Theirs To Protect: a Reverse Harem Romance Page 23

  She decided she could either let fear make a prisoner of her, or she could trust her clan to protect her.

  Almost daily she had the argument with herself about whether or not to just tell them about the threats Jeffries had made. Surely, if she told them while they were all together, and then they went as one to the Commander, then…

  We’re a multitude, Jeffries had said. We got men everywhere. In every guild of workers. All over the government.

  At the time she thought he’d just been talking about Jacob’s Well Township. But what if he meant on a larger scale? Like, was there some revolutionary anti-President Goddard movement brewing or something?

  Or was Jeffries just lying out his ass? Maybe it was just him and Camila’s four other husbands who were the rotten apples.

  But if he was telling the truth…

  Then saying anything could get Nix killed. Or Clark or Graham or Mateo or Danny.

  And ultimately, that was enough to end every argument. It was simply a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

  So she stayed quiet.

  And stuck like glue to whichever husband was shadowing her for the day. Sometimes she joined them at their work, sometimes they came with her.

  Today she was heading to the Food Pantry working with Sophia.

  Graham rubbed his thumb in circular patterns over her palm as they walked. Audrey smiled, knowing he was secretly counting the number of strokes. She loved all his little quirks. The new things she discovered about him and the other guys every day.

  Maybe eventually some of their habits would get on her nerves. But right now, she loved the sense of discovery she felt whenever they spent time together.

  She loved watching them get to know each other too. Some of them knew each other before the lottery, others just in the most cursory way. But now they were getting to know one another intimately. Because it wasn’t like she was in five separate marriages—no, it was just one big marriage. They were bound to each other as much as they were to her. She grinned to herself as she and Graham turned onto main street. Some of them took to clan life better than others.

  Clark was always yelling at someone or other while Mateo often got stuck in the role of peacemaker. She loved watching Mateo come out of his shell to calmly arbitrate disputes between a hotheaded Danny and a furious Clark or Nix. Graham needed routine and he’d had a hard time moving into the new house, with everything changing. But she loved how he’d really put in the effort to build new routines around his new clan.

  She loved the way—

  And then she paused, realizing the thread going through all her thoughts.

  She loved.

  She almost tripped over her feet at the revelation. Graham caught her, his eyes flipping up to hers for the briefest half second before he focused back on the pavement.

  Then they kept on down the road.

  But Audrey felt like she was walking a few feet above the street.

  She loved them.

  All of them.

  When Danny and Nix had both said they loved her that day, she hadn’t known what to say back. She liked them, that she knew. And in spite of their earnestness, she thought they might have just been saying it because of the sex. Two weeks of constant orgasms would do that to a guy, wouldn’t it? Sex was powerful. It made you feel things strongly. Maybe more strongly than you would ordinarily feel.

  And it wasn’t like they’d eased up on the sex much. Well, okay, they weren’t doing the marathon twenty-four hour sex anymore, with Audrey sleeping in between the guys’ work shifts.

  Still, though, most nights she and at least three—and sometimes all five if they were all there at once—got their release. But equally and sometimes even more satisfying were the long minutes afterwards when the guys would hold her close. It was hot sometimes, being surrounded by all that male body heat. But when Mateo ran his hands through her damp hair and Nix scattered kisses down her back while Clark played lazily with her still-buzzing cum-soaked pussy… God, it was like nothing else in the world.

  She hadn’t known goodness or satisfaction like that could still exist in the world today.

  But she didn’t just love them for what they could give her. She loved them for themselves.

  She was married and she was in love with her husbands.

  The realization had her smiling all morning while she and Sophia doled out morning porridge to the townsmen who depended on the daily communal food assistance.

  With a town population of over five-thousand and more applications to settle here every day, it took a veritable army of staff to feed them.

  And while Audrey couldn’t say the food was exactly… a tempting feast, so to speak, she’d learned from Sophia all week long about how everything they served was carefully thought out.

