. There was a picture of that.

  She ran her finger over the illustration.

  “Go on,” Ryke murmured.

  “Don’t you know it all?”

  He shrugged. “I know the gossip. She never told us all this directly, only preached it. You remember you’re to say if anything seems to be of your world? Visions?”

  “Yes.” She read on.

  The rescue, the return to the Underdeck, her explanation of why the Aerthe did not kill her.

  “She swallowed a waik crystal?”

  “That’s the theory. She thought it changed her and then...then she proposed that only I had the power to make it work for others.” He stirred. “It’s drivel. I need to sleep and you will come with me. Lie on my bed.”

  No sex then. Being disappointed about that was surely not normal.

  How was she going to pervert this little bible of theirs? Because a religious text was what it was, really. They had faith in this yet no solid proof.

  “No one has tested this idea? To swallow a crystal then walk on the land?”

  “Some deckers did. It didn’t work. It killed. Though no one in the Above ever thought about her being lost for more than seconds. She was a decker.”

  That summed it up, apparently – being a decker.

  At the bed, he found a belt and punched a hole in it, wrapped it about her neck until she felt it grip then he slid the tongue into the hole. With a knife he cut off the excess, right beside her neck and her eye. She held very still. The blade loomed so near.

  If she told more lies that knife could be used to cut her. Ryke was a man who lived vengeance and violence. Did she really want to go there? Her stomach churned. Ulcers, she was growing ulcers.

  For someone who’d never had courage, she was walking on wobbly ground.

  “Temporary.” He attached the leash to the makeshift collar then tied the end of the leash to the headboard. “I meant to put the mask back on you.”

  He muttered all this in an absentminded way and she wondered why he was so distant.

  The book, it could only be that.

  She lay beside him in the dark, wondering. Perverting something so personal was fraught with danger.

  Ryke stroked a finger down from her nape, along the center of her spine. “You’ll have Aunt M with you wherever you go from now on. I will be away sometimes helping Badh with repairs.”

  Why? He wanted to watch her?

  “Can he teach me then? So I can improve my reading.”

  “Yes. I suppose.”

  Yes, oh yes. This was a day for both small and large victories.

  In the dark, she could hear if not see his breathing. It took a long time for Ryke to fall asleep. She wasn’t tired, so she lay and thought.

  How could she do this? They’d no doubt dissected this book for years. Everything in it ran on faith. Even the person who’d set it down on paper had died. The words were immutable. Until now. What if she envisioned new words?

  Possible, but if she did this, she played with Ryke’s family history.

  Beware. He might’ve become less terrifying since coming here but she risked provoking the monster.

  Chapter 30

  Gio woke in the morning to Ryke fucking her. Nothing fancy – he simply rolled her onto her stomach, pulled her thighs apart, fingerfucked her for ten or so strokes, then he plowed her until he came. With her head stuffed into the pillow, she let herself drift close to climax, and was disappointed when he finished without letting her come, but then...

  She was also satisfied that he’d done it this way.

  She lay in place, eyelids flickering as she assessed what lay between her legs and how she felt. Satisfaction from the mere act of being fucked was new to her. She’d never had a man who stayed with her long and had needed, even demanded they all make her come. And they mostly had, by mouth or vibe or with fingers. Coming by penetration alone had been elusive.

  Ryke...had managed it more than once with instruments alone.

  Her perfect lover was a madman.

  He turned her over and sat astride her at waist level, his big feet brushing her legs, his hairy legs down there, his much larger and heavier body above, and those blue marks on his face fading in and out like forgotten stars. He took her wrists and pinned her hands to
either side of her head, his mostly flaccid cock resting wetly on her belly. Already it hardened.

  “Not fucking my ass, Ryke?”

  That’d been his threat, and here she was reminding him.

  She used his name, as he’d once asked her to, though perhaps he’d forgotten asking her to do that. So much had changed.

  “I’m looking at you.”

  “Just that?” Her eyebrow arched of its own doing. She hadn’t quite meant it to do that.

  A little dangerous. Not so long ago she’d have thought it a lot dangerous.

  Why did she taunt him? When had it become fun?

  It...just...had.

  Last night, when she sat on his lap and read to him, for one. That’d been intimate.

  When he confessed to being obsessed with her – flipping things upside down and sneakily telling her she had value to him.

  And here she was plotting the demise of the Mekkers. That made her feel hollow, even bad, which must be the height of irony.

  He flexed his hands where they gripped her wrists and came in closer, as if to kiss, but instead he nipped the tip of her nose.

  “I don’t fuck you unless I want to.” Oh the cruel curve of his mouth. He made her want to wriggle. “While I instruct Aunt M, I will let you consider your errors. Stay.”

  She stayed, following him as he slipped off the bed and collected objects that tinkled and dangled from the top of the cage. Those hadn’t been there last night. Her pussy clenched at the sight, at what she imagined he might be intending to do with those.

  The side of the bed sank when he put one knee to it and leaned over her. Ryke undid the belt on her neck.

  “I have a proper collar for you. Aunt M foraged in the house and found a room full of fun things. I went shopping there this morning. The last king was a man of taste, great and varied taste – dildos, collars, leashes, whips. There are even some things I haven’t figured out what to do with them, or what he did with them.”

  He buckled on a white collar, then wrist and ankle cuffs, then he bent her legs up toward her face and buckled her wrist cuffs to her ankle cuffs. She watched greedily, mostly without blinking, as he curled her into a ball shape and propped her in place with a pillow to either side and one beneath her ass.