Jessa Ch. 12

She purchased access to gateway sites that had established links to the most sought out of the dark and councilary web pages. Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, most of those were porn sites and more than a few were very dark indeed, eliciting gasps from Jessa, who'd thought she'd seen or imagined pretty much everything in her time with Torah. But slowly, her search began to bear fruit, and just as it was time to head home, and Raza was standing a few feet away, tapping her toe impatiently, Jessa found a web page that mentioned both her and Torah. And it wasn't their wedding announcement. She all but slammed the notepad closed and stood, suddenly realizing that Arnau was crossing the street, headed directly toward her.

Jessa turned to Raza. "Will you bring the car around? I'm more tired than I realized from all that swimming." Raza looked skeptical, but went to get the car and Jessa tucked the notepad into her bag, praying that Arnau was on an intercept course for someone besides her. Luck wasn't with her. He rounded her table to stand right in front of her. She stared up at him, her earlier anger not forgotten.

"Raza has no doubt seen you, already, and now you mean to confirm her suspicions? How long do you think it will be before Torah hears?"

"Half an hour," he replied, unfazed.

"Arnau, I don't know how to make it any clearer to you. We are not going to have an affair." This time, she actually spoke loud enough that onlookers could hear. At least the gossip would be that she had turned him down flat. Then he spoke, clearly if not loudly.

"But my dear, we already are."

"No, we are not," she said, pushing him out of her way as Raza pulled up to the curb. Unlike Torah, he was easily moved aside, and she climbed into the car next to Raza, fuming. Torah had suggested he had his own agenda, and that certainly seemed to be the case. She was finding it much easier to resist the temptation he presented when he was acting like an ass. Who in their right mind would taunt a trained assassin? Her anxiety was only heightened by what she had glimpsed on the web page moments ago. She had to learn more, and as soon as possible. She needed to lead Torah's tech to believe that she was busy on the web at home, while she and her notepad were off elsewhere searching forbidden sites. Yet more subterfuge and dangerous games.

"Are you okay?" Raza asked softly.

Jessa realized her myriad emotions must be playing across her face. She took a deep breath. "Oh, you know. Men!" she sighed. "What is it about them that convinces them they are irresistible to women?"

Raza smiled faintly, then quickly stifled her humor. "He is handsome, isn't he?"

Jessa glanced over at her. "Not as handsome as his driver, though about twenty times as egotistical," she suggested with a fond smile, then sighed again. "I should have never agreed to have dinner with him. I thought it would be good to placate Torah's friend but how good a friend is he, flirting with his friend's wife?"

"He is pushy, isn't he," Raza agreed, then her eyes widened, fearing she had overstepped.

Jessa rolled her eyes. "Please, share your opinion with me any time, Raza. I need all the help I can get navigating these waters."

Raza smiled shyly as she pulled into a parking space near the apartment. "I cannot imagine that Torah is an easy man to be married to, but everything I heard about him in Düsseldorf suggested he was a good man."

"You had a choice to come here?" Jessa asked softly, wanting to keep the servant in such a talkative mood.

"Of course," Raza said stiffly. "I'm Elite."

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to offend you. I just didn't know how it worked in the cities. I didn't even know there were cities until a couple of months ago."

Raza was immediately mollified. "That's okay. It's like a trade-off. We choose to do more menial work, but we get to live in the city and on our free time, we can do pretty much anything the Circles do. I mean, restaurants, shopping. You know."

"But when do you get free time? I should be giving you days off, shouldn't I?" Jessa said, horrified that it had just now occurred to her, but Raza only shrugged.

"When the Lord is here," she replied. "I understand he'll be coming soon for almost a week. Shay and I have asked to drive back to Düsseldorf to visit friends."

"Good," Jessa said with relief. She looked at the quiet servant. "Raza, can I ask you a question?" The girl shrugged. "Have you been to Summer's End?"

Raza suddenly became busy staring out at the dimming light of evening. "I can't... I couldn't..."

Jessa reached over a put a hand over Raza's. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. It's none of my business."

Raza looked at her lap then over at Jessa. "It's not your fault," she said, but there were unshed tears brimming in her eyes. "I'm not like you. I mean, I'm not strong and smart and beautiful."

