Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Fighting with the little strength she had, biting, hoarse screams, and pathetic flopping did nothing to keep her from being shouldered like a knapsack.
It wasn’t a short walk, but she didn’t give up, powerless to move her arms more than a sorry swing but sharp with her tongue. She threatened the stranger’s life, swore she’d tear off his cock if he put it anywhere near her. His mother. His family. Creative in her expletives until a door opened and cool air blasted her back.
There really was air conditioning on that boat! One taste of it on her skin and she went from spitting hellcat to sobbing wreck.
The trivial thing she’d craved most from the life stolen when the bombs fell was just as divine as she remembered.
“Hey, Joan, here’s a new one. Captain wants her cleaned up and kept alive. Level 15.”
“Well”—a woman spoke, a no-nonsense, middle-aged voice—“won’t that just get the men frothing at the mouth? And just look at all that red hair.”
“Temper to match. She’s a biter.” Hefting Eugenia down against something soft and forgotten, the bruiser who dragged her into air-conditioned hell warned Joan, “Watch yourself.”
“Yeah, I heard you. Now go. No men are allowed up here until the bell.”
Chapter Two
Water enough to make her belly poke out, blessed air conditioning, a bed with real sheets that were so clean her dirt made a mark... it should have been bliss.
It wasn’t.
According to the solitary porthole in her room—a porthole too small to climb through and too high above the lake to survive the fall should she dislocate a shoulder and squeeze out—Eugenia had measured two days.
Time to recover from dehydration, most of it spent sleeping, drinking, eating food that was delivered by the no-nonsense Joan. Using an honest to God toilet when her taxed kidneys continued to do their job.
A porthole with a bird’s-eye view of the cliff face that concealed the ship from any wandering travelers brave enough to dare the seemingly endless, decaying wood.
Dogs howled each night, the familiar, dreaded sound sending her to her feet, heart in her throat as she reached for a knife that wasn’t there. As she scrambled to hide. Only to find herself blinking in the dark. Confused. Protected by inches of solid steel.
No stray pack was getting at her there. Something worse would try.
Her gut never lied.
And it wasn’t like she hadn’t been in a similar position before. But always in a ruin, a hut, a pen, a ditch in the ground. Never a massive ocean liner with working electricity and flushing toilets.
New situations required a new perspective. Her body required rest.
She’d die without water.
And water was delivered aplenty, with ice clicking against the side of the glass. They had ice machines, for fuck’s sake! They had guns, which meant they probably had the ammunition to fire them.
They had resources to feed what had been deemed a slave, and the luxury of time to allow that slave to be more than… what she’d seen so many other women turned into.
Bland food three times a day, mostly stew, brought to her like she was some princess in a tower. Yet no morsel ever served with any sort of utensil—heaven forbid she try to make a weapon out of a freaking spoon. Only a bit of crusty bread that, in itself, was so rare she gobbled it down despite the brick in her stomach.
They had ovens. They had stoves. They made bread.
No one, save Joan, entered her room. No men came jeering at the door. There were no squabbles in the halls over who got to fuck her first.
When she yelled for answers or threw her weight against the door, no soul took her bait.
Another stark reminder that this was very different compared to all her other situations of capture in the past.
Two days turned to three before her solitude was broken by more than a tray and congenial older woman. Joan arrived with orders.
First, a shower overseen by Eugenia’s overpolite taskmaster. Joan, standing over her, making certain every inch was scrubbed clean of filth, that stray body hair was removed. Joan scrubbing caked mud from red curls when Eugenia’s shampooing skills were apparently under par. Joan slathering her locks with conditioner to take out the snarls, pulling a comb through Eugenia’s wet mane until it felt like half her hair had been ripped from her skull.
Tsking, shaking her head at another errant tangle, Joan complained, “Young lady… you had three days to wash, and I have to be the one to come in and make you? Do you have any idea how you smelled?”
Well excuse the fuck out of her. “How was I supposed to know that water was safe?”
And why on earth would Eugenia want to wash off her filth and potentially grow appealing to the things that crept around this place?