Taken: Original Sin Book 1

by Hart, Stella

  I hugged my arms around myself. “What are you doing here?” I asked again.

  “I thought you might be freaking out, wondering where this was.” He pulled something out of his back pocket and held it up. I knew what it was in an instant.

  My book.

  I fell to my knees, tears immediately spilling from my eyes. “Please don’t report me, Mason. I can’t… we aren’t allowed to read things like that.” The words rushed out of me in a jumble. “They’ll cut off my fingers. They’ll…”

  “Jolie.” Mason’s deep voice echoed right by my ear. He’d stooped down to my level, and one heavy hand was on my shoulder. “I’m not going to report you. I thought I made it clear earlier. We’re a team. You and me. Partners, remember?”

  I looked up at him, eyes wide. “You really won’t tell?”

  “Of course not. You think I wanna see them cut my girl’s fingers off?”

  I swallowed my sob. “How did you get the book?”

  “I came down here earlier to scope out your room so I’d know exactly where to go when all the candles were out,” he said. “I didn’t mean to snoop. Saw a book-shaped lump in the pillow. I thought I’d take it and put it in my room for safekeeping. I’m allowed books in there, after all.”

  “Oh. Thank you,” I murmured.

  He smiled. “Y’know, I flipped through it a bit, to see what kinda stuff you’re into. I was surprised. It’s very racy. Sex scene after sex scene. Like porn with a plot.”

  I shook my head with confusion. “Porn?”

  He chuckled. “Right. You wouldn’t know. Do you remember movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the old times, some people made movies or took photos of people doing all the things described in these pages.” He held the book in the air again.

  “Like the ceiling mural in the Great Room?” I asked.

  “Yes, like that.”

  “What were the movies for?”

  His smile grew wider. “People watched them to get off.” He paused. “I mean, they’d pleasure themselves to the sight of it. Probably the same reason you kept this book, huh?”

  I felt my face flush. “I like the story,” I said indignantly. “That’s all.”

  “Uh-huh.” I could tell he didn’t believe me. I was a bad liar.

  I stood up. “Mason, I can’t talk about these sinful things with you. I already told you earlier, I can’t—”

  He cut me off, pressing a finger to my lips. “Shh, pretty girl. I didn’t come down here to try and convince you to fuck me. I just want to talk. That’s all.”

  My brows furrowed. “You want to talk to me?” I said. I shook my head and went on before he could respond. “Men don’t talk to women. Not unless they need to.”

  He shrugged. “I do.”

  “But isn’t it hard to lower yourself to my level?”

  He chuckled again. “Don’t need to.” He took my hand and guided me back to my bed. “Lie down. If we squash ourselves together, we can both fit.”

  I stiffened and pulled away. “I said I can’t do that.”

  “Jolie, I promise, I just want to talk,” Mason said in a soothing tone. “I’ll keep my hands to myself. Do you trust me?”

  I thought about it for a second, then nodded. “I think so.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  I lay down. Mason got in beside me, making the bed creak under the weight of his muscular form. It was so narrow that the only way we’d both fit is if we lay right next to each other, snuggled up close with my head on his chest. Mason stayed true to his word, though. His hands didn’t sneak down below the blanket or try to touch me in any way. He simply lay next to me, letting me listen to his steady heartbeat.

  “You’re the only man who’s ever treated me like I’m a real person,” I murmured a moment later. “That’s why I trust you.”

  “You are a real person,” Mason replied. “And you deserve to be treated like one.”

  “You’re so strange.”

  I thought he might laugh at that, but instead he remained silent for a long moment. “I don’t like that you find it strange that a man might want to treat you as an equal,” he finally said. He sounded angry, but not at me.

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say. I just lay there listening to his heart again.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” I finally asked after a few peaceful minutes of silence.

  “Whatever you want,” he replied, softly stroking my hair with one hand. “Is this okay?”

  I nodded. It felt nice. “I don’t really know where to begin,” I admitted. No man had ever asked me to have a real conversation with him before.

  “Well, I want to get to know you more,” Mason said. “We haven’t exactly had many chances to sit and talk, have we?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “So why don’t you tell me some happy memories you have from the old times?”

  I closed my eyes and thought back to when I was a child. “Summer,” I finally murmured. “It used to annoy me so much. The unbearable heat and sweat, and the way it never seemed to end. But now I’ve barely seen the sun in eleven years, and I think about it all the time. I wish I could run outside and play again. Lick melting ice cream cones. Get a tan. Pick some flowers. All those things made me happy and I didn’t even know it at the time.”

  “What else do you remember that made you happy?”

  I smiled. “My mom. She was always so nice. She used to make me my favorite snacks and have tea parties with me. And I remember she always used to watch this show called Friends. I would sneak out of bed and hide behind the couch so I could watch it too. I didn’t really understand most of it, but it was funny anyway. Everyone on it seemed happy.”

  “My mom and sister used to be obsessed with that show too.” Mason kept stroking my hair. “Anything else?”

