The v Girl (34 page)

“When my father appeared in my life, I saw him as a savior in a way. He manipulated me to think my mother would be better without me. I left my mother. She was pregnant at the time and my father kept sending her money. But as soon as my brother was born, she disappeared. If she’s alive, I’m sure she’s hiding from him.”

Later we go for a walk on a rocky beach. As he promised, I’m walking differently, mostly because I’m deliciously sore. His long hair plays with the wind and I can’t help it. I ogle him. He looks so human and attractive now that he’s talking about his past.

“My father loved the military life and soon I learned to love it, too. At twelve, I was already a cadet. My father wanted me to become a general for the Patriot armies. But I knew of the cruelty of Patriots in Nationalist cities and vice versa. I decided to stay out of the conflict and join the German training camp for the Accord Units.”

I noticed certain emotion when he talks about his father. “Do you love him?”

“We fight like hell but—” He stops and looks thoughtful for a moment. “Mmm, this is the first time I’ve admitted this.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “He may have been cruel to others, but he was kind to all of his children. He would leave anything and run to my side if I needed him.” His gaze over me becomes intense and he grazes my cheek with his fingers. “Sometimes you can’t help loving someone when you shouldn’t.”

His blue eyes scan the horizon. “But I’m not about to justify marital rape just because I love my father. I’ll never forgive him and yet … it’s complicated. Love is a complex feeling that can’t be tamed using the whip of what is right and what is not.” I sigh. That’s so true. Especially for both of us. “Despite his cruelty to my mother, I can’t hate him”

I hop to prevent a wave from touching my boots. “Yes, sometimes you can’t bring yourself to hate someone.” I used to fear that he was going to rape me and there were many moments in which I hated him. It’s incredible the way my feelings have changed since I met him a few weeks ago.

He puts his hand around one my hips, interrupting my musings. “You’re sore, aren’t you?” I blush. “I told you. You won’t walk like you used to again.”

He pulls me into his strong arms. The waves are soaking our boots, but I don’t care anymore. “I’m reborn, too. I’ve had sex so many times, but I never made love. It was a first for me, Lila, and I can’t believe how much I was missing.”

“I was so intoxicated with you last night, Lila. I’m not even sure I wasn’t dreaming. Did I tell you that I love you?” I look up at him smiling and nod. “You love me don’t you, Lila?”

“Yes, I love you.” And just as I say it I feel an oppression leave my body, allowing me to breathe freely. Excitedly, he lifts me above his head. His elation is evident. “Whoa! Put me down. We can’t be together, so let’s not get overenthusiastic.”

He sets me on my feet and leans in to kiss me. “Why wouldn’t be together?”

I look at him in disbelief. He knows why. “You can’t fraternize with the enemy or both of us will be executed.”

“Lila, you’re the reason I fought my way to get back to Starville. I came for you to take you away and start a new life with you.”

I shake my head. He must be joking. “You can’t.”

“Aside from the obvious, the fact that you have led a very difficult life, why don’t you allow yourself to have hope?”

“I prefer to expect the worse. I’m always prepared for bad things so they don’t catch me by surprise. If you were to stay with me, you’d get pissed off at me frequently because I’m not an easy person to love.”

“Neither I am. But I don’t understand. Loving you is the most effortless thing I’ve ever done. I fought against the feeling so many times and lost ...” His eyes look at me with infinite tenderness. “Why do you think you aren’t an easy person to love?”

“I’m a natural born pessimist, and as much as I try to become stronger and to act maturely, I—” I sigh loudly. “I’m a woman, Aleksey. I’m not the simplistic creature the world expects me to be. I’m flawed. I’m multidimensional. I make mistakes all the time and I’ll make even more as life challenges me. And I don’t want to be afraid to make mistakes. Firstly, because I’ll learn from them. But more importantly, they’re what make me human. You would have to be incredibly patient if you were to be with me.”

Gently he lays me down on the sand and covers my body with his.
“I’ll be with you for as long as you want me.”

I look up at him and tuck one of his long, blond strands behind his ear. “No, you won’t. Everything is against us. Your commission in New Norfolk, the law, recruitment.”

Aleksey kisses me. “You don’t have to worry about recruitment anymore.”

I turn to look at him in confusion.

“There’s a way. A way that wouldn’t have been possible if Tristan hadn’t been so valiant and filmed everything. Maximillian Kei has been forced to change the recruitment laws.”

The way his hands are roaming all over my body is distracting. “Kei wouldn’t abolish recruitment.”

