Swallow it Down - Addison Cain Page 0,52

and dropped the small cabin’s in-room refrigerator into the water below. Once the surface tension had been upset and chance of a severe impact injury massively decreased, she threw herself over. Simple physics. Landing feet first with not a single broken bone.

Pack dragging her down, the room’s sofa floatation cushions strapped to her body buoying her up, the current had its way with her.

And for once, she didn’t fight back.

Winter? Or was it spring? It didn’t matter. Either way, she floated for hours, lips blue before she felt sediment under foot.

It was then she realized she had no shoes.

Dogs howled.

Chapter Seventeen

Dress flaking with dried mud, Eugenia walked through dead woods. Meandering in no particular direction.

When she’d been closer to the ship, pockets of hidden farmland could be seen from the tree line. Acreage she would have once ran toward as a haven was now avoided at all costs.

Roads were circumvented on her lackadaisical journey to nowhere, leaving no staged corpses for her to loot. Which meant Eugenia’s drinks had been exhausted, her snacks had been snacked upon. Weaponless, shoeless, and wild, she’d beaten the duck she ate for dinner to death with a rock.

Pre-bombs, duck confit had been one of her favorite dishes. As had duck breast sliced thin and served deliciously raw. Which was how she ate it off the bone.

Fire was not an option.

It might be seen.

And though that time of year in the south was chilly, it was nothing like the snows in Boston. The very ones that had driven her south to begin with.

Not that she wasn’t cold.

Uncured skins from freshly killed vermin kept some feeling in her fingers and toes. Poorly tied together with little strips she’d carved through with sharp rocks, they covered her well enough. And stank.

That first week, the howls didn’t wake her up like they should. Eugenia was too busy dreaming of hazel eyes, flashes of anger, the feel of a man’s hands on her body. How he tasted.

Every woman on Level 15 knew how he tasted. He knew how they tasted. And she could only guess how many of them he’d been with since she cut and ran.

That was the price of her freedom, after all. Not that she ever imagined she’d earn it so quickly, or so unintentionally.

It was surprising how boring the days were when all she did was hunt and walk. Too much time spent remembering and too little spent thinking.

It was like she carried an infection and something even worse—doubt.

The women always came back, he’d said. But she couldn’t do that, even if she’d caught herself walking toward the boat more than once. Seeing him with the others, the very women she’d driven him to time and time again, would kill her. It would kill her more quickly than Level 9 ever might.

Joan had been right. Eugenia was in love—unsure who she hated more for it, Aaron or herself.

Had Joan not come to her first, after that long, sleepless night on the couch, Eugenia would have fallen at his feet and begged just like he had begged her in dark corners for months. Keep me. Accept me as fucked-up as I am. Love me back, even when I hate you.

He’d outplayed her every move, crumbled her flagging resistance to powder. All the while, she’d tormented him in every way she could imagine. Took from his physical release despite his tricks. Participated when he’d moved inside her. Enthusiastically accepted his caress after a taste of pleasure, knowing after the first time that it would end with him spilling where he should not.

He’d take care of Brooke as long as Brooke might live. He’d take care of all of them. That had to be enough.

He’d also still force women who didn’t want to have babies to reproduce for his vision of humanity’s second chance.

Her best friend. Her arch nemesis.

Maybe she’d really left her beloved textbooks for him, so he wouldn’t forget her. Because seeing them would kill him little by little. He’d hold them; he’d smell her on them. He’d still fuck the other women too hard from behind, and he’d still not be able to look them in the eye as they serviced their captain.

Brooke bore horrific scars, ugly ones everyone could see. Aaron bore the same, with only Eugenia knowing they sat right under his skin.

Just as he knew all about her secret wounds, having inflicted many of them himself.

Yet with each deep cut, she’d had someone to stitch the wound closed. The scar was still