It was a process of elimination.

Kinzie was the obvious candidate. Boss loved the girl, but she also liked to come out of a night between the sheets without her vital organs rearranged.

Shaundi was out. Boss liked to fuck girls, but she didn't like girls who were fucking crazy. Shaundi was also really fucking straight, and as alluring as the thought that the last few people in the universe would want to live out their days in a giant orgy regardless of gender, things just didn't work that way.

There was Asha, which would be pretty uncomplicated, but Boss just didn't feel it. Any woman who would fuck Matt Miller—yuck—was disqualified.

So that left Jane Austen.

Not that the lady wouldn't have gotten a second look if she wasn't as closely tied to their little group as she was. That rack was amazing, especially for a woman who was several hundred years old.

How hard could it be to seduce a lady from the Victorian era? Not like Austen had her pick of smokin' crime bosses in her day.

"So…you wanna fuck?"

Boss was pretty surprised when Austen only raised an eyebrow and handed her a book. Not exactly the welcome she'd hoped but no where near the worst response. Victoria writer ladies probably didn't like the term 'fuck'.

"Um, what do you want me to do with this?"

"Read it."

"You're fucking kidding me."

Austen raised that eyebrow again.

Boss stared down at the book in her hand. Silas Marner. She knew this book. She hated this book. Everyone hated this book.

"I'm not reading this."

"Then we'll never share a bed." Austen turned on her heel and flounced away.

"Hey, hey, hey, lady! We don't need a bed." But Austen continued walking away. Boss looked down at the book in her hand again. "How the fuck did she get this?"

"Kinzei."

"What?" Kinzei was deadpan, staring at her multitude of computer screens.

Boss sat down on her keyboard, prompting a shrieking, "What the fuck?!"

"Yeah, what the fuck. Mind telling me how Austen got a hold of a real honest to god book. One of the bright sides of Earth burning was all this shit was supposed to be gone forever."

Kinzei rolled her eyes. "I don't know why you're asking me. Zinyak probably saved as much as he could since that was what he did apparently."

Boss narrowed her eyes. Kinzei's mouth twitched. "Okay, okay! I may have helped her bind it. Why do you have it now?"

"I hate you so much right now, Kinzei."

"What?!"

Pierce apparently didn't get the message Boss called dibs on Jane Austen. Not that she'd attempted to read that damned book yet. At least Pierce came to her with his romantic hopes.

"So, I was thinking I might ask that Victorian lady if she wants some downtime."

Jane Austen would never in a million years want to have some downtime with Pierce. Victorian ladies didn't fuck around, clearly; Boss had tried. "Come on, Pierce. She's a classy woman."

Pierce rolled his eyes. "And I'm a classy guy. So we can be all classy together." His eyes narrowed at Boss's pointed look. "Are you saying she won't want to because I'm black? Because that's racist."

"Do you really think I'm racist?"

"Hell, yeah. You've talked some weird ass shit about Japanese schoolgirls."

"Completely out of context, Pierce. I'm just saying that Austen has different ideas about what a relationship should be."

Pierce's eyebrows shot up then back down. "Ooh, I get it. You've called dibs. Makes sense. You slobbered over her worse than you did Burt Reynolds."

Boss rolled her eyes and took a swig of her beer, glad their bromance was stronger than Pierce's short-lived lust for Austen. Zinyak's goons had some great reproduction skills: this tasted like good ole high class Earth beer. "Yeah. She's Jane fucking Austen."

"You only read Jane Erye thirteen times."

"That was Bronte, not Jane Austen," she snapped.

Pierce raised an eyebrow, not needing to say anything to make his point.

"Zip it."

"But you said—"

"That was in a really stressful moment, and we all agreed not to talk about that."

A book. A fucking book. This fucking book. When her homies asked her to do shit for them, it usually involved blowing stuff up, killing aliens, or fighting giant soda cans. Not reading a goddamn book. Not this goddamn book.

Boss really, really wanted some pussy. She really wanted some virgin Victorian vagina. Hah, what an alliteration. Her eighth grade English teacher would be so proud.

How hard could this be? It wasn't like she'd dropped out of school to avoid reading this piece of shit. If only Austen had given her a gothic novel—nope, her mind told her. No good came of thinking like that.

Boss leaned back in her plush bed and cracked open the cover. At least she was comfortable on Zinyak's giant ship.

"Chapter 1. In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses…Christ, that sounds like hell. –and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts… Holy crap, does this sentence ever end? …in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid…" Boss looked farther down the page. "This sentence is an entire paragraph. There's no periods on this goddamn page. This is worse than Faulkner."

Shit, why did she admit that?

She put a hand against her face and sighed before trying again. On the bright side, one page read a day would get her pussy in…she flipped to the back of the book…a year. Boss banged her head against the wall with another groan.

One page.

