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“Here is how the story goes: the McCain couple lived on a boat with their seven kids. They fancied themselves rebels of their time. Then the old gods rose from their slumber, and the McCains were eager to carve their place in the new world. They turned pirates for a time. Until one day, our new reality caught up to them and the Leviathan sank their ship. They ended up stranded on land, with some of their children still too young to even carry a gun. That didn’t stop them. They rallied people around them. People who respected strength and survival above all else, and they slowly conquered parts of the wastelands. Including an oil platform deep in the desert, along with its refinery. It gave them access to fossil fuel, and they became unstoppable. Their followers now count in the hundreds. They chose a name fitting their new lifestyle: the Highwaymen. Listen, if you’re out there in the wastelands like me, avoid the main roads. And if there are tracks in the dust, walk in the other direction.”

Video transcription of a video file shared among survivors, creator unknown, 2058.

Margaret and Jess let us sleep in one of the buses for the night. They have turned it into some kind of guest room for when their son and Perri come over. They tie my chain to the foot of the heavy bed and my hands with heavy handcuffs, ensuring that I have a little room to move, but not enough to try anything. At least Jess insisted on giving me a thin mattress and a blanket, to Jude’s and Margaret’s dismay.

My captor blows out the candles and settles on the large bed above me. And suddenly, an uncomfortable flashback surfaces. Helios used to sleep at the foot of my bunk bed for months before he left me. Many times, I offered to share a bed, but he always said that we were getting too big for that. When, in reality, he was just happy to get away from me at night. He would have preferred to escape my tent altogether.

The realization feels like a knife sliding in a festering wound.

For the better part of an hour, I stare at the dark ceiling. As drained as I am, sleep eludes me. From the rustling I hear on the bed, Jude can’t sleep either. All I can see from where I’m lying on the floor is a shapeless form under the comforter.

But at some point, the noise turns…repetitive.

I growl in the dark. “Are you fucking masturbating?”

“So what? I can’t sleep,” Jude answers. He already sounds breathless.

Lust coils in my lower belly. It’s been a while since I released the tension. It’s been more than two weeks, to be precise. And I fucking hate what the idea of him pleasuring himself does to me.

“Stop it,” I say.

But he speeds up. I can see the comforter rising up and down from where his hand is.

“Why should I stop?” he says. It sounds like a challenge. “Am I shocking you?”

“No. Trust me, it takes more than that to shock me.”

It’s not entirely the truth. I’ve had no serious lovers besides Helios, and we were teenagers. I pined after him for years. Since then, all my experiences have been short and fruitless. Only to satisfy my most basic needs. The inhabitants of Bunkertown liked to spin tales about me. Of how I used the slaves to satisfy my darkest desires. It was never true, but I didn’t rebuke the rumors. They only contributed to my reputation and the fear I needed in order to be respected.

“Stop it,” I repeat, voice dangerously low.

“Make me,” Jude says in the dark.

I shiver and reach for my own erection. I know I’ll hate myself once this is over, but I can’t find the strength to care right now.

Jude hums his approval. “I see that you’re a slut.”

“I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He slides out of bed, naked to the waist down, and crawls over me. Before I can make a move, his gun is pointed at my face.

“Be nice, or I’ll blow your brains out,” he says.

But all I can think about is his backside rubbing on my erection, and his naked legs on each side of my waist. And he smells so enticing, like clean sweat and soap. He must have cleaned himself before bed.

He buries the tip of his gun under my chin and starts to jerk himself off on top of me. It’s the most degraded I’ve ever felt, and yet I can’t fucking breathe.

“I’ll kill you,” I repeat.

Because what else can I say? ‘I want to bend you over the bed’? My pride would never let me live it down.

“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he jokes.

Except it doesn’t sound like a joke. Not when he’s speeding up. He’s getting close to orgasm. And I’m getting close to losing my mind. In this position, I can’t touch myself.

Jude moans and says, “Fuck…!” before coming all over my naked chest.

