Tithe
Page 7
“Now you’re just teasing,” I murmur, sliding up him, dragging all kinds of friction along the way.
Daniel drops to the floor beside us, sinking an elbow into the squishy bean bag. “So, what’s the story with Georga?”
Gabe groans.
I roll my cheek across his chest to look at Daniel. “You tell me.”
Daniel’s always up to something, but there’s something more than the usual spark of mischief in his eyes. “She didn’t want to dance with me, isn’t dancing with anyone.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like to dance?”
“Whatever.” He nudges Gabe. “A game of Foosball?”
“I’m kinda in the middle of something here, bro.”
“It’s okay,” I say to them both but Daniel’s already pushing to his feet and Gabe’s arms tighten around me when I try to shift away.
I look into his eyes, my fingers pushing through his hair as his hands fit onto my backside with an intimacy that apparently knows no boundaries. I’m conscious of the potential audience around us, but I don’t want to give this up either, the warm thrill cascading over inch of my skin, seeping into my veins.
I’m hot and bothered and we’re not even kissing…and then we are, his mouth moving over mine, coaxing my lips to part for him. I love the feel and touch of my soft curves pressed to his hard body. The kiss deepens until I’m ragged for breath, lost to the sensations washing through me.
“God, Senna,” he groans into my mouth, his hands shifting to my waist, holding me in place. “Let’s slow this down a minute.”
I don’t have much experience, but I’m not completely naïve. I lift myself off him and snuggle at his side. “Sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says, his voice a husky whisper. He turns into me, an arm folding me closer as he drops a kiss on my forehead, on my nose.
Warmth flushes through me. There’s a hunger in the bowl of my stomach that has nothing to do with food, a restless energy snaking through my bones. I’m that rock ballad from our first dance, young and wild and restless.
Nothing lasts forever, but Gabe is my forever.
“We don’t have to slow down, Gabe.” My heart pounds with the sudden rush of what I’m staying. My voice lowers to a whisper brushed into the hollow of his shoulder, half afraid to be heard. “We don’t have to stop.”
His gaze sinks into me, a look that caresses and lingers with thoughts that shade his eyes a darker, stormy blue. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Maybe we have the rest of our lives,” I tell him. “Maybe we only have weeks. I don’t want to waste any minutes taking it slow.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but then his jaw squares without a word.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I feel like I should argue against this,” he sighs, that stormy gaze burning into me. “But I really don’t want to.”
I laugh softly. “I always enjoy a good argument.”
“Only when you think you can win.”
“True.” I scrabble out of his arms. “Come on, there’s some place I want to show you.”
Outside, the night is balmy. The sky is cloudless, a vast endless black chipped with diamonds and a waxing crescent moon.
Gabe takes my hand in his as we walk. “This is probably for the best,” he says.
The disappointment in his voice is endearing. He thinks I’ve changed my mind.
I lead us to the gate in the fence. It’s only six feet high, easy to scale, and unnecessary as it turns out. The gate isn’t locked and opens without a sound.
Gabe tugs me back just as I’m about to sneak through. “What are you doing?”
I bat my lashes at him. “You took me to the wall for our first kiss. This is going to be our thing, a tradition of bad behavior firsts.”
It takes him a moment to register. I haven’t changed my mind. The air between us hums, charged again with that hot, restless energy. His fingers laced around my wrist become a tender, caressing bracelet.
“You mean to be all kinds of trouble tonight, don’t you?” he says, his eyes glinting with amusement in the moonlight.
His eyes stay on me for as long as possible as his mouth slowly, slowly, finds mine. The kiss is light, fleeting, the brush of butterfly wings on my lips. My heartbeat flutters with love and longing and something else…a wild, furious flutter of something trapped and desperate to escape.
Gabe closes the gate and we strike off down the road, hand in hand, shadows creeping in from the sides, the moon and stars lighting our way.
