True Silk

chapter iii | Coniston

IT MAY OR MAY NOT STRIKE YOU DUMB WHEN I TELL YOU THAT WE HAD FLYING CARS. We did, in fact. And it was a luxury we couldn't have in the Seam due to our autonomy. But it was nice, no doubt.

I wasn't bewildered to find that King Salkamenos had a personal stretch and a personal Chauffeur.

"My Lord," the driver bowed. I'd never quite found redheads attractive. But this one was. He was attractive, I'll admit. However . . .

The man raised his head, and it was small but I saw him sneer at Savanah being jostled roughly into the second row. The ideal look of a man gazing down upon someone lower than his own status.

Obnoxious.

I glared back at him. Doubtlessly, the driver didn't notice. He was too busy scrutinising a woman of lower sociability than himself – a simple driver who could be fired, whipped, and stepped on just the same as she. But any retributive justice to him wouldn't be nearly as ruthless as hers.

Ireful, I hoped he knew that, too. If I could, I wouldn't have someone torture him with knives and hot irons, though. I wouldn't have let anyone crucify him simply because no one deserved it. I certainly wouldn't want to be tormented.

Gazing up into the dark sky, my eyes drifted towards the only light there: the moon. As pale as it was in the darkness of night. A beauty, it is.

But, as beautiful as it is, it isn't free. It is dampened to a cycle of darkness and light. Bottled up until it's presence is required. Just like the rest of us.

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I PERCHED ACROSS FROM THE KING IN THE CAF. The partitions – which departed each row of the stretch – bid down still. Savanah settled in the row behind me with her sentinel, even now, slavering and garbling incoherencies from the narcotics been used to calm her. It worked, obviously. Perhaps just a little too well.

Salkamenos paid little attention to me, and I was glad for that. He sat with his ankle crossed over his knee, one hand on his ankle and the other pressing an earpiece that would've been called a cell phone centuries ago. Except it didn't look like one. It was merely, well, an earpiece.

He was making calls.

"I've told you nearly a million times, Hoffman. You need to have those men in check. Unless you don't want them to see the light of day again . . . Good. They should be proud their father has stayed alive this long. As I was saying . . . "

I let his voice faded. As calm as it was, it had a sort of icy danger to it, I guess you could say. And, dubiously, that is not a good thing.

'They should be proud their father has stayed alive this long . . . '

My father was dead. The King killed him.

Clasped my hands together in front of me. If I didn't, I would start fidgeting. And who's to say that – with him being my Owner and all – that he won't punish me for that?

Or is it just me worried about the slightest of things?

Yes, that was possible. I could've simply been overthinking everything. But when I stared up at him through my lashes I couldn't help to think that I wasn't. That he would be more ruthless than I could handle.

"Mávena."

My whole body froze save for my eyes which looked up of their own accord, but the rest of me was stiff.

"You are quite stiff. And you haven't breathed for exactly five minutes now." His cloudy blue eyes stared down at me. I think he was trying to sound concerned – something he probably never had to do before. But even still, it wasn't working. He sounded just as insensitive as ever.

Nonetheless, I was holding my breath and I hadn't realised either. I let go of a shaky breath. I opened my mouth to speak but his statement hadn't been a question.

"Kasey," he said simply and the driver answered with a quiet 'Yes, Sir?' "Partem."

I heard the partition behind me roll up and I sat up straighter, leaning forward so that my hair wouldn't get caught in it. Even though I was in the presence of someone I nearly despised because of what he had started – and I wasn't doing it to make myself look good – I wasn't trying to make a fool of myself.

Watched him drop his leg beside the other, press his fingertips together. "Why is that?"

My throat seemed to cave in on itself, my mouth drying up like water does in the summer – one where you can see the air moving in the distance and their isn't any rainfall, groundwater, or nearby lakes, rivers, and oceans. Where there is simply nothing but the dusty sand and no wind.

"I am simply . . . apprehensive, My King," I answered slowly, unsure of my words and if I had chosen them correctly. I was a bit of a perfectionist, a bad habit of mine in this case.

King Salkamenos harrumphed. He sounded almost as if he were going to chuckle, but couldn't find the heart to do so. He curled his middle finger in a 'come here' manner, and so I scooted closer. When he did it again, I moved even closer, to where our knees were touching. Perhaps a mistake, but he did motion for me to get closer.

