Branded Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 3)

by Cari Silverwood

  Her first cry made him smile, her second made him shut his eyes and thrust in another inch.

  He wasn’t going to be doing this for long. The immense pressure combined with that thrumming lust she generated just beneath the surface of his cock that ran up the shaft to balls and brain was going to undo him fast.

  “Fuck!” Then he gasped and fucked her ass again.

  Once he’d thought to get her addicted to the accuator, but this...

  Watery-eyed, sweat pouring off him, his jaw pained from clamping, his thighs seizing up from the desire coursing through him ready to explode, this woman, she was addictive.

  And he was the addict.

  Fucking her ass was better than any drug he’d tried a million years ago when he was a young thing.

  He started to thrust into her properly, powerfully, making the bed swing, getting his dick into her ass to the farthest it could sink.

  He paused there, and pushed, as if he could jam it even deeper, though his balls were against her cunt. The bed creaked and swayed, Gio, her face on the side, breathed in a shaky whine and moan.

  Chapter 34

  Her mouth was almost submerged by the bed’s cover, her fists clutched the bed either side, and Ryke was buried in her ass so deeply she wondered if he’d gone too far and was planning to do oral from the wrong end. But her biggest shock was how close she was to orgasm.

  Not from anal. No. Yet the to and fro of sensation from ass to pussy to clit, from even her nipples rubbing on the cover, it merged and every time he slid in, opening her, taking her...it was fucking glorious.

  “Please,” she whispered between her stifled and somewhat frantic noises, her fingers beginning to ache from the strain of clutching. “Please...”

  “More?”

  “Mmm.” She nodded fervently, and felt him move then withdraw and plunge in again. His grunts came faster as he sped up, then he stopped to massage her cunt, her clit, and she was almost there, almost, there, and her thighs shook hard. She shoved her ass up and backward hoping his cock could ram in even deeper.

  “You like this? You want to come?”

  “Mmm!”

  “Well...don’t. This is mine. This time. You are mine. You won’t fucking...” He slid in, out, slammed in and rocked her. “Come. Not this time.” Withdraw then thrust. “Or I mount you outside the door on a fuckspear. Clear?”

  She closed her eyes and, enthralled by this resurgence of the worst of him, she whispered, “Yes.”

  Every time he suggested sticking her on a fuckspear for others to see, it made her wonder how that would feel.

  Holding her breath, counting to one hundred, thinking of sheep jumping, mounting, what was it sheep did? She prayed he’d come soon as he shunted her ass, pounding her down onto the bed’s meagre padding. Had to not come, had to. Her clit disagreed and she whimpered, her mouth opening as he slid in again, occupying her with force, and the small explosion blew every thought to the stars, leaving her trying to hide and swallow her gasps.

  He wouldn’t notice that, or her trembling.

  His cock swelled and he jammed himself into her one, last time, with Ryke swearing and cursing curses she’d never heard before as he came. The last squeeze of cum swelling into her ass made her sigh into the bedding. He collapsed onto her, panting, and she smiled, until seconds later he yanked a few times on her hair.

  “Did you come?”

  Should she say? Something compelled truth. Daring? Guilt? Whatever it was, she murmured, “yes,” softly then waited for retribution.

  “Hmmm. Bad girl.”

  Oh god, didn’t care. Not after that. She sank into the bed. Slowly, her heartbeats counted down to the serenity she often reached after sex.

  “You know I’ve been wanting to do that to you.”

  Her eyelids flew open. She waited.

  “Stick you on a fuckspear in public.” In a lackadaisical fashion, in casual curves, he smoothed his hand down her back to the beginning of the cleft of her ass. “I bet you’d enjoy it.”

  She shook her head, and moved as if to burrow further into the bed. “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me. Would you?”

  To admit to this troubled her, yet she wanted to say it. “Maybe?”

  She turned her head, and could see more. Across the room, past the pond, was a wall with a trompe l’oeil painting of an alien forest where small red birds flew and swooped among the tracery of vines.

  Ryke chuckled.

  She wondered why she felt as if she’d just delivered her soul to the devil.

  Maybe because she’d never heard him laugh in quite that way before.

  The tone had been foreign to him, almost...as if he were happy.

  “You wouldn’t...” And she held her breath.

  “Oh, I would, when you least expect it, girl.”

  Then he slipped his cock from her ass and wriggled into place beside her, entombing her with the bulk of his body, laying the bar of his arm over her back, so she felt safe and not safe all at the same time. She lay there dwelling on the remembered feelings, the vanishing reminder of sensations and the deliciously nasty threats.

  He would do that. Yes. Deep inside she quivered, wanting it now. To see how she’d be, strung up and fucked on his spear.

  And this was so strange, this joint enmeshing of wills and desires to create such a playful lust, that she knew something else was happening here, something out of her grasp.

  Something...

  * * * * *

  They’d set up a meeting where the Followers could listen to her speak the words from the New Text of Symaia, as they were calling it. The Followers had definitely expanded in number, exponentially. This room in Building Shaft Two was enormous and must contain a thousand people.

  How they’d all hear her, she had no clue. No mic or megaphone, again.

