Page 8

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Cam

Palming my cock on a staircase under the watchful eye of too many birds that are actually mechanical drones observing our every move makes Paigelynn more of a billion-dollar bitch than she ever fathomed.

Now I’m rock hard and can’t do a fucking thing about it.

And on top of that, I have to come up with a plan to extract us both alive.

With a hard-on.

Thanks, Paigelynn. Thanks .

Getting her down to the shore and by the crashing waves was harder than it should be, but now we’re here, and I have her full attention.

Fair is fair. She put me at attention, too.

“Go ahead,” she says, words buried by wind, but I can read her lips. “Talk freely.”

“I’m trying to save your life.”

Her eyes narrow. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

She squeezes my arm, fingers digging into the soft flesh of my inner elbow. “Not good enough.”

“We have about five minutes before someone wonders why they’re picking up nothing but muted wind on audio. You need to put aside all doubts about me.”

“You are nothing but doubts!”

“And you need to forget that part.”

“You betrayed me!”

“And now I am your only hope of getting out alive.”

Her head reels back. “Alive?” She begins to laugh, the sound washed out but her twisted face a mask of panic and disgust as her lips open wide, nose crinkled, the moment frozen in time.

She looks like every emotion a human can feel spread out on skin, as if someone buttered her with a jar of melted feelings.

“YES!” I shout. “ALIVE!”

“If you wanted me alive,” she screams, “you never would have brought me here!”

“You need to stop arguing. Release the past. I can’t undo it. And it’s an obstacle.”

“YOU SOUND LIKE YOUR MOTHER.”

Oof .

She’s gone from The Mother to Your Mother. I get it. I do. But she has to let go all her anger toward me and go into robot mode if we have any hope of surviving.

I grip her shoulders and step on her foot, pinning the ankle monitor under the sand. My lips go to her ears and she tries to turn away.

“I mean it. You’re dead without me. You have a small chance with me. Make a choice right now, Paigelynn. Life or death. Me or death. Pick me. You have no choice.”

“Maybe death would be better.”

“Not the death they have in mind for you.” I look down at her, those lovely eyes conflicted, filled with a mix of revulsion and – yes, I see it.

Something close to hope.

“I really, really have no choice."

“You have me.”

“Do I? Do I really?”

“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Then how about this?”

The kiss comes from a part of me that cannot help myself, because there’s every chance – in fact, a strong likelihood –that neither of us is making it out of here alive.

And we have only a handful of minutes before someone sends a drone, so while I know we’re already being watched, it’s better to steal a salty kiss on the water’s edge than to not.

She surprises me.

Paigelynn always surprises me.

Pressing hard against me, her hands rise up the lines of my back, fingers gathering at my neck, lips yielding and demanding all at once. She’s soft and pure and I want to do everything to her. With her.

Beside her.

And most of all – inside her.

The touch of her tongue against mine is a war cry.

We are prepared for battle.

And we will win.

My life means nothing without saving hers. As the kiss deepens, a sound catches my ears, the taste of her too delicious to break off from, and yet…

Here they come.

She’s the first to pull back, her arms hugging me close, eyes imploring.

“You mean it, don’t you?”

“Every word.”

“Then I will pretend you are my king.”

The words cut so sharp it’s like she ripped out my heart.

Two drones appear, my ears aware of them before my eyes. I take my toe and move the sand off her monitor, bending down for one final statement.

“I don’t want to be your king. I want to be your –”

She squeezes my arm as a drone slips down to eye level, whirring before us, the camera’s eye shining our image back, distorted and grotesque. The hard metal is alienlike, all tech and zero humanity.

Yet it watches.

“The prophecy above all,” she says loudly as she dips to touch the water, which has come so close now. “My king is here to save me.”

A red light blinks next to the camera. I half expect to hear Mother’s voice croak out from a speaker. I look up the hill and see a line of security guards, four in a row, one beginning the descent down the stairs.

Let them come.

Let them try to hurt us.

I have no fucking idea how I’m going to get us out alive, but having her buy-in makes all the difference in the word.

She’s leaning against me now, eyes closed, head tipped back, and the wind takes her hair in a carefree caress and pulls it back behind her.

Whatever I said, whatever I did just now shifted the energy between us.

She trusts me now.

I haven’t earned that trust.

