Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Looking to Neil, Eugenia asked, “We all can agree that this is ridiculous, right?”
“You don’t have to go hungry.” Despite those spread fingers on her belly, Neil had been remarkably polite… aside from the offers of a kiss for a bite of cow. “Just eat what’s left.” And it visibly pained him greatly to add, “I’ll give it to you.”
Never look a gift cow in the mouth. Especially when the majority of a steak was on offer. As she had agreed not to touch anything sharper than a spoon, lest she receive a beating that had been described in enviable detail, Eugenia scooped up the steak and ate it just as she’d eat roasted squirrel. All hands and teeth and hollow-stomach starvation.
They had salt on the ship. They had pepper.
She moaned from the taste.
The cooks made food that took a girl back to before the bombs, before everyone she knew scattered to the wind. Before the universe utterly failed her.
“Well, Neil, if I didn’t hate that you were trying to buy me instead of genuinely get to know me, I would give you that kiss. But hey, love is dead. I was sold by an idiot I found wandering the road with no pack. That’s mercy. And him being chained in the engine room—or so I have been told—is karma.” Picking her teeth with her pinky nail, she cooed, “Tell me, did you sell one of these ladies to have access to steak?”
White teeth in a splendid grin, Neil gave her the dopey puppy look that always ended badly. “I think I could just love you.”
“Handsome as you are, the feeling is not mutual.”
“You’ll change your tune. After all”—southern drawl in full effect—“fate won me your time tonight. You feel like cream, and you smell like strawberries.”
“It’s the shampoo.”
Looking even more enamored than jackass John, Neil rubbed little circles on her belly. The same belly now full of his steak. “I’ll save up to see you again. Once you settle in, you’ll think better of me.”
“All just slaves to the machine, eh? Let’s fuck until the world totally dies and humans are replaced by radioactive cockroaches. That’s the same drivel John tried to feed me too.” Throwing an arm over Neil’s shoulders, Eugenia set her lips to his ear, whispering, “And guess what? He couldn’t get me to fuck him either.”
He held a bit tighter. “You’re missing the point of the game if you think what the men up here want is sex.”
A nasty scoff was offered in response.
“We’re lonely, not enough women around no matter how hard we look. If we don’t share, we can’t function as a unit. You think we don’t fall for you? That we don’t sacrifice to find baubles and buy favor?”
“You make it sound like I have the power.” And, boy, that diatribe was not going to work on her.
But the man’s unguarded glance was nothing but exposed. “You do. You even get to keep the babies we’re never allowed to hold.”
All that steak was about to come up. “Stop talking to me.”
“Fine.” But Neil’s response was resigned. Weighted down by God only knew what.
Yet that hand remained on her belly, his chest to her back.
And though that should have eaten up all her attention, in the hour that followed the men’s hard-won dinner, her scrutiny landed on another.
The intruder so close she couldn’t imagine how he had been missed.
Sitting on the floor, jean-clad legs stretched out, and the wall at his back. Not ten feet away. Boots pointed right at her. A man who looked every bit the cowboy yet utterly a pirate, lounged. So relaxed he had melted into the scenery.
Not dressed as finely as the men who’d spent their tickets for a few hours of shared female company. Lacking the tilted hat over his brow or the bit of hay that should have hung from his lips, he watched all around him in the lazy way of someone not to be trusted.
Eyes of an indecipherable color from this distance took in everything.
And everyone made way for him, unless, like Joan, they approached in reverence.
How odd it was to listen to the madame list a quantity of items required for the girls. How easily the captain nodded that he heard her and acquiesced.
He could not have shaved in a week.
Probably smelled more like a man than the perfumed collection at Table #2.
Those boots caught the sun. Polished. Worn yet cared for.
Which spoke about character and habit. Drew Eugenia to slink off the lap of the man who’d traded tickets for a cookie sheet and access to uncovered skin. Yet, it wasn’t facing off against the captain that kept her feet going; it was inspecting those boots.
Crouched down until at eye-level, tapping her finger against metal embellishments, she said, “These might just be the cleanest shoes I’ve seen in six years.”