  Well, she shrugged and began, lowered her eyes to the book, sitting on the stage with Ryke beside her on another chair, and the skirt of her pretty blue dress swished under her butt and draped over the chair legs below. With his hand on her thigh, she began to speak.

  She and Ryke knew it well by then. He’d had her reread it several times and the few words that’d been damaged by the time in the Engine Sea had mostly been figured out. But to the Followers this was new and the passage about swallowing the waik crystals while touching the ground was a revelation to them.

  That it was essential for one to touch the ground of Aerthe for it to work – that passage made a few of them gasp and mutter among themselves. She paused to let it sink in then continued.

  They believed this book so readily. Maybe this was what happened when you needed to believe in something because without that belief you were done for?

  Maybe. She smiled around the hall and looked at the variety of deckers. For once, children were present. She hadn’t seen children this close for many months. Those were the innocents, the hope embodied for any people, even Mekkers. It pained her to think she might cause the deaths of any children.

  Gio grimaced and looked down at this book, turned over the last page to where it was blank metal. The fineness of whatever substance this was contrasted with the state of what they made now. Such delicate metal pages. The book itself was likely far more ancient than Ryke’s mother. The Mekkers were falling into a dark age of technology. Their end was coming. She’d seen how little they knew of what they used. Even the physical make-up of the Engine Sea was a mystery. They worked over it, manipulated the waik crystals, and they knew not what they did. Incredible.

  They were ripe for being killed off by their ignorance. And most of them did not see it.

  Men and women had walked onto the stage, climbed up, and Ryke was accepting handshakes and congratulations, as if he’d orchestrated the writing and not just retrieved the book from where he’d tossed it. A few spoke to her and she nodded and smiled, played her part.

  She was supposed to be manipulating this, making them do stuff, delaying them. It was all too impossible, today.r />
  Children. Damn. Damn. Damn. The philosophy, the ethics, the morality of this would give her ulcers on top of ulcers. Of course, they were doing damn fine distracting themselves anyway, what with their conspiracies and Follower stuff. Believe in the miracle and it will save you. Hallejulah.

  She’d become an accessory to evangelism, and her doubts were piling up.

  She poked at the inside of the back cover, running her nail over some of the indentations.

  “Time to go,” Ryke murmured, squeezing her shoulder.

  She blinked up at him. Her monster had become much less scary. Sometimes he looked as puzzled as she felt. He’d changed so much and she half expected to turn around, any moment, and find he’d grown tentacles and spider legs.

  “Where is your brother?”

  “I think he’s doing what he needs to do. Repairs.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The Gathering should be her main aim. Every swathe of landships would meet at the same location and let their people mingle on the ground, if they wished to. They opened the doors to the outside and let people walk out. She was never going to save humanity from the Mekkers. It’d been an aim that’d made her feel good for a while. Now? Time to do what most normal people would do...plan how to leave this landship, by herself.

  Surviving in this place, at the edge of a desert, would not be easy – though she’d noticed the landship had been following the banks of a large river. Water, trees, vegetation and surely animals to hunt.

  Under her finger, on the inside of the book cover, words formed.

  At first she frowned and read them to herself, then she began afresh and said them aloud. Perhaps remaining quiet was wiser but the shock of seeing them overcame such a notion.

  This was from his mother, and addressed to Ryke. Why had she not seen them before?

  Ryke. My dear child. You are my first son and you have a destiny. I am sorry I have left you as I did. Writing this, I must tell you this – the sadness of knowing what I must do to trigger events in the correct order, it has crushed my heart.

  As she stumbled over the first syllables, she saw from the corner of her eye that he was stock still and listening. She waited and the others around her fell silent also.

  You will be the one who will allow our people to be free to live on Aerthe for the first time. I know you will disbelieve what I have said, and that by the time you hear these words you have already done so. That you will deny my journey, my words, and those who follow them, many times, but now you must listen and accept what is your duty and your fate.

  I have seen where we can go and live in peace, if we will but accept that we cannot forever be the masters of this world.

  We need to stand down from being the aggressors. We need to seek forgiveness from the populace of Aerthe, from grounders and from Scavs. We need to make ourselves anew. If we cannot, we will fail, we will die, we will fade and rot and rust into the soil of this planet. We will be damned and forgotten.

  Accept your burden. Be the man and the Prophet our people, both deckers and the Above, need. Give the Followers the waik crystal with your blessing as bestowed on you by Aerthe.

  Sacrifices hurt but the gain is worth it.

  Your loving mother, Symaia.

  Then she looked up again and saw she had the rapt attention of everyone from the stage to the first rows of seats and beyond, to the very back of the hall, and she had a feeling she’d begun something huge.

  People whispered, passing on what she’d read aloud.

  An avalanche of hope.

  If she was right, if the words that had appeared on the page were true, maybe this was good.

  Maybe this would free her people too.

  If the words were false, it would lead them to the doom the words had suggested was theirs anyway. That would be kinda perfect also, wouldn’t it?

  “Please.” The spokesman of the Followers held out his hand and she gave him the book.