He sighed and glared at me in the I-won't-repeat-myself way. I furrowed my eyebrows. How close did he want me to be?

Suddenly, he pulled me up and onto his lap, my legs curled on either side of his waist. I gasped incredulously. In normal social standards, he would've been frowned upon. But we were behind a partition and one-way windows with no one else sitting beside us. Besides, he was the King; he could do as he pleased and no one would bat an eyelash.

Yet, it wasn't fear that I stiffened out of. I was slightly uncomfortable by the way things had taken a steep turn, but I was confused too.

He spoke quietly, though his voice lacked no dominance, "And what are you apprehensive of, Mávena?" The King's right hand settled at the small of my back while the other crept up the outside of my thigh, but not in a sneaky manner, through the slit in the dress I wore.

I hadn't regarded the fact that my dress had shifted a little too high before it. "Well, I-I . . . " I stuttered, again, at a loss for words, my voice barely at a whisper. While my hands rested helplessly against his chest, he was moving his filthy hands up my body, or so I liked to pretend that it was mine. The only thing I really had left because they had enslaved my mind back at the Chapel to believe that I was nothing more than someone else's property. And it seemed like what they said was true.

So, they weren't feeding us all lies.

I turned my head, but the man only clasped my chin in his strong hold and forced me to look him in the eye. "Tell me."

We were only maybe an inch away, and as I closed my eyes, I felt his minty breath drift over my nose. I almost felt the need to push him away and I might've made the daft decision had he not began circling the side of my butt cheek with the weight of a feather.

I clenched my teeth instead, but not in time to cover the gasp that rose from a grave in my throat. It was an unbearable, ticklish feeling there he touched. It was almost painful; I didn't like it.

"You don't speak much, do you?"

Wincing and trying not fist his jacket – rather I kept them clenching the fabric of the dress – I brokenly nodded my head. No, I didn't speak much. I was usually trapped in a train of thoughts, questions, concerns. Things of that nature. It usually ended with me talking out loud and growling at myself, so not very well.

Perchance I needed my mental health checked out.

Salkamenos pulled my hips forward, spreading my folded legs further apart than before. Yes. I was very disconcerted with terror. As I said before, I liked to feign the notion that this body was my own. So to know of what he could do next had me riddled with an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The fingers of his free hand, which had – I suppose – been sneaking its way up my back, enlaced themselves in my hair and ripped my head back. My sudden intake of breath was only out of surprise.

The tip of his nose skimmed my throat. "I can smell your fear." That's nice to know. His lips lightly closed against my throat. They weren't as cold as I'd expected them to be. Alternatively, they were still rather warm. Quite a change from being inside cold rooms that required several blankets to sleep in. Of which we had none. "Of what is it?"

I wasn't used to warmth nor physical contact. I didn't like people touching me because they were generally cold and I didn't want to be anymore chilly than I already was. Yet, he wasn't.

But that was because he'd already had a drink.

"You."

The temperature in the car – or at least in our area – seemed to rise and I incidentally relaxed as his kisses made their way to the side of my neck and up to my ear. "As you should be, Pet," he responded, his voice low and husky, putting more force onto that last word. Maybe it was a nickname.

He moved me forward again, but this time my body hit something solid. And it wasn't just his chest. It was something in his pants.

Now, I wasn't ignorant. I knew many things about anatomy, despite the fact that females are meant to know nothing but cleaning, mothering, and obeying our male counterparts. My mother never wanted me to end up an airhead. She wanted me to know things that she didn't. And so I did.

Whilst he kissed my throat, I found him moving my hips back and forth against the tent in his pants. Between the friction beneath and his touch, I was panting for something that I didn't know anything about.

And that truly pissed me off.

Not the fact that I wanted it, but that I didn't know what 'it' was.

The rest of me was relaxed, but my forehead was contorted in frustration. There was an uncanny fluttering in an extremely deep pit in my stomach. It...burned, I guess you could say.

Odd.

My eyes shot open. I hadn't known they were closed.

He was coaxing. He was coaxing me...

I tried to wriggle out of his hold, move my body away from his, but it was a futile struggle. He only pulled me tighter against him, laughing diabolically. "Do you like that?" He gave me a final kiss to my collar bone – the dress was still undone around me – before leaning back in his seat.

