Free The Gigolo's Bride (The Necklace Chronicles) by R.E. Butler

continued to look, she
found page after page of drawings, paintings and sketches of
herself. Mostly alone, always wearing beautiful clothing, and
sometimes drawn with him, embraced liked lovers. “Eden made these?”
Her voice was a bare whisper. Emotions rioted around in her
mind.
    “Of course he did, Ashleigh. He’s an artist.
He’s absurdly talented. The moment he took the soul-walk to
find his mate, he started to prepare for you. Besides drawing what
look like near mirror-images of you,” she held one up next to her
shocked face and compared it, “he also spent the last five years
preparing for you. All of the things in here - the clothes, the
linens, even the furniture - it was all done with you in mind.” She
went to the closet and pulled several more volumes of art of her
from within.
    “I don’t,” Ashleigh licked suddenly dry lips
and sat down on the bed, “I don’t understand. If he really wanted
me to be his wife, why has he been gone all night and why is he
having sex with someone else’s wife?” She wanted to be mad at him,
but she felt completely torn and broken at seeing the pictures.
    Sloan interrupted her thoughts by joining her
on the bed. “Okay, so clearly Eden left out a large bit of his life
before you came here. He’s a brokah... It’s a, uh, I think
the term on your world is 'gigolo'?”
    She gaped at her in shock. “A gigolo is a
male prostitute.”
    She nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right. You
know how beautiful he is. Even as a child, everyone knew he was
going to be gorgeous. We were born into one of the poorest cities.
Our parents indebted themselves even further to send him to the
best boarding school so he could learn how to fit in among the
upper echelon of society. When he showed an interest in art as a
child, he was punished and told that it was folly. Art wouldn’t
help him gain employment that would help our parents to get out of
the slums. When he turned sixteen years, the age of sexual maturity
for our people, he was taken from our parents' home to the house of
the governor of Kyvern City. His wife had seen him at the school
and wanted him. Eden said that it was awful. The governor watched
him the whole time and made crude comments, and then he... Oh,
Ashleigh, the governor raped him while he was having sex with his
wife.”
    Ashleigh’s heart stopped dead, and her eyes
filled with tears. Immediately her mind flashed to the book she'd
read for her book club about abused children. Eden was as much a
victim as those children had been, sold for profit, tossed to the
wolves for money. Eden had suffered so much; all he'd asked of her
was time, and she hadn't given it to him.
    Sloan continued her story of Eden’s life:
that their parents sold him as a brokah , and he was taken to
the Bordelayz as a sex slave. For the last fifteen years, he
had been forced to service anyone who called for him. After the
governor raped him, he fought not to be taken like that again, and
eventually the males that preferred that sort of thing gave up on
him. But he was called constantly to the beds of married women
while their husbands watched him. Their world was casual about many
things, including the use of prostitutes by couples.
    It was his job. He was not allowed to deny
anyone no matter how much he was filled with disgust at the act. He
became addicted to drugs, trying to dull the pain and humiliation
he suffered, and then he overdosed, trying to kill himself. After
he tried to take his own life, Sloan paid for him to take the soul-walk and hoped that he would be able to find his mate.
That was five years ago.
    "What is this soul-walk you keep
talking about?"
    "Oh, sweet Ashleigh, he really didn't tell
you anything, did he? I think he must have wanted you to love him,
before he shared such painful things. The soul-walk is
something that our men do to find their perfect mate. It's a
drug-induced vision that leads them to where their bride is.
Machines hooked up to the males pinpoint the