Chapter 2

Alexzander

The next day, I found myself in the diner again. I sat in my usual booth and swirled the dry, flakey eggs around my plate. Not even ranch could fix them. They'd probably been left on the hot griddle for too long.

The dark-haired waitress came over, her hand on her hip as she looked at my plate. "Those are no good," she said as she scooped the plate into her hand and balanced it on her arm. "Let me have the cook scramble some more for you."

She took the dry eggs away and disappeared into the back, the swinging doors bumping against each other once she'd disappeared. She didn't give me a second glance as she returned to the dining area and bussed the bar countertop. She may not have looked at me, but I had trouble dragging my eyes away from her. Her white skirt climbed up her thighs as she leaned over the counter to get to the back of it. My eyes caught on a purplish bruise, right above her knee. It didn't seem to bother her as she leaned into the barstool to give the counter a final wipe.

A bell aggressively dinged in the back. She cursed under her breath, abandoned the rag on the countertop, and high-tailed it to the kitchen. She returned through the swinging doors before they'd had a chance to close fully, as if the cook tossed the tray into her hands and turned her right around to push her back onto the floor.

"These should be better," she said as she slid the plate in front of me. "Sorry I didn't notice how shitty they were before. I've got a lot on my mind today." The eggs were creamy and smooth, much better than the last plate. She looked around the table and realized she'd forgotten the ranch. "Let me deliver this tray of food, and I'll get you your ranch."

A pang of jealousy crept into my chest as she hurried off to serve another table. On the days when she worked in the diner, I thought of her as my waitress. Mine. I didn't like it when she offered her sweet smiles to others.

After she'd served the other customers, she looked back at me apologetically before hurrying back into the kitchen to get my ranch. She brought out two little cups and set them in front of me. "I'm sorry," she apologized.

"Stop apologizing for shit you can't control, Ophelia."

"Oh...you remember my name," she said, caught off guard.

I knew a lot about her, actually. Like the way she tied her dark hair into a ponytail before driving home in her beat-up car. She didn't always drive, though. Sometimes she made the trip on foot and stopped to scratch the head of one of the ponies at the farm on the way to her house. And I knew where she lived, and that her pop's old pickup truck sat out front with nearly deflated tires. I assumed he didn't leave the house much.

I almost met him once, when I was sneaking from her bedroom while she was at work. I had just wanted to know what she was like outside of that diner. How she lived. I was surprised by all the broken alcohol bottles laid out like landmines everywhere. No way someone could walk around this place barefoot. I was even more surprised by the emptiness of her room. It had been void of any life. A set of flower-print pajama pants lay folded on her bed, and I'd picked them up and brought them to my nose, inhaling her scent.

So clean. So untouched.

Her room seemed like she'd never grown up and made it her own, like she was still trapped in her childhood. Even the bedside lamp, with its pale pink shade, looked like it belonged in a child's room. It made me uncomfortable.

Yeah, the girl in front of me right then didn't match the one who slept in that bedroom. I wondered if her soul got zapped the moment she walked into her home, much like mine did. The diner was a breath of life away from the homes that suffocated us in this small, shitty town. I could almost forget I was a Bruggar at the diner. Could she forget what waited for her at home?

Ophelia flashed me a white smile. She had one tooth that was the tiniest bit crooked in the front, and it was fucking cute. Her cheeks took on a pink hue as she wrote out my check, and she could probably feel the heat of my stare as I waited for her to hand it to me.

"Have I ever caught your name?" she asked, tucking the pen into her apron. The bell angrily chimed, as if the cook was slamming his hand down over and over. "I'm sorry, I gotta go. See you next time," she said, leaving me awash in silence.

I finished up, grabbed a to-go box off the counter so I didn't have to bug her again, and slapped the money on the table before going to my truck.

I sat in the loud, idling vehicle for several minutes, absorbing a little more of her. She flashed her blue eyes at me through the window and threw me a wave that made me choke on the saliva that had gathered beneath my tongue. I could watch her all day, but I'd end up as big as my brother if I kept going to the diner just to get my fix of her. With a sigh and a final glance toward her, I made the drive home.

Once I got inside, I pulled the takeout box from the bag and put it in the fridge. The old thing barely kept the food cool enough to be considered safe, but we didn't have another option. The handle nearly came off the door when I closed it. Nothing a little duct tape wouldn't fix.

"Alex!" my brother yelled from the basement.

I hate when he calls me that.

My mother named me Alexander, but she never learned to read, so she spelled my name the way it sounded. That was where the "z" came in. Alexzander comes from Greek origin—defender of the people—which is ironic, considering what we do. The Man hated my name and said it made me sound like a sissy, so he refused to call me Alex and chose Zander instead. I didn't mind. I didn't like the way my name sounded in his mouth anyway.

