Page 194

Buckeye was lurching to her feet, cracking the tiny book open before he changed his mind. A rude grip spun her by the hips, pressed her into the divider. She took advantage of the hard, vertical surface and, paper and pencil in her face, began to scratch out words.

A boot knocked into her ankle. Pencil skewed down the divider. Buckeye swore and August chuckled.

“Gonna have to be more careful than that.”

Blunt, cockhead rooted for position. Jabbed at an awkward angle past her entrance. She forced herself to write. He forced himself inside.

A hand came to her shoulder for leverage. The other curled around her hip, dug in behind the bone. He didn’t wait. Didn’t build speed. Traitor cock started slamming home, no clever words, no preamble whatsoever.

Her wrist jerked against the divider. The muscle pad of her thumb cramped trying to keep the pencil from weaving all over the paper. Vicers in the other cells would be staring, but Buckeye had to ignore them. Had to pour all her focus into getting this done. Legible.

Hips clapped against her backside. Soft tissues tore and stung. August grunted. Fucked her. Words appeared on the page, blocky and childlike under her death grip on the pencil.

Focus. Do it.

She did. Done. Pencil and paper fell from her hands right after she scrawled her name. The side of her face hit the divider. August speared up and in, lifting her onto her toes. Her tits mashed flat to the plastic and he kept coming, pinning her, using her as though the harder he did it, he was going to win something.

And in a few more violent thrusts, he did.

The traitor roared and his cock was gone. Her cunt was on fire. Hot semen splattered the crack of her ass, oozed down over her pucker. Her slit.

She stood there, splay-legged, forehead resting on the backs of her knuckles, trying to breathe. Trying to fucking live.

“Jesus Christ, woman.” She could hear him getting his britches back together. Gathering notebook and pencil. Dice. “Shoulda had that pussy back on the truck.”

She made a face at the divider. Eyes skimmed away from the woman in the next cell, who was staring up at her, aghast. There was no looking at him.

“You gonna take that message, or not?”

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” he said. “Shit. I keep my word. Your asshole’s still puckered tight, ain’t it?”

“Fuck you.”

He chuckled behind her. “Done did,” he said. She heard the clack of a latch, metal on metal. “Best of luck, Gambler.”

If there had been something to throw, she would have. The door swung shut behind him.

Down the row, Wayland was entering another cell. She curled her lip and shoved herself away from the divider. Flopped down on the mattress and had her back to it all before she could see whether August made any more offers of his own. Dull noises suggested at least one of the traitors did.

Just like that.

She pulled the blanket over her head. Fogged the small space inside with her breath.

Just like that you bet every last hole you have. What are you now?

But what was one more? One more in a sea of eager pricks, for even the tiniest chance the double-crosser would make good on his word and take her message where she wanted?

It didn’t matter. Only a small disruption. Routines and priests and service stretched out ahead of her. Forever.

Buckeye closed her eyes.

It was the first time she’d felt clothes on her skin since they’d stripped her out of shirt and britches that first day in Virtue. And these weren’t her old VT clothes. This wasn’t her cell, either. Buckeye gaped, clueless, while people moved around her and fussed.

They’d come for her some handful of days after the troubling appearance of August. Just her. No one else.

For a minute, she thought the guards were herding her to the baptistery again. This time, however, they took a circuitous series of stairs and corridors until they’d brought her to some other part of the cathedral. It was still above ground. There had still been windows along the way, and the quality of light told Buckeye it was somewhere near sunset.

The room she stood in now was called a vestry. She’d learned the word from the guards on her way to the stairs in the crypt. ‘They can work on her in the vestry’, the one had said to the other.