He released my hair, which I briefly shook trying to get to feel of his hands out of my head. "No," I replied to the awful question, hugging my arms around myself. A lie, I told. My features softened, gazing lower than his eyes. I added, "My King."

The man raised a brow incredulously, hands clasped onto my hips. I didn't know why I even bothered anything but the truth. He would catch me in a lie. He lifted my chin and made me look at him again. "Really, Pet?"

My eyes strayed. "Well – "

"Look at me." I did. "You don't even know what you're feeling. You just know that you like it and you don't have any knowledge of its existence."

Still, I persisted. "I-I don't, My King."

"Pet," he started on a rather warning tone, as if he were talking to a child, "If you are lying to me, you will be punished for it."

I admit that I became just a little cocky. There was no way he could prove it. It wasn't as if I had said it or anything. There was no way he could punish me for lying because he simply couldn't prove that I liked it.

Even though I didn't.

He grabbed my left hand and moved it down to my underwear, the very top of the elastic. "If you touch yourself, and you're wet, then you liked it. But," he paused for dramatic effect, "If you can slip two fingers into yourself without them stopping, then you loved it."

I knew what he was talking about. Some girls liked to touch themselves where only men were allowed to touch them. If they were caught, they could get into so much trouble. Unless there was some special permission.

I had never done it before. I'd never felt the need to.

"I only need the first one, Pet, to punish you. You can't go back on what you said now." Ruined my hopes of escaping the situation by simply telling him the truth.

In a moment of panic, I tried to rip my hand out of his. "I can't. My... My nails a-are too...long."

A contemplating expression crossed his face. "Right. We wouldn't want you to injure yourself, or break those pretty little nails, now, would we? How silly of me. I'll just do it then."

"Wait!"

"Take them off."

"What?"

His eyes brow into mine as he pulled back the elastic of my underwear. "Take them off. I won't repeat myself again, Pet."

He withdrew his hand.

He wasn't going to repeat himself. I could tell that he meant everything he said. This wasn't a ruse. It was the truth.

My heart was thrashing against my ribcage and my lungs seemed to be constricted just a little whilst I obeyed his order. I fingered the band for a little less than a second before locking my fingers underneath it and pulling it down. Down my thighs, underneath my knees, and off of my legs without disturbing the strapped sandals that I had to wear for the Embracings. We were only allowed flats. Nothing more.

I set it down along with the other things, simply a few clothes that'd been given to me before we left, in a bag. They weren't mine, but they were most certainly something.

"Go on, then."

Obviously, I hesitated. I wouldn't just do it without thinking.

There was a ghost of a smirk on his face. Very faint, but the amusement was clear. "Do you need a little bit of guidance, Pet?" When I didn't respond, he grabbed my hand again, sliding it beneath the slit again. He turned his hand over mine, palm touching the back of my own. The King moved my fingers down a rather slippery path to an entrance. And just as he said, he easily slipped two of my own fingers inside of me.

My mouth opened in a silent gasp but I closed it again. All my confidence was gone now. Instead, it was replaced by inferiority.

A desperate moan was lured out of me as he withdrew my fingers. Taking ahold of my wrist, he rose them to his mouth and sucked on them. He laid his back and hummed, "Just as I thought."

He took the time to clean my fingers, for some odd reason. I mean, my...insides couldn't taste very well, could they?

But after some time – he must've received a call – he was back to his earpiece with me on his lap, rubbing circles into the small of my back.

He was being...gentle. King Salkamenos was being gentle. At least for the moment. And I was willing to dwell in it for as long as I could. As long as it lasted.

I gazed to my right and was immediately awestruck. Regardless of the fact that I enjoyed the Seam, I'd always longed to see the city. But my imagination did no justice to Coniston, the capital of Llye.

There were more than a few skyscrapers with dim lights. But those on the ground were bright. I assumed they must be both cars, buildings, and houses.

It was terribly wonderful.

I heard him chuckle near my ear and looked at him once again. The auto had stopped already. "There's one thing I forgot," muttered the King and he raised a collar from out of nowhere. The base was a black strap embedded with diamonds and a pendant with a larger diamond surrounded by a pattern of diamonds.

My wonder melted into despair as he buckled it – a sliplock buckle – behind my neck. It reminded me that I was just something else to be sold and bought. Like cattle.