"Raza! Don't you say those things about yourself."

The girl sighed and looked out the car window again. "There's a rumor in Düsseldorf. I didn't believe it when I first got there. I mean, there are always rumors."

"What rumor?" Jessa asked softly, with a feeling a dread.

"That the Elites are... won't exist anymore. That they'll either marry up into the Circles or..."

"Become highborns?"

Raza nodded. "I didn't get my invitation to Summer's End when I turned eighteen, but I thought it was because I had just moved to the city and they just lost track of me. So I made sure my registration was up to date and waited for the next year. I never got an invitation."

Jessa's hand went to her mouth. "Are you sure? I never heard anything like that?"

"I think it was starting in Rhine Region. And maybe Berliner Region, too."

Jessa thought back to her visits to Summer's End. She had been so uninterested in finding a mate, though, that she really hadn't paid much attention to who was there from where or even if the numbers had declined over the five years that she went. She was drawn back to the present when Raza grabbed her hand. "Please don't say anything to Shay. She is very kind. I don't want her to think that I am..."

"Elitist? I totally understand, Raza, and thank you for sharing with me."

"I shouldn't have said anything,' the girl mumbled, releasing Jessa's hand. "It's not your problem," she added.

"The least I can do is find out if it's true or just a terrible mistake. For now, though, it's our secret."

Raza gave her a slow but bright smile and they climbed out of the car at the same time. Jessa didn't care that it was unseemly and she was supposed to wait for Raza to open her door. She was getting rather sick of this whole stratification business.

****

After dinner that night, Jessa had retired to her office and built an applet that would appear to be her, working on following links from one public website to the next. Since links were almost non-existent on the dark and councilary web, she picked likely topics readily available on the public web to keep the range reasonably narrow and built in random timing to make it appear that some pages were more interesting than others. After she added an error handling statement, she set it off and watched for a few minutes. It might not fool anyone watching closely, but it certainly wouldn't arouse alarms from the content it was visiting. She hoped that was sufficient as she laid her cell phone next to the keyboard and gathered her notepad, preparing to play the spy game.

She knew of a small quiet restaurant, probably popular with patrons engaging in affairs, she thought to herself, with Arnau in mind. But she also knew it had a few outside tables for midday dining. And wi-fi. She could sit at one of the outside tables and say she was waiting for someone, should anyone care enough to inquire. She had pulled her hair up into a tight knot and donned a bulky cloak, hoping no one would take any particular notice of her. When she arrived, she selected a table at the far corner of the building, least noticeable from inside, and pulled out her notepad.

The page she had stumbled on earlier had disappeared, as was often the wont of dark web pages, but this had been a councilary page. She immediately became concerned. Someone must have noticed her visit, or she had triggered an automated response. Either way, her stomach tensed and she reviewed all the procedures she had undertaken to hide her identity before she began to hunt to see if the page had been moved, or if she could find similar information. By the time she needed to head for home so she could shut down her main computer, in compliance with Torah's over-the-top schedule, she had found nothing but vague hints about what she had seen. A small part of her brain was beginning to wonder if she had seen anything at all, or just jumped to unwarranted conclusions. She needed something she could lay out before Torah and demand answers to. Especially as to who else knew.

She looked around uneasily. Someone could be watching her even now, someone who knew far more than she. The few people that had spoken to her had readily accepted her answers of either "I'm waiting for somebody," or "I'm waiting for my ride." Or at least appeared to readily accept them. She shook her head to clear the paranoia. It was obvious that, if she really saw what she thought she saw, almost no one knew. She gathered her notepad and strode toward home. It was also obvious that the mere shaking of her head had done nothing to diminish her paranoia, because she stopped at almost every street corner, peering into the dark shadows of Paris. She knew beyond a doubt that Torah would have done it so much more discretely.

Part of her wished he was here right now, making her feel safe, at least from everyone else, if not from him. But the other part, the one that made her strong and independent, the one that had gotten her free of the clutches of Renik, wanted all the answers before she saw Torah again, most especially how much he knew. And how much he had played her, leading her to look everywhere but at the real threat. Even if her little applet didn't fool them for long, she prayed for a few more days - and nights - of research before Torah once more stormed into her life. And storm he would when he found out what she had been digging for. At least now she knew she would survive. Had to survive.

