Page 87
“It’s a debt, Jade. I made it disappear. Most people would say thank you.”
“I’m not most people, and you didn’t ask.” I’m on my feet before I realize it. “That debt was mine. That weight was mine. I carried it. I decided about it. I stayed up nights doing the sums on it. It was the last thing in my life that was still mine to carry, and you reached in and took it because it was untidy?” My voice cracks. “You don’t get to reach into my life and move things around just because you can afford to.”
He goes very still, the cup halfway to the counter. For a second, I think I’ve actually reached him, that some part of what I said landed somewhere real.
Then he sets the cup down and closes the space between us, tipping my chin up with one finger. The same way he did last night, and my traitor body remembers before the rest of me can stop it.
“Everything about you is mine now,” he murmurs. “The debts were just the paperwork catching up. You can be angry about it over breakfast. There’s fruit.”
His thumb brushes the mark he left beneath my jaw. “I noticed you didn’t cover this up this morning.”
I jerk back, cheeks burning. “It’s under my collar.”
“It’s not.” A wolfish smile spreads across his face. “You could have worn the grey shirt. It buttons higher. But you wore this one.”
I look down at the green shirt and immediately regret it.
He steps back, still wearing that stupid smile. I want to hit him and ache for entirely different reasons at the same time.
“Finish your coffee. We’re going out.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m going to work.”
“I already told you, you’re not going back to the mines today.” He starts to walk away, completely certain I’ll follow. “I want to see your planet, stormbird. The green one. You’re going to show me.”
I stare at his back. “You bought me clothes, cleared my debts, and now you’re taking me sightseeing?”
He glances over his shoulder. “Calder’s going to get a good look at who you belong to.”
“I’m not your doll.” I follow him just far enough to make sure he hears me. “You don’t get to dress me up and parade me around.”
He stops, then turns and comes straight back, hooking a finger into the open collar of my shirt.
“No,” he agrees, his smile widening slowly. “Dolls don’t glare at me like that. They don’t fight me every step of the way, making my cock hard, and they don’t wear the shirt that shows my marks and then pretend it was an accident. But you?” His gaze drops over me. “You’re mine. That’s the difference. I get bored with dolls by Tuesday.”
He lets go and turns away again. “The car’s downstairs. Try not to look like you’re being marched to your execution, stormbird. I’ll enjoy it either way.”
The car waiting downstairs is dark and beautiful, its holo-skin shifting like oil whenever the light hits it. House tech. The same kind of money that orders storms for the Hunt.
Asher drives himself, one hand loose on the wheel as Calder moves past the windows. The towers give way to the districts, with dust and water queues and boarded rows sliding past the glass. I’ve never seen my planet from a seat like this.
“Where am I going?” he asks.
I stare out of the window.
Fighting him is easier than this. I know what to do when he orders, threatens, or takes. I don’t know what to do when he asks for something that matters to me and waits for me to give it.
“Come on.” His fingers shift on the wheel. “Show me your planet. Tell me where to go.”
“You do realize most people ask before they drive someone into the desert.”
“Most people aren’t worth asking. East?”
“...East. Past the processing plants, then through the old quarter.”
He follows the road as I watch Calder pass beneath a pale morning sky, the other worlds of the Reach hanging far above us. At first I only give him directions. Then we pass one of the dead irrigation channels, and I tell him what it used to carry. The boarded rows were once market gardens. The salt flats were a lake when my grandmother was small.
The farther we drive, the more I talk.