It was torture. "So everyone hates these weird pale people…these weavers? Why would people hate weavers? What's the big deal? And why the hell is the damn dog narrating this?" She laughed. "Heh, 'skilled in handcraft' and 'difficult instrument the tongue' huh?"

Another page of agony. Less than three minutes had passed by her clock, and those three minutes were hell. They were three minutes she'd never get back again. Three minutes lost of what little life she had left to live.

"No pussy is worth this."

The book bounced off the wall satisfyingly, and she went in search of Pierce to see if he wanted to take a little romp through time.

So reading this piece of trash wasn't all that bad if she let her eyes go out of focus as she looked down the page. She really wasn't sure what happened to Silas, but at least she finished the damn book and read the last sentence. Something about a kid, something about a marriage. She knew the main points; she'd bluffed through harder things before. "And they lived happily ever after in their house. The fucking end."

Boss got up and marched to Austen's suite. She knocked on the door out of courtesy because Victoria ladies didn't just let lustful women march into their room.

"Come in."

Well, Austen was getting used to the informality of the Saints. Boss stepped back as the door swished open, and she walked through the threshold, flexing her bicep. If she thought it would get her into bed, she would try to slap her bicep to her lats, but somehow she guessed Austen wouldn't find that caveman approach particularly sexy.

Austen was reading, as usual.

"You're gonna go blind soon."

"Nonsense. There's so much light I hardly strain my eyes." Austen glanced up with a distracted smile. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Boss tossed the cursed piece of shit book on the table next to Austen. "Finished."

Austen glanced at the book, unimpressed. "What was his daughter's name?"

Shit, why didn't she know this? She'd just finished the damn book a minute ago, and the name was right there, it was…it was—"Edie."

Austen picked up the book and held it out to Boss.

Boss snatched the book from her, raised it threateningly, and lowered it again, unable to formulate a reply to adequately describe the indignity of this outrage. "Eppie! I was one fucking consonant away. Who names their kid Eppie anyway? I— You—fuck everything!"

She needed to kill something and kill it fast. Nazi hunting might take the edge off. Or a good Medieval War with swords and shield and maces.

Boss glared at the book in her hand. "Fuck you, Silas Marner."

"I hate you; you know that?"

"How is the book?" Austen asked, reading her own.

Boss flopped down in the chair next to Austen's. Her spine creaked; she'd tweaked it on the chariot. Ben Hur had nothing on her. "You chose the worst book in existence, didn't you?"

"Yes, well, aren't I supposed to make you work for it?"

Boss leaned her head against the seat arm, her eyes tracing over Austen's face. She was pretty, maybe, but not hot. Not the kind of features that made Shaundi splash across a million billboards and magazine ads. But she was nice to look at.

"Was there ever a Mr. Darcy for you?"

Austen's face shifted in shock. She stared at her book pages for a moment before lowering the book and meeting Boss's eyes. "You've read Pride and Prejudice."

Only ten times, but she had to pretend to play hard to get too. "I wanted to make sure it wasn't a shitty as the piece of shit you gave me to read. Kind of funny a crappy book would break my libido. Took a while to get used to the language—probably missed a lot of important shit. Was Mrs. Bennett written from your mother because I gotta say, she was annoying."

"Some aspects."

There was something wrong with her. Boss leaned her head back to look up at the plush red ceiling of the lounge. "My mother was a whore."

Austen jumped in shock.

"I'm not being figurative. She was a prostitute. Took care of me though. Made me go to school and keep my shit together. She made me read too. I hated school, but she told me, 'You have to get an education. No one can take that away from you.'"

"Did you?"

Boss laughed hollowly. "Fuck no. Social services figured out what she did for a living and threw me in a foster home, and I didn't have to go to school anymore. Started running with gangs, met Julius… I was in a coma for a while, and when I woke up, I found out Momma was dead. The rest is history."

"What about your father?"

"Momma used to tell me these stories about a soldier who died in the war, who loved me and wanted to be my Daddy so bad. It was kinda like the toothfairy; you only believe it as long as you want to believe it because you don't really at all. My father was just some john who got tired of his wife."

"I'm sorry."

Boss shrugged. "Nothing to be sorry about. He's dead too now. Look, I've read Jane Erye eighteen times. Does that count?"

Austen laughed softly. "I knew there was something more than bawdy jokes and blasphemy to you."

Boss leaned closer, hearing a 'yes', but Jane held up one hand. "What is your name?"

Another test. Boss sucked on her teeth and glanced back to make sure the door was shut. "This doesn't leave the room. No one will know this, and you won't say it ever."

Austen's smile was smug and amused, but she clearly had to have an answer before Boss could enjoy the fruits of her labor. Boss sighed again. "My name is Elizabeth Bennet. Seriously. Can I fuck you now?"

"That almost makes this awkward."

"Only if your last name is Darcy."

Austen gave a a fleeting smile. "Well, come here then. I suppose I can't be picky with my prospects, and what use is marriage to us?"

And so, Boss got the girl.