Jessa became even more cautious when she neared her own block. She approached from the far side of the building, the side that faced the boundary of the occupied sector, just a few blocks north. She was relieved to see that Shay and Raza's lights were out. They hadn't realized she'd left the building that evening. She slipped into her apartment and went straight to her office, depositing her notepad and turning the computer monitor on. Her little applet was still working away, bouncing from link to link. She quickly shut it down and logged off, only a couple of minutes over her allotted time. With a sigh of relief, she went to the kitchen and found a bottle of wine, pouring a generous glass. After drinking almost half the glass, she began to entertain at least a glimmer of hope that her imagination had gotten totally carried away with her. To think that she and Torah were the only two in the world who could create... No, such a thing couldn't be.

She walked to the windows and looked out over Paris, but the rain that had been threatening as she walked home, had arrived in full force now, and turned all of the lights to a watery, surreal vision, not unlike her life. She quickly turned away and drained the glass of wine, wondering if Torah had a way of knowing if she was actually in bed at 11:30, per his schedule. Probably. She wandered into the bedroom and was halfway to the bathroom when she realized she wasn't alone. She hadn't turned on the bedroom light, because there was a soft light in the bathroom that was always on. She looked around and saw a shadow headed for the bedroom door.

The first thought that flashed in her mind was Torah, but there was something about him she had come to recognize, a lingering smell perhaps, and she knew at once that this was not him. She backed toward the bathroom, watching the tall shadow as it cut off her exit from the bedroom. She wasn't scared, at least not yet. Only a few men could scare her just by their presence. Torah, certainly. Erich. Perhaps Jacq, but this was none of those three, not Torah, and not stocky enough to be Erich or Jacq. She reached out and touched the switch for the bedroom light.

The room was immediately bathed in a soft but adequate light, and she saw Arnau leaning against her bedroom door, watching her, lacking his usual playful or predatory smile. She frowned slightly. Arnau was given to the strong perfumes favored by Parisians. There was no trace of that now.

She put her hands on her hips, regarding him sternly. "What are you doing here?"

"Where have you been?" He countered.

"That is none of your business. I have told you, clearly, that we have no relationship."

"Did you find someone else? Someone to dominate you like Torah does? To order you around and beat you when you don't obey? Perhaps Jacq? He must be hungry now, with his wife so huge in pregnancy and obsessed with her children."

Jessa peered at him. "You're drunk," she stated.

He shrugged. "Not as drunk as I was two hours ago when I came to make sweet, tender love to you and prove you needed me."

"I don't need you, and the risk is too great for me to want you, Arnau. You need to go."

He shook his head. "No, I think perhaps I am missing something. Mind you, it is gratifying when a woman screams as you please her, when she welcomes you because her husband cannot satisfy her needs. But I am pretty sure that a woman has never cried out in terror at missing a phone call from me. Nor have they willing foregone an offer of instant gratification to wait weeks for a me to return. So I must ask. What does Torah offer you that I cannot?"

What is between Torah and me is none of your business," Jessa said, glowering.

"When you told me you met him at Summer's End, I did some checking. I'm actually quite a sleuth. Did I tell you that?" Jessa shook her head, trying to gauge his drunkenness. "Do you have any idea of the rumors that swirled upon your departure? Let me boil it down for you. 'The stuck up bitch was hauled away by a Council Lord.' It seems everyone agreed you had no interest in anyone there. Nor did you have any desire to go with a Lord, Council or no. And now, he deposits you here, while he is many miles away and plans to return only for your grand ovulation. So apparently, he has no more interest in you than you have in him. So again I ask, what does he have that would make you refuse an attentive, gentle, present lover in favor of an absent, brutal hater?"

"Arnau, it is so far more complicated that you can conceive..."

"So you think I am stupid?" He demanded, advancing toward her.

"I think you are drunk. And I think Torah is a trained killer. And I think you had better leave."

"Are you threatening to call your attack dog on me?"

"I don't need him to handle a drunk," Jessa hissed.

"I think maybe it's just that you like it rough. I can be rough, if that's how you want it."

"Arnau," she said warningly. "I don't want to hurt you."