My brother's name was Gunnir, which was just fucking awful. Even though there were two correct ways to spell that name, she still managed to fuck it up. I'd take an ironic Greek name over that any day.

We were fucked way beyond our names, though. The Man didn't allow us to attend school. He said anything we needed to learn about this life could be taught by him. I hated being dumb, so I taught myself as much as I could from books. I also learned a surprising amount of random stuff from the women. One had been a psychology student who loved to analyze us. She said we'd been conditioned, that we were kept uneducated because stupid kids grow up to be stupid adults who keep their family secrets by walking in the same footsteps. I wanted to ask her more about that, but The Man had grown tired of her before I had the chance. She'd been right, though. I'd continued in The Man's footsteps long after he was gone, even if I didn't follow his path quite as closely as Gunnir.

A scream crawled up the basement staircase. I knew that sound, and like Pavlov's fucking dogs, I began to salivate. It was the sound of pained desperation, and it went straight to my dick. My body responded on autopilot, working up an excited sweat before I even knew what was happening. The scars on my back tingled—a reminder of all the whippings that trained me to enjoy that sound.

Like a hound on a blood trail, I descended the basement stairs two at a time. When I turned the corner, I saw the source of the melody. My brother's overalls were unclipped and clumped around his ankles. His dark, greasy hair hung like a curtain around his face and concealed his tiny, near-black eyes. A woman was in front of him, bent over the carpenter's table, her chains rattling as he fucked her. Her face was covered in tears, snot, and spit as she fought him until she couldn't anymore. Her eyes met mine, pleading and desperate, but she was barking up the wrong tree. I wasn't much better than Gunnir. The painful erection rubbing against the front of my jeans proved that. Watching my brother fucking that poor girl senseless shouldn't have gotten me hard, but there I was. Hard as fuck.

"I was gonna let you start," Gunnir said through a groan, "but she was looking mighty needy."

With his thick build and towering frame, Gunnir looked like our father. It was as if he'd been copied and pasted into this sick world he'd built. Down to the very shape of his nose, flat and round, he was The Man's spitting image. He even fucked like our father.

"Take your dick out, Alex," Gunnir said as he ripped open the girl's shirt, exposing her heavy breasts.

"No, please," she begged.

The words made me ache. It was impossible to resist that conditioned response to her pleading. I needed her like I needed water on a warm day. I stepped closer and rubbed her chin, and my fingers slid through tiny rivers of tears and drool.

Her blonde hair hung in tangled strands on either side of her head. Her swollen lips were painted red, and clumps of mascara gripped the lashes around her bright blue eyes. Gunnir loved to hand her makeup and tell her to do it like the day we took her. We picked her up near the college in town, but she wasn't a student. We could tell that from the way she talked and dressed. A whore, maybe. The Man taught us to choose women who wouldn't be missed, and she fit the bill. I didn't like them like that, tired and used up, but she was pretty, and she had one hell of a pair of tits on her.

"Don't you bite me," I told her as I unzipped my jeans.

She shook her head as I pulled out my dick and stroked it in front of her mouth. I grabbed her chin and lifted her face to my cock until I could feel her warm breath rushing over the head. Every shudder of her body against the table made me leak from the tip.

I grabbed her hair and rubbed myself against her lips. "Open up, but don't bite me. So help me god, I'll kill you my damn self if you try anything."

I didn't like to do the killing, so I left that part to Gunnir. He had a taste for it. I only wanted to use the women to fulfill their purpose: my pleasure.

The girl spread her puffy lips for me, and I slipped past them and pushed to the back of her throat. Her teeth scraped my skin. I pulled out and smacked her pale cheek. "No teeth," I snarled.

"I'm sorry," she whispered before opening her mouth for me again.

"She feels so fucking good," Gunnir groaned as he stopped the movement of his hips and basked in her sweet struggle. "You almost wouldn't know she's a whore." He laughed, and the girl squeezed her eyes closed against the word, as if it hurt her more than our dicks combined. "You gonna fuck her when I'm done?" he asked.

I shook my head. I didn't like following on the coattails of him or anyone else. Slipping past someone else's come wasn't what got me off.

I looked down at the girl and pinched her nostrils, cutting off her air. Her cheeks puffed as she struggled to breathe, and her hands flailed at my hips, grabbing me with nails that dug into my pelvis. That was what I needed. The struggle.

I grabbed her by the back of the head with my free hand and fucked her face in a way only a Bruggar man could. Just as her grip loosened and she slipped toward unconsciousness, I filled her throat and let go of her nose.

She took a panting breath as Gunnir pulled out of her. Her struggle had ripped the pleasure from him too. He hated when they gave up halfway through. I'd often seen him shove his dick in a woman's ass to get her squirming again. The pain ripped them from the safe places they crept to in their minds. Coping mechanisms. That was another thing that psych student talked about. They coped with the situation by dissociating and going to whatever happy place resided in their heads. Somewhere outside of the basement in the shit house surrounded by woods in deep east bumblefuck New York.