But I damn sure will.

As long as I have her buy-in, this mission becomes easier. Everything’s slippery in my head, too many ideas all fighting for dominance.

Like these unstable billionaires.

Cormac Donegal and Gian Luisi are the most dangerous, the younger generation with no empathy core. I trust Sandor Javics above all. Plenty of wild cards hide in the shadows, though, and it’s the beasts we don’t see coming who bite the hardest.

And always, always go for the throat.

Like Paul Saari, the man who doesn't exist.

“You have to save me,” she says now, her ankle weight fully exposed, the sun giving it an oddly beautiful smile. “For the prophecy.”

Anyone monitoring us either has no idea about the organ trafficking, as that information is tightly controlled, or they know and are smirking, thinking Paigelynn is too stupid for words.

“Save you? I’m your King, Princess.” She links her arm in mine, gripping a little too tightly. The drones rise up and hover, more than one now, menacing but just watching. Witnessing.

Hunting .

Calculating how much power I actually possess is a complex formula. Pulling in every favor I can think of can get me some help, but the problem is getting that help through the massive security here. Moving Paigelynn off the compound is impossible. Dominic and Niall won’t allow it.

Sure, she’s mine. I bought her. I own her.

But in a sense, she’s also shared by everyone.

Already, my mother has turned herself into my de facto business agent, texting me with offers from various people in the crowd, wanting a baby kidney, a slice of liver, a cornea, endothelial cells. They order parts like calling a pizza parlor and adding anchovies to a pineapple and ham pizza.

Grotesque, yet routine.

“Talk to me,” Paigelynn calls out. “I understand what my mission is.”

Code, right? She’s speaking in code. We need to be a team, and she needs to be able to read my signals before I even send them, because the waters were wading into are murky at best. Split second reflexes will matter. The wrong door leads to death.

The wrong word, too.

One bullet in my forehead and this is all over. A rogue family member can sow chaos.

And Niall’s sons are barely controlled, less human and more like two walking erections looking for a warm hole to play in.

And when guys like that play, they destroy. Chaos turns them on.

“Your mission is to be a princess,” I say, playing the part. “To fulfill the prophecy. My prophecy,” I add, smiling down at her. Those gorgeous eyes flare a bit.

“Your prophecy?”

“I want children. So many children.”

“Of course.”

“I want to fill you with my seed.” My hand goes to her belly. Instinct makes her look down, her hair covering her face. “We will make beautiful children.”

“It is our destiny,” she says softly.

“I hope they all look like you.”

“Maybe the girls, yes,” she says, looking up at me, tears turning her eyes a glossy crystal. “But the boys need to have your dark, wavy hair. And your height. Strong men, we’ll raise. Strong women, too. We’re the embodiment.”

“Indeed, we are.”

“And Makiah Rooney must bless us.”

The mention of his name makes my gut twist. What game is she playing, bringing him up? She knows we’re being watched, so there has to be a purpose.

“Makiah?”

“Yes. He is the reason you found me. A great man like him deserves to be recognized for his contribution.”

Signals can be hard to read when there’s no code book, no standardized set of parameters for meaning. Paigelynn clearly has an idea about Rooney.

Hopefully it involves the man choking to death on his own dismembered cock.

“I agree he should get the attention he deserves,” I reply carefully as we begin our ascent up the stairs, Paigelynn going before me, giving me a few minutes’ reprieve from the lethal threat we’re in as I watch her shapely ass rise up the stairs.

“Cam,” she says, turning to give me a look over her shoulder.

“Yes?”

“When will you put a baby in me?”

I damn near fall backwards down the stairs.

“When will I what?”

“Give me a child. Conceive the future with me. Begin the new epoch.”

“I –”

“You gave me meaning. Helped me to see my value. Made me understand my role even more than The Mother ever could.”

She’s laying it on thick . I can hear the sarcasm in her voice, feel it in my bones, the acrid taste of disgust sliming my teeth.

This is a performance, through and through.

The drone’s close enough to catch most of this.

I imagine the surveillance guards are tweaking the sound, using a band-pass filter to catch every word.

Probably struggling not to play with their dicks, too. Paigelynn looks like a luminous angel right now, hair flowing in the wind, talking about me.

About me knocking her up.

“– put your seed in me.”