Aleksey kisses the hollow of my throat. “He will. Not now, but it’ll happen. In the meantime, the new laws will be the key to your escape.”

A moan escapes my lips. “
Ah!
I don’t understand.”

He smiles wickedly against my collarbone. “Lila Velez Tcherkassky, you’ll join my Unit as an
L
grade recruit. L for love.”

If, as we see nightfall, we become capable of accepting love,

let’s celebrate an alliance with our unbroken delusions.

Who ever knew we would say goodbye to oblivion?

Who ever knew we would accept hope?

General Fürst’s journal

Epilogue

The feeling of gentle kisses on my shoulder blades wakes me up. He rolls our naked bodies until he’s on top. Expertly, he sucks and bites the tender flesh of my neck as his hands explore my body.

Waking up next to Aleksey’s monstrous body in his New Norfolk room is such a joy. Now that familiarity has set in, I have discovered all of the men inside Aleksey’s enormous body. The expert lover, the dominant alpha, the honorable man, the poet, the child inside the twenty-five year old man. But the Aleksey I enjoy the most is the happy man.

“Can I put my pinky finger in your belly button?” he whispers in my ear.

“
Hmm
.” I’m too intoxicated by the ecstatic sensations that his lips have brought to my bared skin to pay attention.

Until I feel it.

“
Ah
! That’s not my navel.”

“That’s not my pinky finger, either,” he says mischievously.

Aleksey’s tone makes me explode in a fit of laughter, but soon I’m not laughing anymore. The movement brings delicious vibrations that resonate all over my body.

He thrusts deliberately, delicately, deliciously. But my body asks him to speed up and soon his gentle thrusts turn into merciless pounding. I turn to the mirror to take a look at the naked girl under Aleksey’s body. She doesn’t look like a scared doe like she used to. There’s a sexual confidence in the way I’m receiving his sexual frenzy. Knowing that I’m the one that drives crazy such a powerful, commanding, strong beast like him is empowering. My new confidence comes from the fact that I’ve finally learned to trust him completely. With my feelings, with my safety, and with my body. I trust him so much that I’ll try C.N. with him. Soon.

After I get down from the heaven of my release, I look up at him in wonder and marvel at the beauty of the man that is coming undone inside me. There’s a remarkable difference between his current enraptured face and the sad expression he had when I first met him. To the rest of the world, he is still an uncompromising, serious man. But in private, he shares with me his playful, fun side. He’s happy to the point of giddiness and his elation is contagious.

When he reaches his climax his body collapses over mine. Still inside me, he buries his head in the crook of my neck and doesn’t move. I love the feeling of his heated breathing on my neck, the way our bodies connect, the violent thud of his heart against his chest. Both of us are enjoying the glorious, euphoric feeling of being in love for the first time in our lives. The best part of walking the path of reciprocated love with him is to know that I’m playing a huge role in his blissful mood. And Aleksey seems to be equally satisfied whenever he acknowledges the huge part he plays on my own happiness.

The fact that he recruited me only adds to the blessings I’m with living now.

Accord cops are subject to Patriot laws as long as they are in American territory. The new modifications to the recruitment laws—due to nasty incidents in recruitments ceremonies lately, including Tristan’s rape—created a new opportunity for the cops to aid civilians. The Accord Unit recruits them. Because I’m registered in a place where recruitment is legal, General Fürst’s Unit has recruited me. It wasn’t easy. Aleksey paid a team of lawyers to find loopholes in the new recruitment laws. Finally, he got the official permission from Maximillian Kei to recruit me. As soon as he got Kei’s formal consent, he kidnapped me and my family and took us to New Norfolk.

Officially, I’m a cadet in New Norfolk’s Military Academy, a training center for future Accord cops. I had to pass extensive physical tests and they tested my neutrality with a polygraph. As soon as I complete the two-year training program, I’ll join the Accord Unit. Hopefully by then, recruitment will be a nightmare of the past. But even if that doesn’t happen, I’ll do my best to help Aleksey build the kind of Accord Unit he’s always dreamt about. One that protects people from recruitment.

This room in the spacious space UNNO assigned him is an exact replica of the one in which I lost my virginity. This room is home now.

His gorgeous naked figure gets up from the bed and I can’t stop staring at his fantastic rear as he crosses the room. What kind of alchemy brought a man like him to my life? He’s beautiful inside out, and he’s rescued me in more than one way.

“Are we going anywhere?” I ask mostly because I hope he says no and we can have another round of morning sex.

“Yes, we’re going to visit your family.”

“Yay!” I forget my lascivious intentions. We’ll have all night for that. I’m dying to see them all.