  Sophia took her on a tour her first official day volunteering, in between meals. “This is where the magic happens,” Sophia said, clapping her hands as she took Audrey around back of the Pantry.

  “You see the John Deere tractor out there?” She pointed out the back window of the Pantry’s kitchen.

  Audrey looked and then nodded. The tractor looked out of place in the small open space of the parking lot between the back of the Pantry and the cooking lean-to.

  Since everything had to be cooked over an open flame, it was decided early on that it should be cooked separate from the Pantry building. Eventually a barn-like structure had been erected, with open walls for ventilation so the cooks didn’t spontaneously combust during the heat of the Texas summers. Guards stood at posts all around, protecting the town’s second most valuable resource after its water—the food.

  “I could have kissed Finn when he and his Scrapper team brought this baby back.” Sophia beamed at the tractor.

  “I don’t get it,” Audrey said. The thing didn’t look especially large or fancy. “Does it help you harvest the corn or something?”

  “Oh no, better than that,” Sophia said. “It’s a John Deere Grinder-Mixer. Back in the old days I guess they used it to grind up meal for hogs? Anyway, till they brought that, we were trying to grind the corn and wheat into flour ourselves with these ridiculous hand-made mills. If you don’t get the meal fine enough, it gives you horrible gas and diarrhea.”

  Audrey nodded soberly. Chronic diarrhea could kill you in today’s world. If you couldn’t manage to keep weight, your chances for survival dropped considerately.

  “So we all had to spend hours of back-breaking work just to get the meal fine enough. Until that beauty arrived. It can grind nine tons of wheat, barley, or cornmeal per hour.”

  “Holy crap,” Audrey said, looking at the machine with new respect.

  “Exactly,” Sophia said with a wide grin.

  They prepared different kinds of food for the men. Two meals a day were served. The first was at ten a.m. and it was usually a corn and bean mash—or rather, porridge as they called it, to make it sound more palatable.

  The second meal was usually bread and soup made of whatever vegetables they’d farmed or managed to trade for that week plus, every other day, tiny amounts of meat.

  “Everything a body needs, right boys?” Sophia smiled as two, big burly men brought in the huge pots of soup to serve the second meal.

  “You got it, Miss Sophia,” said one of the men, his eyes lingering on Sophia.

  He was young, maybe just a couple years older than Sophia, and over the last couple weeks, Audrey noticed he seemed to get Pantry duty a lot more often than any of the other security guards.

  Audrey nudged Sophia in the shoulder. “Hey. What’s his name?” She pointed to the guy in question.

  Sophia looked up from the trays she was arranging and glanced over her shoulder. “Who? Oh, you mean Griff?”

  “That’s his name?”

  Sophia shrugged—a little too nonchalantly, Audrey thought.

  “I think he liiiiiiiikes you,” Audrey teased.

  Sophia’s cheeks went pink. “He does not,” she whispered, eyes glancing furti
vely over her shoulder again to where Griff was slicing bread.

  “Hmm. Do guards usually stick around to help you guys cut the bread?”

  A small frown curved Sophia’s mouth. “Well, no.” She glanced at Griff again. He looked up at the same time and when he saw Sophia looking his way he smiled and gave a small wave.

  Sophia whipped her head back around, cheeks fully red.

  “He likes you,” Audrey sing-songed.

  “Stop it,” Sophia snapped. “He does not.”

  Audrey felt her eyebrows go up. “All right, all right. Touchy much?”

  Sophia huffed out a loud breath through her nose. Then she turned to Audrey, looking genuinely upset. “You of anyone should know better. That’s not how it works around here. When I turn twenty, I’ll have a lottery. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

  Audrey put down the clean forks she’d been piling into a serving bin. “Sophia, I’m sorry for teasing you. But you do realize how screwed up what you just said is, right?”

  Sophia’s mouth pursed into a hard line. Then she turned away from Audrey. “You just don’t understand.”

