by Keri Lake
Swallowing back a second lump in my throat, I crouch down to the cupboard below, find a tube sticking out from a hole in the wall. Peering through the window over the sink, I follow the path of the hose to a massive tank set on the ground, where a funnel sticks up. I’m guessing that’s where rainwater is collected.
A water system.
Undrinkable, of course, unless we boil it.
I flip up the lever on the faucet, and the water reluctantly chugs from the spigot, a yellowish fluid splashing over the remains of my vomit, washing it down the drain. I grab one of the bigger pots to collect the water, filling it up nearly to the brim, and carry it to the stove to boil for drinking.
The corned beef sizzles in the pan as it continues to cook on low, and I give it a quick stir, before venturing into the room opposite the boy’s.
A bathroom.
Simple and small, with nothing more than a toilet, a tub and a sink.
Turning on the sink’s faucet produces the same chugging and rattling of the pipes, before a yellowish fluid expels. If I boil more water, I can fill a bath for later.
God, I could use one.
Returning to the kitchen, I cover my nose against the smell of the food, but unappetizing, or not, I’m eating it, anyway.
By the time Titus enters the house with Yuma in tow, the hash is ready, and I set out a plate for him.
“I cleared off the solar panels on the roof. Found a truck out back. Nice one. Fuel’s no good, though. We’ll have to find a hive to raid.”
“Raid? Why raid?” I spoon a scoop of the hash onto my plate, trying not to think about Titus’s earlier comment about the mouse.
“We have nothing to trade. They’re not going to willingly hand over fuel out of the goodness of their hearts.”
There’s food, but certainly not enough to offer an entire hive.
“We have some time. For now, let’s plan to hunker down for a few days.”
With a nod, I hold my nose and take the first bite of food.
Frowning, Titus watches me as he scoops up some of the food onto his spoon before shoveling it ungracefully into his mouth.
“I can’t stand the smell of this, but I’m too hungry to care. And your little comment didn’t help.”
He plops a spoonful onto the floor, where Yuma quickly gobbles it up clean.
“Thought you weren’t into sharing food with a mongrel.”
“This isn’t real food. It’s slop.”
“You’re already insulting my cooking. My apologies if it isn’t a palate pleaser,” I joke, taking another bite. “Honestly, I can’t believe people used to eat meat out of a can. Doesn’t seem right.”
In minutes, Titus polishes off his plate and pushes up from the table.
As if to leave it there.
“Whoa. Where are you going?”
“To gather wood for a fire we’ll need later. And to hunt for real meat.”
My eyes skate to the plate and back. “Aren’t you going to take care of that?”
Brows lowering, he backs up a step, grabbing the plate he left on the table, and carries it to the sink.
Once he’s rinsed it, I smile. “Thank you.”
“This is why I cook on a flame,” he grumbles, striding back toward the door.
Chapter 28
I turn the knob on the lantern, dialing up the light, which emits a soft glow around the darkening room. Carrying it by the loop at the top, I head toward a machine that’s on a table beside the bookcase, one I recognize from our museum back home as a CD Player. Popular in the early part of the millennium, until it was replaced by handheld devices and cloud music. My history teacher brought one into class once, allowing us to toy with it and play a few of the discs the library kept on file.
I blow the dust off the top of the machine, and pop one of the CD’s, labeled Classics of the 50’s and 60’s, into the player. The first song, according to the titles on the back of the disc, is one my mother sang back when I was a little girl, before she became consumed by the church. When her voice was soulful and full of life.
Share Your Love With Me by a lady named Aretha Franklin. Music fills the room, a sound I’ve missed so much. I sway to the beat and peruse the bookcase along the wall, holding up the lantern to see the titles on the spines. Smiling, I run my fingers over them, stopping on one I recognize from a literature class I took back in Szolen.
Pride And Prejudice.
Beside it is one I haven’t read, and I pull it out to find a black and white image on the cover of what could be the nape of a man, or woman’s, neck.
I flip through the pages, stopping on an excerpt that I whisper aloud as I read. Slamming the book shut on my finger calms the shock moving through me, particularly at the word cunt. Swallowing hard, I open it again and pick up where I left off. Another few paragraphs, and the titillation forces me to close it again. I’ve certainly read my share of love scenes in books, but nothing so graphic.
So erotic.
I thumb through the pages once more.
“What is that?” a voice says from behind, and I let out a small shriek, dropping the book.
Titus stands in the doorway, his taut muscles shining with sweat as he holds a stack of wood he must’ve recently chopped. He pauses to allow Yuma inside, then kicks the door shut after him.
“It’s just a book. That I found. Nothing really.” Clearing my throat, I lift the fallen book from the floor, placing it back on the shelf. I grab the one next to it instead, certain the humiliation is written all over my face.
“No. What’s the sound?”
After he sets the firewood on the floor, I notice red splotches of what appears to be blood. All over him.
“What happened? Are you okay?” I don’t know why the sight of him bleeding is so alarming, when only a day ago, I wanted to kill him myself.