Thankfully, I left my shirt open. His semen drips from my bellybutton to my nipples, warm, wet, and smelling fucking delicious.

Jude composes himself for a moment, then says, “Thank you for your help.” And he climbs on his feet, taking the gun with him, and goes back to bed without even cleaning my chest. “Goodnight.”

Rage mixed with lust urges me to drag a hand into his semen and unbutton my cargo pants. I use it as a lube to make myself come, hard and fast. Even in the dark, I know that Jude is still watching. He must feel so fucking proud of himself.

When rapture comes, it’s not gentle. I arch my back and bite my lip so as not to make a noise and give him satisfaction. I dry my chest and hands with the blanket before throwing it at the end of the bus.

I hear a quiet laugh in the dark.

Sleep, against all odds, finds me this time.

We leave at dawn with a basket of food, courtesy of the two women. In exchange for the repairs, Jude gave them one of the guns he kept locked in the Firefly and a few boxes of ammunition. Fyfe flies us over Gears and Giggles, and then we head north, to coordinates that Jude seems to know by heart.

“Where are we going?” I ask after a minute of flight.

We haven’t talked about what happened last night in the dark. I won’t be the one to bring it up. At least, until I have a gun over his head.

“To the Highwaymen base. We’re going to Hell.”

I sigh. Of course, we are. “Why?”

“I know a hacker. She’s not as good as Perri, but he’ll do. And I also want to know if my brother said the truth, and if my parents are dead.”

I watch him, but his eyes are on the horizon. “I thought you wanted them dead.”

He frowns. “I do. But I wanted to kill them myself.”

He turns toward me, and there is a fire burning in his eyes. This kind of hatred, I know well. It runs deep.

“What did they do to you?” I ask.

“Mind your own fucking business.”

“You’ve made it my fucking business when you started keeping me as a pet and dragging me through the wastelands.”

He lets out a humorless laugh and turns back to the horizon. “So, you admit that you’re my pet? How delightful. And you know, all of this could be over if you only gave me full command of the Firefly.” I glare at him. “No? That’s what I thought. Then learn to enjoy your leash.”

A spark rises from my skin, the only sign of the storm rising inside.

Jude reaches for the gun I now know he always keeps at his belt, hidden under his shirt. He takes it out swiftly and points it at me.

“Now, now. No need to make things more difficult for the both of us,” he says.

“Mr. President, are you in danger?” asks Fyfe.

Jude gives me a pointed look. “We’re just having fun, aren’t we?”

“Yes. I’m fine, Fyfe,” I say.

The Firefly flies true under the clouds, and I spend the next few hours devising ways to kill Jude.

It’s later in the day, when the sun is dropping behind the horizon, that we notice something walking the desert on six legs. Jude orders Fyfe to land on a rocky mountain top. We both get out of the Firefly to watch. It’s never a good idea to get noticed by an old god.

“Who is it?” Jude asks me, squinting.

“I don’t know.”

I might be a mutant, but my eyesight isn’t better than his. The old god I take my DNA from was blind. He gave me other abilities.

The giant creature disappears behind a cliff, then reappears seconds later. They’re getting closer. They have a green shell, and what looks like wings.

“Oh, it’s the Bug,” Jude says as a matter of fact.

“The Bug?”

I’ve never seen nor heard about an old god called the bug.

“It’s a machine.”

I frown. That can’t be right. It’s a giant beetle. “No…”

“I assure you,” Jude says. “The Highwaymen have been trying to get it for years. It’s inhabited by the Devil of the Wastes. Tough motherfucker. He’s a mutant like you.”

I go deathly still as I realize who that Devil is. And who is with him.

“Helios…” I whisper.

Jude frowns and watches me. “Helios?”

“He’s the Devil’s lover…”

“Oh, shit.” Jude smiles. “Good for him.”

Electricity rises from my skin again, and Jude takes a step back, smile fading. Helios is out there, living in the machine. So close…

“Don’t even think about it,” says Jude. His gun is once again pointed at me. There is no mercy on his face. “I’ll fucking kill you now, the Firefly be damned, if you even glance at Helios the wrong way.”

