Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
“Maybe I can take care of this myself,” Penny muttered, looking down at her breasts.
Experimentally, she took one swollen breast between her hands and squeezed. This resulted in a few viscous drops of nectar leaking out…and a bolt of pure agony rushing through the affected mammary.
Penny gasped and stopped at once, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes.
“And m-maybe not,” she whispered in a trembling voice. Somehow she was going to have to work up the nerve to ask V’rex to help her.
Penny just didn’t know how she was going to manage that.
Forty-Eight
By the time V got home—he’d had to stay late, trimming the other fucking trees to match the first one he’d messed up—Penelope had already put Last Meal on the table. It included an array of grilled vegetables, some kind of thin gruel-like soup, and a fresh loaf of the pale purple bread they baked here at the Compound.
The meat was conspicuously absent, but he didn’t blame her for that. Though he still wasn’t sure if the rumor she’d heard about where it came from was true, he would rather not risk cannibalism, just in case.
“This looks delicious, thank you,” V said, taking a seat across from her at the small, two-person table. “But you don’t have to cook every night if you don’t want to—we can trade off,” he offered. “Seems only fair since you have a job now too.”
“Thanks.” Penelope smiled briefly up at him and then went back to poking listlessly at the grilled vegetables on her plate. Her long chestnut hair was damp as though she’d recently showered and V thought she looked beautiful but miserable.
Her whole posture spoke of depression. She was hunched over in her seat, her elbows planted on the table and her chest low, almost as though she was trying to hide something. Also, she was keeping her eyes down, not looking at him.
V wanted to ask her what was wrong—since something clearly was—but he sensed he’d need to take things carefully and slowly. First, however, he looked up at the ceiling. To his relief, the little red light centered over the table was dark. At least they had privacy.
“So, speaking of work, how was your first day?” he asked, taking a bite of a grilled green tuber that had a fleshy texture and a bland taste, though Penelope had obviously done her best to add flavor with salt and powdered cheepa peppers—some of the few spices that were available at the Compound.
“Oh, you know…the usual,” she replied evasively.
“The usual? Sweetheart, nothing’s usual in this fucked-up place,” V told her. He raised his eyebrows. “So what happened?”
Penelope sighed.
“Well, first I met my new supervisor, who hated me on sight. She gave me to someone else to train and told her that if I messed up, she should send me over to the butcher shop because they needed someone and—”
“Wait—wait a minute. The butcher shop?” V interrupted. Fucking Skrug worked there—V had seen the big asshole chopping meat with a cleaver out in front of the shop every damn day.
“Don’t worry—I didn’t end up there,” Penelope told him. “I’m only right beside it, at the bakery. But not in the bakery itself, because I ruined a whole batch of bread dough by forgetting to put in the yeast and adding too much water and not melting the butter and mixing up the salt and the sugar and…and…and just generally screwing everything up.” She sniffed and V saw there were tears standing in her big brown eyes.
He wanted to comfort her, but he was so disturbed by her news that he had to stand up and pace.
“You’re in the bakery? As in the Marketplace?” V ran both hands through his hair. This was bad, bad news. He couldn’t count the number of rapes he’d seen during the “Public Breedings” the “Glorious Leader” periodically and randomly announced and almost all of them took place in the fucking Marketplace!
Of course, it wasn’t the only public place where females were considered free game during a Public Breeding—there was also the park and the Amphitheater. But neither of those was ever very busy. The Amphitheater was mostly deserted because it was only used for public gatherings and ceremonies and the park was sparsely populated because—V suspected—unaccompanied females stayed away from it on purpose, so they wouldn’t be targeted.
“This is bad,” he said out loud, still pacing. “This is really, really bad. The Marketplace is where every horny male in the whole Compound heads the minute the fucking ‘Glorious Leader’ announces a Public Breeding!”
“You think I don’t know that?” Penelope flared, glaring up at him. “I was told already that it’s a punishment assignment—probably for the way I acted during that stupid Unification Ceremony. Oh, and that’s also why they turned up the hypno-whispers—to keep me in line. So I can’t promise not to do anything stupid and embarrassing again tonight, all right?”