hard concrete. With nothing to do, my imagination fills with all kinds of fantasies.
Most of them have to do with leading a normal life. My life is a disaster. You’d think my fantasies would be pretty damn epic. But they’re not. They’re exceedingly normal.
I’d give anything to be boring and uninteresting, but most importantly, safe from the monsters in this world. For whatever reason, they seem to think they own me.
Seriously, that’s as salacious as my fantasies get.
I’ve never lived anything close to normal. No first date. No night at prom. No homecoming dances. No boring high school classes or competitive sports. I never had the chance to go to school after that bitch of a foster mother tossed me to the curb at twelve.
My school education came to a sudden and frightening end, but I learned on the streets. I learned how to survive. How to manipulate men. And most importantly, how not to die.
My lack of an official education is one of many things the people at the Facility were helping me with. I still have a year, or so, left to get my GED. I had hopes of going to college. Doing what is anyone’s guess, but after my rescue in the Philippines by the Guardians, I experienced hope for the first time.
Now, instead of learning all the impossible poses of the Kama Sutra, I know how to read at the high school level and manage my non-existent finances.
She shoots. She scores! The fans go wild.
It’s my brain and my tangents. Deal with it.
Somehow, the hours pass. I don’t know what Bossman does out there all day. Sometimes he comes back hot and sweaty, breathing hard. My assumption is that there’s a gym on board where he works out to maintain his muscled physique. Or, maybe, he runs the decks. The man is a powerhouse of muscle. Those are the only times he changes out of his pants and into shorts. He swaps out his boots for sneakers as well. And he takes both his knife and his gun when he goes.
Oh, and the phone.
What I wouldn’t give for him to leave that behind.
As for what he does leave behind, there’s nothing helpful.
Bossman packs light, but I win on who packs the lightest. All I have are my bikini top and bottom, my tank top, and my shorts with the zipper I managed to fix.
As for the chair thing, the moment the door opens and Bossman returns, I slide out of the chair and go to my knees. This is how I greet him, feeding his fantasy, but like I said, Bossman is smart.
I think I’m smarter. If anything, my motivation is greater. I’m banking on that to get me out of this mess.
He glances at me and does a full sweep of my body as my gaze lowers to his feet, where my rage simmers. I never look at him directly.
“Good news, slave.” He’s taken to calling me that. It started two days ago and I feed his hunger as much as I can. There is a line in the sand. I found it, and it’s one he won’t cross. Which sucks and pretty much leaves my plans at an impasse.
“Yes, sir?” I play it up.
“Tonight’s our last night together.” He sounds wistful, but all I hear is last night.
Time is running out.
“Sir?”
“You heard me. We pull into port tomorrow.”
“And then what happens?”
Meek. Mild. Subdued.
My voice comes out whisper-soft, but not so soft that it’s a strain for him to hear me.
“You meet your Master.”
Here I go, falling down a rabbit hole.
“And what about you? Will you still be there to take care of me?”
God, I hope not. He disgusts me.
He tugs off his shirt and stops midway as he draws it over his chest. His entire body locks up and a gleam simmers in his gaze. It’s there and gone before I know it.
“Unfortunately, not.” Bossman seems genuinely sad, the fat bastard.
Well, he’s not fat. The man’s stacked with muscle. Intimidating, hard muscles. But he’s most definitely a bastard. I wonder if his mother ever loved him.
What kind of childhood did a kid like him have that turned him into a monster like this? Like, at what point does a little boy say, “‘You know what? When I become a man, I want to murder, maim, and enslave?”
Like, is there a sign-up sheet for that kind of thing?
I had a pretty shitty childhood, but I’m not out there murdering and maiming.
Wait, I may have bit