"Sweet baby Jesus, I come with her like I never did with no one," Gunnir hooted as he shook his overalls and pulled them back into place. "Even when she don't fight, she still grips the hell out of my dick. You sure you don't want a turn?"

I rolled my eyes and tucked my spent cock into my pants. "Not when she's filled with your spunk."

"Mama made you a little bitch, just like The Man said she would." Gunnir laughed and buttoned the left strap of his overalls. He left the right side hanging loose, exposing the dirty t-shirt beneath it. "A pussy is a pussy, whether it's been come in or not." He shrugged and pushed past me, leaving me to deal with the girl.

I wasn't being a bitch about anything. I didn't like the feeling of someone else's come or the way it gathered at the base of my dick, and finding bits of my brother's dried jizz in my pubes wasn't exactly my idea of a good time.

"Please..." Her begging broke me from my thoughts.

"Don't. Don't fucking do that with me," I said as I dragged her to her feet and looked at her. I smoothed down her unruly blonde hair. "You're fine. No worse for wear. It's just some dick. Nothing you aren't used to."

Gunnir's come dripped down her pale, dirty thighs and plopped onto the concrete. I curled my lip, pointing to the bucket beneath the spigot jutting from the wall.

"You know what to do," I said. "Go clean yourself up."

She walked to the spigot and turned the handle. Rust-colored water rushed from the faucet and circled a drain in the floor. The metallic scent was almost strong enough to override the tangy aroma of her body odor, but not quite. She gathered the water in the palms of her hands and brought it to her body. Goosebumps rose on her skin from the chill. From the way she furiously scrubbed between her legs, it was clear she didn't have the same affection for Gunnir as he had for her. If she was smart, she'd start pretending.

As I climbed the stairs to the first floor, I dug around in my pocket and pulled out the receipt from the diner. Stuffing it inside my jeans had crumpled the paper, but I could still make out Ophelia's signature across the bottom. Seeing her name tugged at the corners of my mouth. She was a really sweet girl.

When I entered the kitchen, I found Gunnir in front of the open fridge, looking through the mostly empty space for something to eat. "We got any of that stew left?"

I pushed him out of the way and grabbed the metal pot from the bottom shelf. He'd seen the pot, but he was too fucking lazy to heat it himself. Asking about it was his way of hinting.

I placed the pot on the only stove eye that still worked and turned the heat to high. The bowls we'd need to eat out of were still in the sink from last night, so I washed them and set them on the counter. Gunnir dropped into a chair and scooted toward the kitchen table, helpful as always. He gripped a spoon in his massive fist and tapped it rhythmically against the wood.

When the stew came to a bubble, I filled the bowls and slid his toward him across the table. It rattled along the cracked wood. He stopped banging his spoon like a big goddamn child and started in on the meal: venison stew, the way our mother used to make it. I stared at Gunnir as he ate, shoving spoonful after spoonful into his mouth as if he'd been starved. The big idiot hadn't missed a meal in his whole damn life.

With a roll of my eyes, I sat across from him and started to eat. Gunnir kept talking with his mouth open, gravy spilling from the side of his mouth and flinging off his spoon as he gestured. I shouldn't have judged him—I was born a Bruggar, too—but Jesus fuck.

"I don't get why you don't wanna fuck her," he said through a mouthful.

I shook my head and swallowed what was in my mouth. "It's not that I don't want to fuck her. It's that you've clearly taken a liking to her, and you're like a dog humping a stuffed toy when you like them."

He stared at me, chewing loudly. "What's that gotta do with anything?"

"I don't need to keep explaining this to you. I don't like to follow anyone's dick."

"Why you gotta make it sound like that? Like I like following dick? I'm not some...some..."

I blew out a breath. There were five total brain cells in his head, and they were fighting for air in there. "Jesus, just stop. I'm not calling you nothing. I don't like it. That's it. There's nothing more to it. You and The Man played that way, but I don't."

"Are you calling me an incest?"

I rubbed my temple. "You're as dumb as yesterday's roadkill."

Gunnir stared at me and chewed. "What if we get you one of your own?"

"One of what?"

He smirked. "A girl. Get you a girl." He twirled his spoon. "And you say I'm dumb."

I swallowed. "That's a pretty good idea."

"See, I get them too! It's not just you, mama's boy."

I finished my food. The meat was tough, which was unlike how my mother made it. She did everything perfect. She may not have been able to read a recipe book, but she knew how to whip up a dinner like no one's business.

"So?" Gunnir asked when he'd finished eating. "You ready to do this?"

"Tomorrow." I nodded. "Let's get me a girl."

I knew exactly who I wanted.