He laughed cruelly. "Did you really believe me when I suggested you could break me in half? I'm not so fragile." He reached for her wrist and Jessa easily twisted free, standing her ground and staring defiantly at him.

"Arnau, I'm only telling you one more time. Get out."

"Or what?" He challenged, drawing himself up to his full height. He was one of the few Circle men that stood distinctly taller than Jessa, but she just continued to stare evenly at him.

"Or I will break you in half," she threatened.

"Oh, my dear girl. I think that unlikely." He reached for her again and this time Jessa kicked out with her foot, trying to trip him as stepped forward. He was wobbly all ready and it wasn't difficult to alter his balance beyond recovery. Unfortunately, he managed to grab hold of her as he went down, and they both ended up in a tangle on the floor. Jessa rolled onto her side and shoved back against Arnau with one arm as she tried to lever herself up off the floor with the other. He managed to grab her wrist that was planted against his chest and twist her arm behind her back, pushing her face down on the floor.

"Arnau, get off me, damn it."

Instead, he fell on top of her, his mouth near her ear. "Still think you can break me in half?"

"Starting with your arm, if you don't let go of me." She pushed violently upward, throwing her head back, hoping to make contact with his nose, but his length foiled a trick that had worked with others who thought to wrestle her into submission, especially at Summer's End. He twisted her arm tighter, in a move that was making her blood boil. She worked a leg free from under his weight and then used her free arm and that leg to roll him onto his back, though he maintained his grip on her other arm, wrenching her shoulder painfully. Jessa immediately twisted in the opposite way, freeing the pressure on her arm. He grabbed for a handful of her hair, realizing he was about to lose his hold and used her hair to yank her backward onto the floor.

Jessa had a brief memory flash of Torah, at his angriest, when he had used her hair alone to control her, but her fear and his uncommon strength had given him an edge that Arnau lacked. Jessa rolled with the pull, throwing her legs up and over, summersaulting to her hands and knees as Arnau tried to figure out where his control had gone. Before he could do that, though, she launched herself at him, and this time not out of sexual need. He fell back under her onslaught and she rolled over him, leaving a trail of bleeding scratches across his cheek. She hit the floor on the opposite side of him rolling, determined to actually break his arm in hopes of convincing him once and for all that she was not going to be his conquest, or even a passing friend, but suddenly the back of her head hit the nightstand next to the bed, and her vision went red and black. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes, but Arnau was on top of her again. Jessa gasped as her head was banged again, this time as he tried to wrestle her gown up. The moment he freed her legs from the fabric, she kicked out with both at once, but he had pulled the fabric over her torso and face, effectively binding her, then pulled it even higher until her arms were entirely covered. She heard a clock crash to the floor and realized he was using the cord to tie off the hem of the gown so she couldn't free herself. She screamed in anger and kicked even more, hoping for and occasionally actually finding a target for her fury. Arnau rewarded her with an occasional grunt, but then he was sitting on her legs, rendering them useless as he ripped at her panties.

"Now I know what Torah sees in you, at least. Your struggles are very... arousing." He leaned closer and whispered in her ear. "I'm not sure when I have ever been this hard. Do you fight him like this every time?"

Jessa, now having a good idea of where his head was launched upward and forward, going for a football header, hopefully against his nose. He turned his head at the last moment and she managed only a glancing blow that resulted in painful throbbing for her own head but, too, she heard what she thought might be his head hitting the nightstand. She immediately tried to accomplish the same move, willing to suffer her own head banging if it made him give up his lustful pursuit. Unfortunately, he had reared back after the collision to rub his own lump and she only succeeded in banging her own head, yet again.

She was really reeling, now, forced to lay back and try to recover some of her equilibrium as Arnau took advantage of the situation to dive between her legs, trying to pin them with both his hands and his own legs as he forcefully assaulted her pussy with his lips and tongue. Jessa grappled with the nightstand, trying to get the leverage she needed to pull away from Arnau, but she only succeeded in wedging herself against the wall with no where else to squirm and pushing the nightstand over onto her left leg, helping Arnau keep it pinned. Worse, she could feel herself responding to Arnau's assault, just as she had when Torah took her roughly. Arnau could tell, too, judging from the way he was chuckling, even as he drove his tongue repeatedly into her pussy.