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“What’s that?”
“You’re going to come for me a great many times on our journey. How, when, or where is not going to be up to you. The only thing for you to decide is how red your bottom is going to be when you do,” he growled.
My face turned beet red. I did my best to hide it, but I had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t doing a very good job.
“Yes, sir,” I squeaked. His finger dipped below my chin, forcing me to look up at him. His gaze searched my face, practically feasting on the vision that was my all-consuming shame.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he mused.
CHAPTER7
Ryker
I guided a very flustered and aroused Naomi out of her house. There was a black SUV waiting for us outside and we couldn’t dally much longer. I dropped my hand from her back, and she looked over her shoulder, a wistful disappointment written all over her face at the loss of my touch.
It was for the best though. Even now, I questioned what I had done, if showing her what it was like between a man and a woman was too much of a risk.
I still wasn’t certain I should have even touched her in the first place.
Back in Pacifica, I wouldn’t have held back. I’d let the world know she was mine, but this was her home, and I didn’t want to put her in danger. There were stories about what happened to people from New Englandia who had been caught in a relationship or a compromising position or worse, pregnant. Years ago, I hadn’t been sure if they were just gossip or folktales meant to rouse fear and suspicion of their city state, but since then I’d been exposed to something that was most definitely real.
I’d heard the evidence with my own ears more than five years. I hadn’t been able to forget about it ever since.
I still remembered that day like it was yesterday. I had been called into the Central Intelligence Tower as a top weapons engineering expert so that I could give my comments on a new weapons design technology. I remember sitting at the conference table and an emergency phone call came over the system not fifteen minutes into the meeting. The agents with me answered it, knowing full well that I had signed a nondisclosure agreement upon walking through their front door.
Before that call, I had thought that New Englandia was just something of an oddball. Sure, they were obsessed with work productivity and frowned upon certain things, but my opinion completely changed that day. I thought back to those dark memories and the sounds and emotions came back to me like it was yesterday.
“Our monitoring devices picked up this transmission less than thirty minutes ago. We need to decide whether or not to intervene,” a woman in a suit announced as she strode into the room. She lifted her chin, cool and confident despite the concern on her face. She clicked a button and the sound of static blared loudly once over the speakers in the ceiling, then once more before leveling out.
All was quiet for a long moment before I heard the soft noise of crying.
“Please. I didn’t mean to. I just wanted…”
It was a woman. She sounded hurt and my hackles rose.
More shuffling. More static.
“It’s not her fault. It’s mine. Take me. Don’t punish her for this,” a male voice pleaded.
“She’s pregnant. That is a criminal offense,” another voice replied, but there was a distinct computerized tone to it that made it clear that the speaker wasn’t entirely human. An android maybe? I wasn’t certain.
There was a muffled scream and a single loud gunshot. An uncomfortable feeling blossomed in the pit of my belly, and I wished they would turn it off. I didn’t want to hear anymore.
“Please,” she begged.
Another gunshot echoed in the room, and I wanted nothing more than to cover my ears.
Neither man nor woman spoke again.
The computerized voice continued talking about laws and regulations, playing for several seconds too many until someone mercifully shut it off. I sighed in relief, but still the sounds echoed in my head long after it was over.
“This is the third instance this month,” the female agent said.
“We do not have the power to intervene right now. They would crush us in a heartbeat,” a male agent countered.
She gritted her teeth.
“We need more information. Names. Locations. Methods. We can’t decide on a course of action going in blind. Get me that and then we can do something,” he pushed.
