Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor (top fiction books of all time txt) 📗

to look around to see if the others had noticed and saw Caleb had just hoisted himself from the water.

Anna wrapped her arms around herself, shivering, her teeth clattering together hard enough he could hear it. He struggled with the sympathy that coiled in his belly, but he couldn’t shake it. He also couldn’t prevent the rise of resentment inside him when Caleb helped her up and supported her to the dryer.

“Why did you bring her here?” Ian muttered beside him. “I thought the plan was to take her to the Watch Center and interrogate her.”

Simon didn’t even glance at his friend. He was fully focused on watching Caleb wrestle with Anna for her clothes. Not surprisingly, Caleb won the battle and stripped her. He swallowed a little convulsively when the ‘veil’ was lifted, allowing him an unrestricted view of her.

“The governor told me to handle it,” he responded finally, a little absently. “He made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to know the details. We can’t take her there without everyone in the city knowing inside of a day, and if the governor hears, he’ll be forced to do something about it.” Moving to the side of the pool before Ian could question him further, he climbed out and strode to the dryer. Caleb had pulled a robe from the locker next to it and was dressing Anna as if she was a child.

She looked like a child, he thought, feeling his belly clench—all big, round, frightened eyes.

Well, unfortunately, not entirely like a child. As slender as she seemed, there was nothing at all childlike about her full breasts and rounded hips. That was all woman and his cock knew it, springing to attention before he even realized his body was working against him.

The robe swallowed her—no surprise since all the robes were of a size for them and she was at least a foot shorter than he was and probably half his weight.

He managed to get himself under control when he discovered that she was clutching at Caleb a little frantically, as if trying to shield herself with him.

“It’s alright, baby,” Caleb murmured. “No one is going to hurt you. I promise.”

Simon rolled his eyes. He didn’t like it that she was scared anymore than any of the others, but the hard truth was that her fear of them was all they had to work with.

They couldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t have even if he wasn’t constrained by law to protect her.

Glaring a warning at Caleb, he caught her arm, dragged her loose from Caleb in spite of her efforts to cling to him and marched down the main corridor until he reached his room. “Wait inside,” he said curtly, stealing himself against the wide-eyed look of terror she turned on him before she scurried inside.

Closing the door behind her, he jerked his head at the men in a silent order to head into the living area. He could see all of them were thoroughly pissed off—with him. He supposed he should’ve expected it, all things considered. There were virtually no women in all of New Atlantis. The government had glibly promised brides to the first colonists to accept the ‘change’ and establish the new American frontier. Like everything the bastards promised, though, it never really materialized.

They’d legalized prostitution just to get any women at all and even the money wasn’t enough to draw droves of them. Those who came could not only name their price, but the men were eager to take them as brides and carry them away if they could convince them. That practice eventually led to bride bartering on the bride mart. The poor and desperate sold their daughters to the colonists, but even the most dutiful daughters apparently refused to support the family in that way more often than not, because there remained a tremendous shortage of women even after generations.

It was the main reason the people in the upper forty considered them wild and barbaric—their wedding practices—because beyond the fact that women were scarce, they were damned expensive to acquire. Few of the colonists, no matter how hard they worked, could afford to buy a bride without help, let alone protect their investment from the men who were doing without, which had led to claim sharing.

It was a marriage—of sorts, but it was so ‘outlandish’ to the traditionalists in the continental U.S., who weren’t faced with the problems they were, that it was seen as proof of their barbarism. No one in the territory was particularly happy about it, if it came to that, but ‘owning’ a fourth or even an eighth of a bride beat the hell out of having no woman at all!

So he could see their point. Women were precious. They were to be pampered and cared for because they were so scarce and fragile.

“Let me remind you before anybody says a god damned word that that … human in there is the spawn of the bastard that just killed a hell of a lot of friends of ours,” he growled, “and it’s very likely that she’s the only chance we have of getting our hands on the son-of-a-bitch.”

Some of the angry tension eased from them, but he could see he was going to have a battle on his hands. “I don’t believe she had anything to do with it,” Joshua said tightly. “I mean … look at her, Simon! She’s just a little bit! Any one of us could break her in half! I feel like a god damned bully and I don’t mind telling you I don’t like it worth a shit!”

“You bought that dumb act?” Simon growled with disgust. “She admitted she was a scientist—although we knew that already! She graduated at the top of her