I wasn’t paying full attention, plus the wind’s howling in my ear, but I heard that.

“My seed?”

“Yes. Your mother wants me to have babies, of course. Many, many babies. We don’t have to do this in a terrible way.” She strokes my arm, pausing for effect, eyes shifting with subtlety to the drone. The men at the top of the stairs.

The audience .

"You prefer a softer approach."

"Softer, sweatier," she murmurs, sighing out her nose, the sound acute and intense in my ears, in spite of the noise around us. She licks her lips and smiles at me. I swear it touches her eyes this time. "I've been told conception occurs more swiftly when the woman orgasms."

"You were taught well."

"The prophecy above all."

I groan but hold my strong gaze, our eyes locked. Anyone observing us would think I was a man in control and she, a woman of feminine wiles soothing me. They would be wrong, of course, but what's right and what's wrong doesn't matter anymore.

The truth is a laughable construct created by whoever has the most power.

"You want orgasms, then," I say in a low voice, so dark and quiet I'm certain she cannot hear me. I underestimate her, though.

Perhaps she reads lips.

"From you, yes. Only you," she says loudly. "Only my king." We're about halfway up the steep cliffside, and my hamstrings announce themselves. I'm in no danger of being unable to climb, but my humanity asserts itself. We really are just flesh machines, with parts that wear out, break, or go awry.

Objectively, the billionaire body part sellers are like machinists. They're making parts, some of them interchangeable, some of them custom, to replace broken parts of machines.

They're craftsmen, using money and deceit to finish living, breathing puzzles.

Leaving some of the parts generators not living. Not breathing.

At its base level, they're solving problems for some, creating problems for others. The ethics of what they do really come down to consent.

What would you do for a life-saving body part? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? Offer ungodly sums of money to people who possess what you need to live?

It all comes down to consent and competing needs.

Paigelynn never consented to any of this. Therefore, the competing needs part is moot. She didn't agree to be used this way, so what Rooney, Mother, Dominic, Sandor – any of them – needs is irrelevant.

Paigelynn's needs come above all others, even my own.

"I mean it," she says a bit louder, the roar of the ocean below us, our voices clearer as we ascend. "About babies. My womb craves them."

"We'll make fine babies," I reply, the words coming out automatically, yet also a gut punch. An internal pause makes me hold my breath for a moment. A glowing sense comes over me, a peaceful joy at the thought.

Until I remember what will happen to our babies if I don't get us out of here.

"The finest," she says. "We can give your mother the grandchildren she deserves."

That shatters any joy I was feeling. I cut my eyes to Paigelynn and see her looking back at me, down at me from above, the wind lifting her hair. She’s smiling.

This time, the smile doesn't reach her eyes.

Soon we're back at the top, a flank of guards waiting for us, all of them calm.

If I scan the windows of the sprawling mansion before us, I'd possibly see my mother peeking out a window, hidden by curtains.

I don't bother. It doesn't matter. She can easily watch us from behind a screen, using a drone to see whatever her sick heart desires.

Fierce fingers dig into my biceps as I smell Paigelynn before I see her, standing at my side. She stands on tiptoes, her legs crooked from the weight of the ankle bracelet.

"I mean it about the babies," she says, suddenly tense. "Don't you see? It's prophecy. My babies are needed. It is how we have eternal life."

"Eternal life," I repeat, and then I understand.

Not eternal life.

Just life. A little more life.

Forty weeks more of life.

Because if I impregnate Paigelynn, or if the cabal even thinks she's pregnant, then my mother can't get what she wants right away.

At least, not until Paigelynn's baby is born.

Which means I need to sleep with Paigelynn. Take her virginity. Pop her cherry.

Deflower her.

Whether the rest of them like it or not.

The glow comes back, covering my skin, making my heart beat faster. I reach down and tuck a long strand of hair behind Paigelynn's ear, the guards standing at attention, but not moving close.

Then I bend down and whisper in her ear, "Of course you'll have my seed. The sooner you are pregnant, the better, Princess."

I feel her relief as she lets go of my arm.

"Good," she says. "Because I need to fulfill my purpose. I need to be by your side, always. And to bring forth a new era. A new life. A new world."

Or die trying , I think as the guards close rank behind us, ushering us into the mansion without touch.