  Then he raised it high above his head, and said, “This is our future!”

  The roar the people gave shook her eardrums if not the hall itself.

  Ryke only looked at her oddly and nodded. He leaned down to say to her ear. “One problem. I see no words on that page.”

  Chapter 35

  Ryke stood over the gap, looking down at the sea. He gripped the railing, hard, twisting his hands as he tried to make sense of everything. Nothing he saw below made it from his eyes to his mind. He was blind to all but his thoughts.

  When he’d told Gio he had seen no words on the page she’d read from, the look of shocked disbelief on her face had rocked him. Since then, the Followers had applied certain methods to the page and he’d seen this, seen the results.

  They claimed to be able to read most of the words, once various corroded spots and patches were catered for.

  Magnets and metal filings. Ink wiped over the surface. Stars knew what else.

  Gio had believed though, that had convinced him more than any Follower science. Believing her, that was a sort of faith that transcended all else. She was the one person he should trust the least...surely? Once, she’d wanted to kill him and he’d happily been prepared to destroy her to get what he’d wanted.

  Then the Followers had retrieved the last few sentences of the words, convincingly. Those, he had read.

  Accept your burden. Be the man and the Prophet our people, both deckers and the Above, need. Give the Followers the waik crystal with your blessing as bestowed on you by Aerthe.

  Sacrifices hurt but the gain is worth it.

  Your loving mother, Symaia.

  That would’ve been enough to make him question all he had believed before. Or rather what he had not believed.

  He’d believed his mother had died, selfishly. What else could it be to leave two sons behind when their father was already gone?

  He’d believed the Followers were idiots following useless words.

  He’d believed there was no solution to the predicament of the Mekkers

  That he was no prophet and anyone placing faith in him was a fool.

  He’d believed his life was never going to rise above being the king’s man, who did exactly what he was told, no matter how dire.

  Now, he knew he was wrong.

  When she’d died, the Followers didn’t even have a label. Which made her words eerily prescient. How had she done this? It’d been twenty-five years since her death.

  If he was the Prophet of his people and due to make them into something that could walk on Aerthe without dying then he must also be due and right to reject the offer of Judge Ormrad and keep Gio as his.

  He must walk out onto the Aerthe at the Gathering and remain there to test the waik crystal theory. Because there was no way he was going to ask that of anyone else.

  His mother’s words...

  For so long he’d almost hated her. Loved her, hated her. Two irreconcilable things. He hadn’t quite forgiven her all. How could he?

  She’d left them alone.

  Tears formed in his eyes, welled up when he ignored them. More came. He watched them fall into the void, heading for the sea, and let them come. If ever there would be a forgiveness of her, if ever, it would be now.

  Stars, how could he do this?

  Then he plunged his face over his hands and he clawed his fingers into his scalp, his cheeks, his jaw, until the pain rose and rose, obliterating his grief, or so he thought. The physical pain waned and left him and his heart still ached.

  There was no one here to see at this most lonely spot and he fell to his knees, his hands sliding down the vertical rails. He banged his forehead on the metal until tears came again. Tears. He wept fully with his head bowed to the floor.

  “I forgive you. I do. I’m sorry, Mother. I am. I forgive you.” As he always should have.

  * * * * *

  The days passed and he came up with a million, million plans on how to avert the disaster that might happen when he denied Ormrad.

  He collected provisions,
weapons, anything that might be useful on the land. He’d take Gio, of course, yet wasn’t sure he should tell her his plans. He wasn’t telling the Followers either. They, of all of the deckers, might act irrationally if they knew their prophet was about to try a dangerous experiment.

  Sneaking away with a pack on his shoulders, and hers, might alert any number of watchers, so he gave Aunt M that duty. Other mechlings couldn’t carry the weight whereas Aunt M seemed perfectly capable of lugging about furniture and climbing dead trees. She would be vital outside – impervious to most weather, smart, strong, and she could recharge easily.

  His plans firmed, so did his dick most times he saw Gio waggling that ass near him.

  The sex was far more consensual than anything he’d had for years, barring the whores, but he’d acquired a taste for it, as long as he had the control and that was indisputable.

  He put more rope into the packs, then had to make up a third pack for Aunt M, then added his favorite dildo. Getting bored and not fucking her while in the wilderness must be illegal.

  When the Gathering was only one day away, he found himself nervous.

  He was never that. Finally, he saw why this was. He had her kneeling before him but facing away so he could simply study her. He’d found it calming to do this, to place her in a position where he could gather her hair in his hand and play with her, let his fingers slowly trace her curves.

  He let his fist close over the tail of her hair, feeling the soft give as he ran his fist downward to the end. Her gentle sigh and the subtle twist of her neck enticed him to gather her hair again in both hands.

  Her. It was Gio.

  He had responsibilities that were grievous, and not just for the entire race of his people, but also for her. If he failed at this, she would likely also die.

  That was his main worry.

  What was wrong with him?

  Gyle called him to the screen again soon after to give him a location to meet tomorrow, and to remind him to bring both the girl and the mechling. He agreed, nodded, then disengaged the screen. Everything would need to run like clockwork for this to succeed.