This overprotective streak… I had it for Helios for years. I understand it well. I know that his threat is serious. My rage deflates, leaving me hollow.

The six-legged machine is nowhere to be found. It has disappeared into thin air.

I walk back to the Firefly without a second glance, hoping that Jude would shoot me in the back.

We land on the rooftop of a three-story high villa in the desert to spend the night. The only way up is by stairs that have been barricaded a long time ago. Tonight, we should be safe from nomads, at least. It used to be a rooftop garden, if the empty planters and rotted chairs are any indication. Below us, a wide pool is filled with dust. I’ve seen the pictures and movies from before the Rise. It’s hard to imagine such a lavish life.

Jude sets camp, and I watch him.

After a moment, he says, “Are you going to fucking help?”

He’s my captor, and yet he acts like we’re travel buddies. How the hell did that happen?

And yet, strangely, I grab the sleeping bags and place them around the solar lamps. I’m still weak—I wouldn’t be able to take off running if I needed to, even without the shackles on—but I can move around a little.

Jude takes out the food that Margaret and Jess gave us and starts filling bowls. We eat in silence. But he keeps eyeing me over his food.

“What?” I ask eventually.

“What’s up with your obsession with Helios?”

I still. “I’m not obsessed,” I say in a low voice. I don’t want to talk about it. Ever.

“Dude, you sent your slavers in the wastelands for months to find all the young blonde men in the hope one would turn out to be Helios. If that’s not an obsession, then I don’t know what is.”

“They weren’t my slavers. As soon as it was known that I was buying able workers to build my underground city, mercenaries just flocked to the opportunity. I just warned them to be on the lookout for someone in particular.”

“How convenient, slavery,” he says with a sneer.

“It is. In our world, you’re either the slave or the master. I just decided some time ago that I would be the master. You’re naive if you think otherwise.”

For years, I was the scientists’ slaves. Their little monster to experiment on and turn into a weapon. Then, I was my father’s. I was a slave to his legacy. A perfect little soldier.

Jude lets out a humorless laugh. “I guess that makes me your master now. Let’s see how you enjoy it.” He rises and pulls his gun out. “Get up,” he says.

He leads me to the Firefly and orders me to drop my sleeping back close to the landing gear. I lie on the bag while he ties me to the aircraft with the heavy handcuffs the women provided last night.

Jude crouches over me as he locks the handcuffs in place, and his smell invades my nostrils. From where I am, I could lick the curve of his throat. I could bite his damn neck and tear it to shreds with my teeth before he could have time to shoot me. He would bleed out to death.

His eyes find mine, and he smiles when he notices me watching him.

“What are you looking at, pet?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, really? Then why are you hard?”

We both look down. He’s right. There is an unmistakable bulge in my pants.

“No particular reason,” I lie. “My blood is thicker than normal humans. I get hard more easily.”

“Is it all that talk about me being your master that turned you on? Or have you been thinking about what we did last night?”

I grind my teeth. “I’m not thinking about anything. Now get off me.”

But he only trails a hand down my chest and to the buttons of my cargo pants. “Your blood really is thicker? Is that why your veins are black?”

I sigh and nod.

Jude’s smile turns predatory, and he starts to unbutton my pants and slide them down with his left hand while the other holds the gun.

“Stop it,” I say in a low voice.

But, of course, he doesn’t listen. He frees my cock.

“Gods, it’s huge,” Jude says. “I’ve been wanting to really take a look at it since I bathed you the other day. It’s so…peculiar.”

Shame burns its way to my face and ears. I know I’m peculiar. Black veins snake around my dick, darkening the skin to the head. A few ridges travel from base to end. I have no foreskin. The shape is human-like, but much longer and thicker thanks to the density of the blood pumping through my erection. But the colors make it look almost alien.

I struggle against my restraints, but Jude angles the gun at my face.

“Now, now. Play nice,” he says.

He slides the gun over my chest, taking all the buttons off with his free hand. Soon, I’m naked from neck to balls. His gun goes lower still, until I feel the cold metal on my intimate parts.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” I say.

