Page 44 of Taken to Kor
He’s insistent and I’m fidgeting uncomfortably now and for whatever reason, that makes me blurt, “You’re not my first…with that either.” Actually, I know the reason. I’d rather him drop me, stop kissing me and stop saying nice things to me because he now knows I’m not a virgin than because of my stomach.
He pulls back when I start to slow and looks down at me without the skein covering his eyes. In the swimming silver, I can see Kor — all of Kor and its brilliance — reflected back to me. It makes me want to cry again. He’s so shroving beautiful. And I don’t deserve a single piece of him. Not even one arm.
I look down and he nuzzles my cheek with his nose. Then he kisses my forehead. He pulls his hands out from under my tarp shirt and, just when I think I’ve gotten my wish — that he’s done with me now because he knows I’ve had sex with other colony boys — he says, “I will slaughter any male from your past who would challenge me for you.”
He sets me down bluntly and the floor is cool beneath my toes, making them crinkle. Meanwhile, I’m left feeling stupid and utterly speechless. “Wh-what?”
He grins. “Did you think a pirate would do anything less? Or have you forgotten that your people call me king? I did not come to turn Kor’s head bynotstealing what I want. I’ve stolen you. Now, you’re mine. The males who came before will not be remembered once I take you fully. Now come. I’m hungry and I want to feast.” He glances at me over his shoulder as he starts to walk away and in the look he gives me, I know he’s not talking about food.
Shrov.
“Uhh… WHAT?” The word comes out too loud. I try again. “WHAT!” Well.
Rhork is standing by a pyramid in the center of the floor — a pyramid that wasn’t in this room when I first entered it. He places his palm against the pyramid and its black surface wrinkles back and forms a circular opening. That’s the moment I realize that the entire vast room around us is almost completely empty.
A few pirates are arguing by a smaller cruiser off to my right. A few more are walking briskly back and forth even further away than that. To my left, an opening in the yeeyar leads to a ramp. Another three pirates are laughing about something on that ramp. I can see them until the yeeyar slides shut, sealing this hangar off again.
“Deena, come home.”
“Home?” I whisper dumbly.
“Ontte. The place where your soul was birthed, even if your body was born somewhere else. Come with me.”
I’d go with him anywhere he wanted. All he has to do is ask. My feet propel me forward and the “gown” I wear billows around my feet. It feels like a gown, but only because he looks at me like I’m a queen.
Heat touches my cheeks when I remember that I’m limping. Holy shit. It didn’t occur to me that I was limping when I was in the control room, holding up pirates at blaster-point, fighting cyborg giants on floating bridges. For the better part of a solar, I forgot.
“What?” He says, closing his hand over my extended palm and reeling me in.
I crash against his chest, curling my brown fingers against his silver skin. “N-nothing. I’m just excited.”
“Good.” He touches my chin, combs his fingers back through my locs, tugging them just enough to ignite sensation all along my scalp. “No more crying, now. Pirates don’t cry.”
To that, I suck in an irate breath and stab a finger at his chest. “Centare. Pirates do whatever they want.”
He swoops down and kisses me and his lips are everything. The universe and then some. The ocean.Ocean rhymes with potion.That’s what being with him is like. Bewitching. I’m not myself. Or really, it’s like the person I was is unzipped and this bold, fearless, nervous, terrified creature steps out. One who knows how to wield a blaster and kill enemies with wanton abandon, but who’s so afraid of rejection it makes her bladder swell and her twisted leg burn and her heart shrivel and desiccate all at once. I want to be here. I want to belong.
“You are here. You do belong. Just let me show you, Deena,” he whispers against my teeth to words I didn’t realize I’d spoken. “I will show you everything. Not the things, but the ability to have them. You are a pirate now. You can have everything you want. Anything.”
“Even you?”
“Centare. Because I am already had. Lost completely to you. Now come home to me and leave this thing behind.”
“What thing?”
“The thing Mathilda burdened you with.” He touches the center of my chest and it zaps me. I’m gutted and ripped open and I step out of me and when I look back, I see it there, a shriveled, sad, grey husk. But the longer I look, it turns to dust. I don’t want to see it go, because it was me, but I don’t want to be in its presence either.
This little naked timid creature carrying a blaster strapped to her heart steps forward into the triangle room with Rhork, and I leave it behind. Whatever that thing was that I saw and that Rhork saw and that Mathilda gave me. And when I look up at Rhork, it’s with terror. Because I don’t know who I am without it anymore.
Because without it, I’m me.
“Ontte, you are. And you are a perfect thing.”
10
Deena
“This is poshkin,” Rhork says, handing me a small bowl filled with something that’s blue and definitely alive.
