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Gem’s fiancé, recovering slave, and a guy who’d finally accepted that freedom didn’t have to mean leaping into the world straight away. I didn’t have to be comfortable with music festivals and noisy restaurants. For now, we were in our own version of normal. And that was more than okay.
Lately, even my headache didn’t seem quite so bad. Whiteness didn’t flicker as often, and I felt...stable.
Stable in my love for Gem and her love for me.
Stable in my mental and physical safety.
I still thought about my family and what sort of pain they were enduring. I worried about Jareth and his bloody mission. I felt guilty and useless, but I also felt grateful.
Grateful to be stable, sane...normal.
And the faster I was normal, the sooner I could do something meaningful and try to help—not just my family but so many other kids who’d been trafficked, abused, and stolen.
As the days passed and I improved, Gemma returned to her usual routine that’d been neglected since she’d found me. She returned to work, going to her local climbing gym and filming technical videos to post on her cha
Those evenings were my favorite. We’d go to her gym when no one else was around, I’d sit and watch her scale walls so effortlessly, we’d go home, have sex the moment we slammed the door, and then curl up together. Me reading a book, her editing raw content, adding voice-over, music, and teaching me how to upload, surf online, and do a bunch of stuff I never imagined was possible.
I’d always loved books and the knowledge they gave. But her laptop? Fuck me, it was as if I had the entire world at my fingertips without ever leaving her home.
After I’d accompanied her to the gym a few times, she invited me to go with her to the supermarket. To see all the cans, cartons, and jars full of food I used to have in the valley before I’d run out.
However, I’d declined. In all honesty, I wasn’t quite ready. Her house had become a sanctuary to me. The online stuff was helping me figure out my place in this new existence.
I was doing good.
I hadn’t had a relapse where I became a danger to her, and the longer I stayed sane without flashbacks or panic attacks, the less inclined I was to upset my new balance.
The only other outing I’d done with her had been to a local plant nursery. It’d given me a headache that lasted for days afterward, sending my heart rate sky high and my protective instincts into overdrive. The sales assistant had smiled a bit too friendly at Gemma. He’d stood too close. He’d laughed too loud at her replies to his gardening questions.
I’d wanted to plant my fist in his face.
By the time we’d arrived home and unloaded the trays of seedlings Gem had purchased, I had better control over myself. But it didn’t stop me from snatching her around the waist and carrying her into the house.
My sudden need for her came from stark fear of losing her.
My aggression as I ripped off her jeans, bent her over the couch arm, and slammed inside her was my way of assuring myself she was still here, still safe, still mine.
I’d imprinted myself on her. I’d touched everywhere to make sure she was unhurt from strangers. She’d matched my chaos, fucking me back, hard and rough, letting me lose control in relief that she was okay. We were okay.
At least with the gardening supplies, I finally had something to occupy my time with while she created videos for work. I transformed her overgrown garden from pointless to productive. I dug neat veggie rows, read sites online that Gemma taught me how to use, and planted winter vegetables, doing my best to provide for her when all her money provided for me.
I sighed, doing my best to turn off my mind. I lay with my arms out to the sides and my legs spread like a dead starfish on the small grassy area beneath the boulders Gem was currently scaling.
Clenching my stomach, I sat up and reclined against my elbows. This was the second climbing expedition she’d brought me on outside. But it was the first where she’d asked me to run the video equipment.
I’d done what she taught me—set up the camera on the tripod, checked periodically that the frame was still centered, following her progress (thanks to the movement detection technology), and ensured that the lighting was still adequate.
My heart thundered in my chest as I looked past the cameras, through the empty field, and studied Gem, currently halfway up a massive boulder that looked mean with craggy corners and weathered rock.
Christ, she’s stu
Her teal leggings showed every muscle as her legs bunched and propelled her up the stone. Her tight T-shirt showed the lines of her sports bra underneath, rippling over her shoulders as she reached for the next hand hold.
She was so strong, so agile, so mine.
I grew hard as she inched closer to the top.
I always grew hard watching her climb. My mind teased me with the night when she’d run away from me. I hadn’t seen her scale the cliff after she hit me around the head with the shovel, but I imagined she looked like she did now. Graceful and powerful, climbing her way into the sky with ease.
I still didn’t understand how she made money from this stuff, but I couldn’t deny, watching her was hypnotic. And even though there was money in online things, I’d yet to take up her offer to create my own YouTube cha
After the comments that first day? The sexualized sentences about me. The cruel remarks.
