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When we get outside again, the sun has begun its journey toward the far horizon. He tugs me back into the place where he first took me, the outer chamber where the fire is and he ties me up the same way he did that first night he took me. The vine rope slides around my flesh, reinforces my weakness. It touches the tender parts. It exposes my delicate spots. He pulls my hands behind my back and he loops them together and he makes the rope run under and over my breasts so they are presented for his gaze and his touch—even though he doesn’t seem inclined to touch me now.
He puts me in these sensual bindings and he sits me in the corner while he lights the fire. I know he is angry at me. I know I have disappointed him. That is what I do. I disappoint men.
Two can play the game of silence. He lights the fire and we sit there, me bound, him as quiet as the rock itself. Unable to move, and without conversation to take refuge in, I am forced to think.
The worst part of all this is, at my core, I do want him. I am attracted to him. I am even attracted to his dominance. My body reacts to him in ways it has never reacted before and the pleasure he brings me is beyond compare.
But when he evokes the thought of my father, when he and the Patron become the same tyrannical thing, I cannot help but rebel and run. These are instincts I have given into again and again, and I don’t know if I could ever stop.
“Zion.”
He looks at me.
“The people who came to this planet. The ones who set their heading here. They weren’t bad people. They were good people. The best people. They didn’t want to live life as they were told to. They wanted to make their own way. That’s what I want too.”
“You want to leave me. You want to follow no rules. You want to be above the world, in the stars, where nothing can tether you.”
“Don’t tell me what I want!”
“Then you tell me what you want.”
“I want you, you idiot.”
His eyes flash. “Do not speak that way to me, Tselia.”
“I want you,” I correct myself. “I… like you.”
“You like me,” he rumbles doubtfully.
“I do. Most of the time. When you’re not beating me.”
“I beat you because you need it. You have no discipline. You are a danger to yourself. And others. You don’t want to follow the rules of the sky, or the rules of the ground. You want all things your way, all the time.”
“So?”
He throws back his head and lets out a dark laugh. “You were left alone for too long. Nobody has all things their way all the time, you spoiled little star girl. Nobody lives the life they want to live. They live the life they must. The best they can.”
“Except when they don’t. Except when they veer off-course and land far enough away to be free.”
“My ancestors didn’t find freedom here. They found work, and danger and death. Their descendants suffered because of their arrogance. I was born on this dirt and this rock because of their decisions.”
“Well, you could have been born on a shiny star ship and be an ice block now. Is that better? Zion? Would you want to spend your life doing everything some old Patron says under threat of frozen death?”
“I want to spend my life with you, star girl.”
“And I want to spend my life with you!” I shout back at him.
I am shocked to have said that. I didn’t even know it was true until it came out of my mouth. I could have sworn I wanted escape. I wanted to head for the stars and do as I please forever and forever, but that’s not what I said to him just now. I told him I wanted him.
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” I admit, to him and to myself.
“But I have rules. I have punishments. I make you angry and rebellious…”
“Yes, you do, but not the same way,” I say, squirming in my bonds. “You bring heat and life. You make me more of a human. More of a woman.”
That is the difference. Every order the Patron ever gave me took me further away from life. Everything Zion has ever asked of me has brought me closer to it.
“Please, Zion.” I am tearing up with emotion I don’t fully understand, but nevertheless overwhelms me. “Don’t hate me for what I am. I can’t help it. I have been trying to survive for so long. I have had to break rules just to feel real, just to be able to tell the difference between myself and my ship, to know I’m not just a machine that does another being’s bidding…”