“Got a mule deer hanging out back.” The pride in his voice is undeniable, and I realize, stripped of the chains and the fighting, the Alpha stuff that I still haven’t quite grasped, this is Titus--a simple man who enjoys hunting and nature. “It’ll be enough meat to last a while.” He jerks his chin toward somewhere behind me, and I turn, following the path of his gaze with a frown.
“Oh. The music? You’ve never heard music before?”
“Where’s it coming from?” Leaning to the side, his frown deepens as he studies the invisible crooning over my shoulder.
“It’s a machine that they used to play before the Dredge. It’s called a CD Player. And these …” Twisting around, I snatch the case from the table, holding it up to see the song is At Last by Etta James. “These are compact discs that play the music.”
The dubious expression on his face doesn’t seem to disappear with my explanation, but isn’t like I can go into too much depth, as I don’t quite understand how a bunch of etched circles lasered into a piece of plastic equates to music, either.
“I, um … boiled a bunch of water, if you’d like to clean up in the bath. Took forever, but there’s enough for both of us.” At his recoil, I realize what I’ve said and shake my head. “I mean … separate baths. You take yours, and I can take one after …” My eyes catch on all the blood smeared over his body. “You drain it and clean the tub out.”
“Take yours first, then.”
“Won’t that bother you? Being covered in all that blood?”
With a shrug, he shakes his head and sets logs inside the fireplace.
“Okay. I won’t be long.”
In the back bedroom, I find women’s clothing--mostly dresses, some T-shirts, tanks and shorts, nightgowns, and a robe that I slide from its hook. I carry the garment to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Three large pots of water sit beside the steel laundry basin I used to collect eight more pots worth. Only a scant amount of steam rises up from the water, telling me it’s cooled enough to use for bathing. I pour the first few pots into the tub, followed by a few more. It’s not enough to fill the basin, but it sits halfway. After undressing, I step ins
ide, greeted by luxurious warmth that engulfs me as I lower myself.
Even alone, my own nudity tends to leave me feeling vulnerable, and as the water snuggles just below my breasts, I hide them behind my crossed arms. The slight ache in them is yet another telling symptom of the pregnancy I can’t bring myself to accept.
There’s no way.
But what if my mother was right? What if God’s will is to watch me fumble with a baby out here?
What a horrible thought. A horrible fate for an innocent baby.
The tenderness has me rubbing the fleshy surface, and I sigh at the relief, accidentally letting out a small moan that seems to echo off the walls like a freaking megaphone.
Although the door is closed, I’ve heard enough horror stories of an Alpha’s sexual appetite to know not to trust Titus entirely. When Jack brought the other Alpha, the one who killed my father, back into Szolen, he was sure to warn me not to get too close. He said the mere scent of a woman was enough to set them off.
That hasn’t seemed to be the case with Titus so far, but lifting my arm releases the horrific body odor clinging to me. Perhaps it’s because I don’t smell very womanly, at all.
Swiping up a bar of soap I set out earlier, along with two washcloths, I clean the dirt away, pausing to sniff the sweet lavender scent. It fills the room as it carries on the rising steam, and by the time I’m finished, the aroma is almost overwhelmingly strong. So much so, it stirs my stomach again, but I swallow back the urge to throw up this time, and instead drain the water. As I stand up from the tub, I catch a shadow beneath the door, but it quickly disappears when I reach for the robe to cover myself.
Once dressed, I exit the bathroom and find Titus crouched by the fire, his back to me. Could’ve been Yuma at the door, I suppose.
I run my fingers through my wet hair to untangle the knots there. “All yours.”
Titus pushes to his feet and, when he turns to face me, diverts his gaze. As if he’s seen something he shouldn’t have.
Or maybe thought something he shouldn’t have.
He strides toward me, and as he passes, I take in the size of him, the way his body smells like metal and fire over a slight masculine odor. A hum of virility, of power, radiates off of him, like a magnet that pulls at something inside of me.
Almost primal.
He slips into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and with a glance over my shoulder after him, I only just notice my stomach is clenched.
Plopping myself onto the chair beside the fire, I crack Pride & Prejudice open to the first page, eyes skating over the words, but not really absorbing them. I lift my gaze to the book on the shelf. The one with the erotic passage. After another quick glance toward the bathroom, I scamper across the room and swap novels, before I return to my seat.
Prior to my first time, I was always curious about the act of sex. How it’d feel. Who’d be my first. With the scarcity of women, our world has become somewhat infatuated with the act, everyone so driven to produce offspring that we’ve failed to recognize the emotions and pleasures that are meant to coincide with it. Pleasures that seemed to be far more celebrated when my mother was a young woman and books like these were prevalent.
The kind of titillation that, although I’ve never felt the things described in this book myself, come alive when I pick up where I left off.
As the image painted in words on the page unfolds inside my mind, I bite my lip, suddenly sensing the rough cotton of the robe against my nipples, the ache between my thighs.
I’ve never read anything like this before, the descriptions so delicious and vivid, I can practically taste them.
It brings to mind my first time with Will, how awkward and uncomfortable the whole experience was. How joyless and painful, only meant to defy those who sought to rob me of choice. I did love my friend dearly, but sex with him held nothing of the passion and ecstasy I’ve read in books.