“You’ve said that before. And yet, here I am, breathing and all that.”

My next retort dies on my lips as his free hand touches my cock. He follows the paths of my black veins with his fingertips. I can’t help it. I arch into his touch.

I close my eyes to try to block the feel of his hand on me. I dread what will happen any moment now. How my body will react and what will become impossible to hide.

But Jude rubs the gun along my cock, and my eyes shoot open against the sweet depravity of it. And it gets worse. He’s watching me intently, and I can’t fucking breathe.

Clear liquid starts to bubble generously at the tip of my penis, before dripping along the shaft.

“What…?” Jude says. “What is that? You’re not coming, are you?”

“No,” I growl. There’s no hiding it. “When I’m turned on, I produce a lot of lubricant.”

It’s viscous and makes everything so wet. Too wet.

My focus is on Jude. If he says one fucking humiliating thing about it, I’m going to rip his throat with my teeth. I don’t care if he shoots me. I’ll fucking—

“Oh, fuck. That’s hot,” he says. “And so useful.”

I stare for a heartbeat, at a loss for words, then he slides his thumb into my lubricant, and I groan. He brings the gun back under my chin with his right hand and starts pumping my cock with the other.

Some part of me can’t believe this is happening. I’m being sexually abused by my captor, and I’ve never been so turned on in my entire life.

“Does that mean you can just do it whenever you feel like it?” he says. “Bend someone over and fuck them to oblivion without preparation? I’m so jealous.”

“Yes,” I say, breathless. “Although it still requires some preparation. I’m big…”

“That, you certainly are…”

His hand speeds up. He has a small hand for a man, but his grip is surprisingly strong. It feels…wonderful. In a matter of seconds, my cock and his fingers are covered in clear lubricant. The smoky smell of me overpowers everything else. The wet noises alone are enough to bring me over the edge.

“It’s not so bad, having me as your master, right?” he purrs in my ear.

“Fuck you…”

He laughs. “You wish.”

But his breathing hitches, and I know he’s turned on too. I can smell it on him.

He’s a fucking nightmare. So beautiful and yet dangerous to touch, like the jellyfish that haunt my dreams. I pull on my restraints to lick his throat. Jude lets out a moan of surprise as my tongue leaves a wet trail on his skin. He tastes so enticing. His hand tightens around my cock, and, without warning, I come all over his fingers and on my chest.

My orgasm crashes over me in waves. I can’t remember the last time I came this hard. I’m still reeling from it as Jude crawls on my lap, like he did the previous night.

“I need to come,” he informs me.

“Then you better come.” The words are out of my mouth before I can keep them in check.

Jude pulls his pants down, just enough to free his erection, and he starts to pump his dick. The gun, of course, stays under my chin. At this point, I don’t care anymore. I just want to see him come, too. For a brief moment in time, I forget who we are and how we’re supposed to act.

He buries the tip of his gun deeper into the tender skin under my chin. His eyes are on me, on my still-hard cock, and he looks close already. I want to touch him. I pull on the handcuffs, but the chain is thick; it’s not giving.

Jude comes seconds later, adding to the wet mess that is my chest and stomach. I keep my eyes on him as he goes through it. His eyes shine, and his cheeks have a red tint to them. A drop of sweat glides from his temple to his jaw. So damn beautiful.

Jude brings his free hand to my lips, and I don’t even try to resist as he gives me a taste of him and me. It tastes achingly sweet.

Why am I letting him do this to me?

I lick his fingers clean.

Jude rises to his feet and disappears into the Firefly. He comes back seconds later with a bottle of water and a cloth. He cleans my chest and cock dutifully, surprising me with his gentleness.

“There, love, all clean,” he says. He sits back on his heels. “So, how does it feel to be my slave? How does it feel to be reduced to an object to satisfy my lust?” His eyes have turned cruel again.

Electricity rises to the surface, and Jude has enough wit to get out of my reach. He laughs as he gets back to his sleeping bag.