  I nodded, my mind buzzing. “I remember lots of things. But my favorite thing to do was skip stones on the pond behind the house. I used to challenge myself to see how far I could get them.”

  “I know. You taught me how to do it when we were kids, remember?”

  I smiled again. “That’s right. It was such a long time ago.” I hesitated, letting out a deep sigh. “I know the world was filled with sin and darkness back then. That’s why the Great Reckoning happened. But there was so much light too. So much good. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes.”

  I sat up, leaning on one elbow. “My father says everything about the old world was bad. But I remember Mom used to take me for long drives to see all these beautiful fields of flowers in the spring. How can that be bad?” I asked. “There were so many other beautiful things too. Like puppies and kittens. How could they be evil?”

  He smiled. “They aren’t. They’re fucking cute.”

  I sighed. “I wanted a pet so badly back then, but Mom was allergic to most types of animal fur. She said we could get a goldfish instead, but then she was killed in the attack before it ever happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mason said softly, still stroking my hair.

  “It’s all right,” I mumbled. “It was a very long time ago. It almost feels like it was a different life.”

  We lay in silence for another few minutes. Mason finally spoke up again, his voice a deep murmur that set butterflies loose in my stomach. “You said you think the old world was a mixture of good and bad. What about the new world?”

  “We are very fortunate to be here, and—”

  He interrupted me. “I asked what you think of it. Truthfully. Not what your father tells you to think of it.”

  I chewed my bottom lip as I considered his question. “Well… I think it’s mostly bad,” I whispered slowly. I felt terribly guilty for saying that, but it was the truth.

  Mason didn’t reply, so I kept talking. I told him everything.

  I told him how hard my life was here. How much backbreaking work there was to do every single day, even though we were lucky the men kept us safe down h
ere and brought us things to cook so we didn’t starve. I told him about all the girls who had died here or been maimed from terrible punishments. I told him about Elena and the things she said in the old church all those months ago. How she thought she saw a plane and didn’t believe the Great Reckoning happened. How she wanted to leave New Eden. How she killed herself out of guilt the very next day.

  I told him how this place was meant to be a paradise, but more often than not, it seemed like hell.

  Mason listened to everything, his fingertips never leaving my hair. “I’m sorry things have been so hard for you,” he said once I’d finally blurted everything out. “I wish I could go back in time and take it all away.”

  “Thank you,” I said in a soft voice.

  We lay in silence again for another few minutes.

  “What about you?” I finally asked. “You never talk about your life before you came to New Eden. How did you survive out there?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I guess I just did,” he said.

  “Was it hard?”

  He shrugged. “Life can be hard no matter what’s going on.”

  “How many other survivors are out there?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  I sighed. He wasn’t exactly being forthcoming, but I knew why. “It’s okay if you can’t explain it all to me. You’re much smarter. I probably wouldn’t understand.”

  With one hand, he brought my face up so our eyes were forced to meet. “Jolie, you need to stop doing that. Stop acting like you aren’t just as smart as me.”

  “But I’m not. It isn’t possible. My father says—”

  He cut me off. “I know, I know. He says men are leagues above women in every way, and he knows this because of his visions from your God.”

  “Yes. He’s right, too. I know because the men here are much smarter than me and all the other women.”

  Mason sighed. “Jolie, that’s not true.”

  “It is,” I insisted.

  “No. You just think it is. If you have something drummed into you for long enough, you start to believe it. You may even start to act like it.”

  “So you’re saying my father is lying about the things he tells us?” I asked, my body turning rigid.

  Mason shook his head. “No. But the thing is…” He hesitated for a second. “I think it could be possible that he might interpret a vision incorrectly on occasion.”

  I stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue. And he did. He told me there were other prophets where he came from who were given totally different messages from different Gods. Messages which placed women on the same level of importance as men. He also explained to me how every single message my father claimed to have received was very convenient for him.

  He really emphasized that word. Convenient. I didn’t understand what he meant at first, and to be honest I was still having trouble with the concept, but essentially, he said something along the lines of it being oh-so-convenient for my father that our God had declared all women stupid and inferior, automatically rendering them a slave class for the men.

  I saw his point, but at the same time, wasn’t that right? Men were bigger and twenty times stronger than women. Didn’t that mean they were twenty times smarter too, and therefore entitled to have the lower class—all of us women—serve them?

  Mason said no. He said that men had brains and physical strength, and on the other hand, women had equally-powerful brains and strong intuition to complement their counterparts’ physical abilities. He said women also had a different sort of physical strength that men couldn’t even dream of matching.

  We could grow an entire human in our wombs, then endure the pains of labor to bring that new soul into the world. He said most men, no matter their size or strength, would fall to the ground squealing like a child if you so much as jabbed them in the testicles. If any of them were forced to endure pregnancy and labor pains instead of women, the human race would’ve likely died out years ago.

  I giggled at that. It sounded about right.