  Audrey let out a disbelieving noise. “I don’t understand? Are you kidding me?” She followed Sophia as she went out to get more clean trays from the wash station by the well out back. Graham followed them at a distance.

  “Yes, you don’t understand,” Sophia said, eyes flashing when Audrey caught up with her. “You just show up here, not having any idea of how things work. You get five amazing husbands. And all you can do is complain about how we do things.”

  Aw damn, this girl was looking for a fight.

  “I got lucky,” Audrey said. “But you have no idea who you’ll be paired with in the lottery.” Audrey thought of Camila and shuddered. “Besides, haven’t you ever had a crush on someone? Or thought about what it would be like to get to know someone and then fall in love?”

  “Of course I dream about falling in love,” Sophia said, throwing up her hands. “And I will. With my husbands after we’re married. Arranged marriages are what people have done throughout history. And they were perfectly happy.”

  Audrey didn’t know about that. And with Sophia being the daughter of the Commander, if Jeffries wasn’t lying and they had accomplices throughout the township… what if one of those men was drawn as a husband for Sophia?

  And what if… could they have any influence in the lottery itself? Could someone fix a lottery? Who had access to the lotto before it was placed out there on stage for the Commander to pull names? She couldn’t remember the night of her own lottery. Everything had been so crazy. Had the Commander himself pulled the names out of the box or was it someone else? But… how come all of Camila’s five husbands just happened to be working together? That was suspicious. Really suspicious. Or did Jeffries recruit them after they all won the lottery?

  It was so much to consider that it made her head hurt.

  Because if they could influence the lottery, then… well that meant that by not saying something, Audrey could be dooming Sophia to a marriage like Camila’s.

  Audrey’s stomach clenched. It was bad enough she felt guilty every day for not telling her clan. Now would she have to worry for every woman who had a lottery?

  “I’ll just take these out back,” she mumbled, grabbing a stack of trays.

  “I can take those,” Graham said when she got halfway back to the building. He was already grabbing them out of her arms so there was nothing much to do except pull the door open for him.

  “Thanks,” Audrey said, glancing up at the sky. The sun was starting to drop close to the horizon. “It’s almost time for dinner.”

  Graham nodded. “Nix should be here any minute to relieve me.”

  “Did I hear my name?” Nix asked, grabbing Audrey and dipping her back, giving her a deep kiss.

  She gasped and laughed, smacking his shoulder. “I’m at work. Let me up.”

  “Not till you kiss me hello, wife.” Nix grinned at her and her heart did a squishy melt thing. God she loved this man.

  She rolled her eyes but landed a quick peck on his lips.

  “A real kiss,” he growled.

  And then he took her lips in a demanding kiss that had all her worries from moments ago disappearing.

  By the time he finally pulled back and helped her up to her feet again, her sex was buzzing and she was so turned on she wanted to pull Nix and Graham into the small supply closet for a quickie.

  Nix must have seen the lust in her eyes because he swatted her ass and said, “Patience is a virtue. And there’s a line of hungry men outside waiting to get fed.”

  “Fine,” she sighed dramatically. And saw Sophia watching them with a longing expression on her face.

  “See,” Sophia said as they lined up to serve men their daily soup and bread. “That’s what I want. What you have with your clan.”

  Audrey looked at Sophia. She was so young. But she wasn’t a kid. She’d grown up in this world the same as Audrey had. Audrey reached over and quickly squeezed her hand. “I want that for you, too. More than anything.”

  Sophia flashed her a smile. But Audrey still felt the weight of all her secrets more acutely than ever.

  ***

  The Food Pantry was set up so that they fed the waiting men through a large open window at the front of the building. Each man got a small tray, a bowl of sprouted oat and cornmeal mash or soup and bread, depending on what meal it was.

  Since it was the afternoon meal, it was soup and bread. It was late in the day, almost sunset, and a jazz band had set up in the town square right outside. It had been a warm early summer day, but not too hot.