Aleksey got a medical job for my Dad in the Accord hospital. Dad couldn’t be happier. It’s obvious he had been dying to practice medicine again. The payment is modest but he can pay the rent on a small apartment near the hospital. In the hospital they have experts in the kind of fibrosis Olmo suffers from. Olmo’s condition has improved and he has been gaining weight.

After kissing me, he leaves the lavish room and I wait the customary ten minutes before departing myself. Others shouldn’t see us together.

Sunday through Thursday nights I sleep with the other cadets in the Accord barracks. From Friday to Saturday nights plus weekdays afternoons, I’m assigned to the service of General Fürst.

To the outside world I’m supposed to be his assistant. We’re not allowed to have a relationship, let alone get married. It doesn’t matter. I’m his woman. He’s my man. When the war ends, we’ll find the way to get married. For now, being together like this is almost as though we’re living together. Even during weekdays, there are times that we’re supposed to be occupied in office work with his other assistants, but he just says:
Let’s go to a quieter place.
Then he takes me to any hidden nook he can find, a closet, a deserted office, to kiss insatiably. Sometimes, we take things further.

Next July, for my ninetieth birthday, Aleksey will take a leave of absence. His first one since he joined the military. He promised me to show me the world.

Not everything is perfect in my new life. From time to time I still have flashbacks. And my sister is having a difficult time after the attempted rape. Azzy’s having nightmares, but she keeps her pain to herself and shows her cynical side all the time.

Tristan’s wounds have required three surgeries already, and whenever I think about him, survivor’s guilt gnaws at my conscience. My happiness came at a high cost for him.

I’m worried for the people I left in Starville. TCR and the Diazes. Saying goodbye to Rey was, in a way, easy and liberating for both of us. We were never meant to be more than friends. Now we can keep loving the people we were meant to love.

I make my way confidently through the clean New Norfolk streets. The round-shaped metallic looking buildings seem to reach the dome above us. On a solitary overpass a jeep catches up with me. Just like our first date, he barely stops the vehicle to let me in. Once inside, I muss his hair.

“You took your time, my
kämpfer
.” he says, kissing my hand.

Love isn’t the solution for everything. But by accepting love and by fighting for it, I’ve found a reason to allow myself to hope. One day this war will end.

By the time that happens, I hope I’ll still be a V girl.

V for Velez.

V for valiant.

V for voyeur.

But not V for virgin.

This book wouldn’t have been possible without a huge group of friends, family, and fellow bookaholics who supported me all the way through.

Erin Plaice: when this book was lacking direction, you gave me the kind of support that I needed. If Aleksey and Lila have found their happy ending is in great part thanks to your sincere enthusiasm. You’re a fantastic book adviser and I cannot thank you enough.

To the wonderful team at Electra Editorial Service. Especially to Rosa and Mia. Thank you for being General Fürst partisans and for working around my hectic schedule.

My extraordinary group of Betas: Ash from Wonderland’s Reader, Bibliophilic Madness, and Maria Kaye. You’re great beta readers! I’m so happy I met you all. I might not have taken your advice all the time, but I always valued your opinions. Thank you for taking your time to read and for your elaborate pieces of written feedback.

To all my Wattpad readers. I cannot mention all of you. Thank you for encouraging me to keep writing this story that was supposed to be only six chapters.

Kit Foster, you create beauty out of images. The determined face that my heroine uses to face the world is the one you portray in your gorgeous cover. Thanks to your talent, Lila Velez makes eye contact with the reader for the first time as the reader reads the title.

Special thanks to the New Adult book club members, especially Bobbi, Derna, Karina, Natalie, Micheala, Nicola, Lori, and Laura. To the people who voted for their favorite cover. I wish I could mention each of you by name.

Lani and Mariel, my soulmates. You know we make a fantastic trio that could inspire plenty of YA novels. Your support means the world to me.

All the bloggers who revealed the cover and signed up for the blitz. You’re amazing.

Mr. Eduardo Carrasco. Thank you for giving me permission to translate “The Dove” lyrics. Whenever I hear your song, I feel the need to inject hope in my dystopian worlds.

Rachel from
The Rest is Still Unwritten
and Belinda from
Literaria
: You might not have realized it, but you were my first reviewers. Your reviews contributed a lot to stay focused on my writing when I was about to drop the towel.

To Demelza Watts. Thank you for your wonderful portrait of General Fürst and his red cape.

My dear family: You have given me the strength and determination to pursue my dreams. I love you all for being there for me when I was full of uncertainty and doubts.