  I was beginning to think Mason was right about a lot of the other things he said too. The men here at New Eden were so fragile about their masculinity that they couldn’t handle even the slightest comment against it, even in jest.

  Elena once received a backhand across the face for simply smiling in amusement when one of the men here dropped something he was carrying after finding it too heavy, when just moments earlier he’d taken one look at it and said it would be very easy for him to lift up. It was funny. But the way he reacted… you’d think Elena had actually stabbed him in the chest and stolen his children. He was that insecure about a woman laughing at him.

  “You really think my father is wrong about all those things?” I asked when Mason finally trailed off. My mind was buzzing with wonder and confusion.

  “I do. Where I’m from, men and women are considered equals in most ways. It isn’t always great for women, because sometimes men still treat them badly or try to take away their rights, depending on where they are. But on the whole, it’s a lot different out there than it is down here.”

  I frowned. “Do you mean were?” I asked. “As in women were considered equal?”

  “No. Are.”

  “But there aren’t any women left in the world, apart from those of us here at New Eden. You’re making it sound like there’s still lots of them out there, even today.”

  “There are.”

  My brows shot up. “Other women actually survived the Great Reckoning?”

  “Yes. Like I said before, your father might misinterpret his visions sometimes,” Mason said. “But trust me. There are lots of other women in the world.”

  My pulse began to race again. “Have you told my father about this?” I asked, my eyes wide.

  “Not yet. It’s a topic we might need to wait a while to broach.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I didn’t quite understand why, but I trusted Mason’s judgment. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you going to go back out to the Wastelands?” I lowered my eyes as I spoke. “Lots of men go out there to explore. Sometimes for weeks. But I…” I stopped halfway through my sentence, too nervous to say: ‘I would miss you if you left, even for a few days’.

  Mason smiled. “I’m not going out there to explore anytime soon. I’d rather spend every minute I can down here with you.”

  My stomach flipped. “Oh. I’m glad,” I murmured, dropping my eyes from his face. I was too embarrassed to look at him. “Can I ask something else?”

  “You can ask me anything, baby girl.”

  “You were saying earlier that my father might misinterpret his visions, because all the prophets where you come from say different things. But how do you know they aren’t completely wrong? What if they get their information from the Devil, and he’s only masquerading as God in order to trick them into believing the wrong things?”

  Mason gently tapped me on the nose. “I could ask you the same thing. What if your father has been getting all his information from the wrong source—the Devil—and he only thinks it’s God?”

  I sat bolt upright. Oh, Lord. All this time and it hadn't even occurred to me that the Devil might have told my father he was the divine Prophet in order to trick him into spreading lies. The things in the book he’d written could be wrong.

  It could all be wrong.

  I stared down at Mason, my heart racing. “How do I know who to believe?” I asked. “How do I know you weren’t sent by the Devil to trick me?”

  Mason reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You have to rely on your gut instinct,” he murmured. “Figure out what it’s trying to tell you and make up your mind from that.”

  I thought about it for a moment; an achingly long moment, fraught with tension. Then I shocked myself. I leaned down and kissed him.

  My body instantly felt as if it had caught fire. Mason tugged me closer, his mouth hot and demanding on mine as he responded to the sudden
kiss. I felt his passion everywhere, flooding all throughout my body. Keeping me warm. Keeping me safe.

  I broke away. My forehead was sticky with a sheen of perspiration and my skin was prickling with goosebumps. “I think I made up my mind,” I whispered.

  Mason grinned. “I can see that.”

  He stroked one hand over my right side. Every fiber of my body screamed in ecstasy and shivered with bliss.

  I wanted to blame him for my sins. Wanted to think he was testing me, or even sent by the Devil. But in the end, I knew it was all on me. I was tired of always trying to be good. I wanted to be bad, and I wanted to do it with Mason.

  The God I’d been raised with would probably know, but would He really care? I only had my father’s word to go by, and I wasn’t sure how accurate that was anymore.

  “I want to do what we talked about earlier today,” I said hurriedly. “The thing I said I couldn’t do.”

  “Are you sure?” Mason asked, fingertips stroking slightly lower.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. Then I kissed him again.

  This time, it was harder. Deeper. With a growl, Mason rolled us both over so he was on top of me, his weight settled between my legs. Our hands tore at each other’s clothing until we were both naked and breathing heavily.

  “Do it,” I begged. “Now. Please show me what it’s like.”

  Mason’s eyes glimmered with lust. “Not yet. Let me show you something first.”

  With that, he moved himself down the bed. His head was between my legs now, kissing and nipping at my inner thighs. I gasped, then put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from crying out. The thing he was about to do… I’d read about it in my secret book, but I’d never heard of a man at New Eden doing it. I was certain it would be considered a sinful act by my father and the Elders, though. They might deem it punishable by removal of the tongue.

  In doing it, Mason showed me just how much he was risking. If we were caught, I wouldn’t be the only one punished. It would be both of us.