  People were out all around the square. Listening to the band. Chatting and laughing. Eating. Sharing gossip. Kids ran around shrieking and giggling. Some people were even dancing, a handful of women in the crowd laughing and partnering indiscriminately with lots of men.

  Audrey couldn’t help smiling at the peaceful, idyllic scene. Three months ago, she wouldn’t have believed that a place like this could exist. But here it was. Somewhere out of time. Sure life here wasn’t exactly like it had been before the Fall—nowhere ever could be—but it was still a place that would make anyone hopeful for a real future.

  About halfway through serving the meal, a man wearing the same fatigues Nix always did showed up. Audrey was ladling soup into a row of bowls and watched out of the corner of her eye as Nix and the man had a tense conversation.

  Finally Nix gave a decisive nod and then turned and came over to Audrey. He had to shout to be heard above the blaring trumpets. “There’s a situation at Squadron command. I have to go.”

  Without even thinking about it, Audrey’s hand shot out to grasp his forearm. He couldn’t go. She was only safe when she was with him. Or another of her clan.

  “Can you get Graham or Clark?” she asked, searching his eyes. “Or Danny or Mateo?”

  His mouth was a hard line as he shook his head. “No time. But this is Wayne.” He clapped the man in dark fatigues on the back. “He’s a good man. He’ll take care of you.”

  Audrey’s eyes flicked over to Wayne. He nodded reassuringly at her.

  Audrey looked back to Nix and leaned in. “Are you sure?”

  Nix frowned and Audrey realized how odd it would be if she insisted she didn’t feel safe without him. It would only bring up more questions she couldn’t answer without endangering his life.

  He seemed to trust Wayne. That would have to be enough for now.

  “Okay,” Audrey forced a smile and reached up to kiss Nix on his cheek. “Be safe.”

  She continued serving the meal, Wayne taking up residence in Nix’s place in the corner.

  It’s just like having Nix there, she tried to console herself.

  Okay, so, no, it wasn’t.

  But she’d be fine. She’d get through her shift and then head back to the house. Danny and Mateo would be home just after sunset, right about the same time she and Sophia had finished handing things
over to the dishwashers and locking up.

  Close to the last half hour, when the end of the line was actually visible, Sophia had just pulled the lid off a fresh soup pot when she came up and yelled in Audrey’s ear, “Hey, can you go back to the supply closet to get some more salt? We’re almost out.”

  She gestured with her head toward the shaker they kept at the serving window. Men were theoretically allowed only three shakes, but Sophia and Audrey were usually more generous. Yes, they needed salt for making jerky and a number of other activities, but salt was one of the few supplies they were never short on.

  Audrey nodded as she finished ladling soup into a short, leathery-faced man’s bowl. She headed toward the back, but only after making sure Wayne was right on her heels.

  It was dark in the back of the building since night was falling outside. The quiet was nice after the loud music of the past hour, though. Maybe next time she’d request the band set up a little further away from the Food Pantry.

  She stumbled when she ran into a box she hadn’t seen on the shadowy floor. She should have brought a candle with her. Oh well. There was just enough light not to run into most things at least, though the closet would probably be pitch black. The bucket of salt was right inside the door on the left though. There were several there, all stacked up. She could just grab one and bring it out so she could fill up the—

  A hand clapping over her mouth from behind. She was yanked backwards against a hard body.

  She screeched and struggled, but whoever it was, a man obviously, had too firm a grip.

  Wayne! Where was Wayne?

  Could he see her? Had his eyes not adjusted to the dim light yet?

  She looked frantically left and right but couldn’t see him. Where the hell was he?

  “Looks like we’re going to finally have that alone time, cunt.”

  Jeffries. Of course.

  A shudder of revulsion rocked Audrey’s body.

  Stupid. So fucking stupid to think she could avoid ending up right back in this position.

  Then again, she’d run through what had happened in the candle shop that day a thousand times. And a thousand times, she’d thought through what she would have done different.