I didn’t like it.
I glanced at the video timer.
Thirty-three minutes and she’d scaled this boulder twice already.
She said she like to film up to two hours’ worth of content to edit it down into a twenty-minute video. I’d learned a hell of a lot the past few weeks. Constantly amazed to see just how different the world was compared to the books I’d read in Fables.
I’d believed those books were modern and how the outside world was. Fiction authors swore it was contemporary and of this era, yet actually living in this era? So many advancements were never mentioned in those pages.
My therapist, for instance, had put an app on the new phone that Gem had purchased for me where I could message if I was having a rough moment and earn guidance from him or another therapist in the PTSD field. With a few tiny buttons, I could access a camera, a dictionary, an entire library of knowledge, along with play movies, songs, and access things called emails.
When Gem had given me the phone on the same day she came home with a secondhand black car with off-road tires, I’d been embarrassed to accept yet more gifts that I couldn’t pay back.
I’d kept a tally of what I owed her.
The total was already in the thousands.
Gem suddenly leaped from her top hold and landed on her crash mat that she’d dragged from the car. The amount of gear it took to film one short video fucking astounded me.
Brushing chalky hands on her leggings, she folded the crash mat, lugged it onto her back, and came toward me.
I leaped to my feet, my cock hardening.
I wanted her.
I wanted her on her knees in the grass.
I wanted—
Whiteness flickered over my vision for a moment, courtesy of my quickening heart rate and thickening blood. My head ached a little but nowhere near as bad as a few weeks ago.
When my eyesight came back, I smiled at Gemma as she dropped the crash mat, stretched her spine out, and bent to turn off her video. I went behind her, cupping her breasts and pressing my hard-on against her back.
She let out a throaty chuckle. “This isn’t the valley, Kas.”
I nuzzled into her neck, licking away the salt from her workout. “It’s a field. I want you. It’ll do.”
Her head fell to the side, giving me access to kiss along her shoulder. A soft moan spilled from her. “As much as I’d love to strip and enjoy some outdoor fun with you, we’re not alone.”
“What?” My head shot up, sca
Nothing.
No person.
No critter.
Just birds tweeting away in a bush close by.
“Above us.” Gemma looked into the sky.
I followed her line of sight, narrowing my eyes on the top of a cliff that ringed this clearing with its ancient, craggy-looking boulders.
At the very top, silhouettes of people came into focus. I laughed and rocked my hips into her ass again. “They’re not close. They can’t see anything.”
“They’d see bare skin and the action as you rode me.” She turned in my arms, her hand cupping my hard cock. “People know this is one of my filming locations. I’d hate to end up online for making an entirely different video to the ones I’m usually known for.”
My eyebrows came down as her hand worked my cock. “What...what kind of videos?” My eyesight flickered but only thanks to the pleasure of her touch. My balls drew up as desire shot down my spine and tightened everything between my legs.
“A porn video.” She reached up and kissed me.
Her tongue entered my mouth as her hand continued stroking me up and down. I wanted to give over entirely to her. I wanted her to use me however she wanted, but her voice echoed in my ears.
Porn.
I’d seen that mentioned in some of the books I’d read. Guests had used that word when they’d arranged a few of us into lewd positions for them to take pictures of us, bound, abused, and bleeding. But I didn’t fully understand what it entailed...not in this new world anyway.
“Porn being sex?” I whispered against her lips, shuddering as she pinched my tip.
“Uh-huh.” She kissed me again, deeper, longingly. “A very graphic sex video.”
Jealousy poured through me. I pulled away from her mouth. “Have you ever made one of those?”
She smiled and fisted me hard. “I’ve made lots of content in my life, Kas, but I assure you, I’ve never made a porno.”
“Do you...want to?”
Her eyebrows rose, and her hand dropped down my shaft, fisting me through my jeans. “Is that a proposition?”
“We’d be the only ones to watch it, right?”
She nodded. “Of course. Something like that you make, you watch, and then you delete.”
“Because it’s not something society approves of?” I frowned. Over the past few weeks, I’d gotten better with touching, talking, and generally figuring out what was normal from my strange upbringing and what was definitely not normal.
Sex and me had a complicated relationship. I hadn’t quite been able to figure out if I liked violent sex or gentler sex. I didn’t know if I preferred Gem naked or dressed. In a bed or on the grass. The animal inside me wanted to be dominant and own Gemma at all times. Yet, the softer moments we shared had cracked open a part of my heart I hadn’t even known existed.
It made me love her all the more.