The guilt of that has me closing the cover, and a horrific thought sweeps through me: that I’ll forever be haunted by that first experience. That every sexual encounter to come will be shadowed by my first, by the untimely death of my best friend. And the child. God, what if there really is a child inside of me? What I’ve always been told is an impossibility, suddenly possible. I hold a hand against my belly, trying to imagine it bloated with life. I try to imagine a life out here, running from Ragers and hiding from Marauders with a wailing baby cradled in my arms. I’d never survive this side of the wall, and therefore, any newborn of mine doesn’t stand a chance, either.
I have to return to Szolen. Back to a safe place, where this baby, if there even is one, isn’t at risk every moment of its life. If nothing else than for my friend, who will never get the opportunity to meet the life he might very well have fathered. I have to survive for the sake of this baby.
I think back to Will’s words, when he told me he didn’t want to live anymore. How those morose thoughts struck me with such grief and disappointment. How could he be so willing to give up?
I wonder if Titus saw relief in his eyes when he took hold of him. I wonder if he saw something I didn’t. Perhaps killing Will was an unspoken favor between them.
At the click of the door, I look up to see Titus emerge from the bathroom in nothing but a towel that’s too small to wrap completely around his lower half, with one whole thigh sticking out from it. Where scruffy unkempt hair once covered his face is now smooth and clean shaven, revealing the sharp angles of his jawline. It’s striking how much younger and unexpectedly handsome he looks. Like a completely different man. The sight of him sends a strange tickle to my chest.
“Can I get your help with something?” He isn’t a man accustomed to asking for assistance, given the way he can’t even look at me right now.
“Sure.”
At the jerk of his head, I set my book aside and follow him into the bathroom. On the sink, he’s laid out shaving items he must’ve scrounged from the cupboards, and a pair of scissors, which he hands to me.
“Have you cut hair before?”
“I have. My brother’s.” Over the years, I’ve grown quite good at it, even trimming my own, when necessary.
“Do what you have to. I prefer down to the skin.” Though, with his clean-shaven face, the longer hair looks good on him.
He kneels down to the floor in front of me, and still he’s at neck-level. Two of me could fit in the span of his broad shoulders, and each of his arms is about the size of my thighs. Clearing his throat, he seems to be aware that lowering his gaze a bit puts his sights on my breasts, and as though he doesn’t know where to look, he glances to the side before settling somewhere along my collarbone.
I slip my fingers through the scissor holes and nab the comb from the sink, my breasts brushing against his shoulder with my reach. He flinches and clears his throat again. The idea that this enormous, beastly man seems to be entirely uncomfortable with my touch brings a smile to my face.
Standing before him again, I gather up a section of long hair and go to work, trimming and cutting, letting strands of hair fall to the floor around him. He remains still as a statue, the unwavering stance of a soldier my father would’ve praised, never moving, or saying a word, while I circle him, snipping away. By the time I’ve finished, his hair is short, a slight bit more than a buzzcut, and longer on top, as well. Enough to run fingers through without catching on anything.
Back at Szolen, if he were a Legion officer, the women there would probably fall at his feet, as handsome and fit as he is when cleaned up. They’d have fawned over his golden eyes and big muscles like cats in heat.
Even with as much resentment as I still harbor toward him, I can’t help but notice it myself. With warmth in my cheeks, I look away and gather up the fallen bits of hair.
When he stands to brush the snippings from his skin, I’m once again greeted by the small stretch of towel covering his bulging groin.
In an effort to distract my attention, I shuffle out of the bathroom to grab the
broom I used earlier to sweep the kitchen floor, and when I return, he reaches for it.
“Thank you,” he says, taking the broom from my grasp, inadvertently touching my hand.
“Of course.” Now I’m the one clearing my throat with discomfort, while he sweeps up the last of his hair, and I head back to the living room, swapping books, yet again, for Pride and Prejudice.
Titus disposes of the hair into the fireplace, and disappears around the corner. When he reemerges, he’s carrying a blanket, which he dumps in front of the fireplace, over the bear rug. “You can have the beds.”
“You’d prefer the floor?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t mind, I’m just going to stay to read for a while?”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
From the stack of wood he brought in earlier, Titus grabs one of the long branches and the knife he’s used the last couple of days, and plops down in front of the fire, still wearing that damn towel. Thankfully, he keeps his business end facing away, while he carves the tip of the branch into what will undoubtedly be a weapon, or meat skewer, from the looks of it, and I take my seat with the book still propped to the first page.
I settle in to read, skimming through the first page of Mr. Bennet and his wife’s exchange over the single, wealthy, newly-arrived bachelor in the neighborhood, and find my gaze wandering over the top of the pages, distracted by the man sat on the floor beside the fire. Even relaxed, Titus looks like a beast, with his steel biceps that hardly flex as he sits carving the wood.
Stop, I mentally chide myself, and go back to my reading. Another page, about the Bennet’s five daughters, morphs into the view of Titus’s lean, perfectly-arched abs, over which he bends, studying his work in silence. My fingers practically tingle with the urge to touch every ridge and I drop the book in my lap.