The night is still, not a breath of wind, but it isn’t silent. There’s the padded fall of our feet on gravel. The distant hum of insect life filtering through the trees. A whisper through the undergrowth alongside the path.
I breathe in a deep lungful of night air. It tastes like the woodlands that surround my farm. It tastes like freedom.
We’ve walked most of the way in companionable silence when Gabe says, “This isn’t you, Senna. Impulsive. Breaking the law.”
His voice is low, thoughtful.
I don’t feel judged. I feel seen, in a way that only Gabe ever could. My dad is an unreliable witness. As close a friend as I consider Jessie, there are parts of me that never stretched that distance between my farm life and her town living.
Gabe is the single, unwavering constant that sees all. He knows me as I know myself. And he isn’t wrong. The foundation of who I am is starting to show cracks.
He gives my hand a squeeze. “Talk to me.”
“It’s this place,” I say in stops and starts with lengthy pauses, figuring it out for myself along the way. “I feel like a prisoner running out of time… We’re locked away from the world like lawbreakers even though we’ve broken no laws. There’s a countdown clock around my neck and I don’t want…there are things I want to experience before it counts down. We won’t be Tithed. I know we won’t.” I have to tell myself that. I have to believe that. “But that doesn’t stop the clock from ticking.”
“Is that what your rebellion was about this morning?” he asks.
No, that was entirely different. The truth about Jenna’s asthma almost slips off my tongue. I know Gabe won’t say anything, he’d never betray my trust. I want to tell him. I don’t want to carry June’s secret on my own.
But that is the nature of secrets, isn’t it? If I tell, all I’ll be doing is passing this niggling weight on to Gabe.
“There was no rebellion,” I say with a laugh. “We don’t have to run just because Kane says run.”
He slides a look at me. “You don’t like Kane?”
“I don’t like him, I don’t dislike him.” I take my hand back from Gabe to smooth my hair from my face and knot it at my nape. “I barely know him. What’s this whole fitness thing about anyway? Did Kane ever say?”
“I didn’t ask. I guess it’s just something to keep us busy while we’re here.”
“Well that’s crap, but hey, it got us out from behind the fence.” I hear the sound of water and quicken our pace, pushing through the shrubbery and trees. “And it got us this.”
The scene is even more magical at night, bathed in moonlight and cast in shadows.
“Wow.” Gabe wanders over to the rock slabs, looking around in wonder. “This is something else.”
“I have a confession,” I say as I climb on the rock. “We didn’t walk the route this morning. We found this spot and parked here.”
“You didn’t miss much.” Gabe pulls me down to sit between his legs, his knees pressed to my sides. “Half of us were ready to pass out by the time we made it back. Kane made the other half do sprints.”
“And which half were you?”
“Well, I had to make up for my lazy girlfriend,” he drawls. “My calf muscles will pay for it in the morning, I’m sure.”
I smile out over the silvery water and rest the back of my head against his chest. We sit like that for the longest while, absorbing the tranquility around us.
We make love there, on that rock, beneath a waxing crescent moon. Gabe is so gentle, so passionate, so loving, I’m boneless with want and longing before he even slips his hands beneath my shirt.
He kisses every inch of me.
My fingertips caress the valleys of his jaw, the tendons pulling at his neck, the muscles flexing his arms and back, exploring like a map of some faraway fantastical land. He is hard where I am soft, bristled where I am smooth, earth where I am floral.
He tells me how beautiful I am, over and over again, brushing the words on my skin with his ragged breath. My blood turns to warm honey in my veins, flowing sluggish and slowly melting me from head to toe.
And just before he joins our bodies, Gabe looks into my eyes and tells me how much he loves me but it’s not the words that fill me up, it’s everything I see in his hooded eyes and his tender expression and the strain around his mouth. We are love. We are friendship. We are desire.
12
GABE’S WAITING RIGHT by the dorm for me the following morning. He pulls me aside and into his arms, his back against the wall, his smile slightly hesitant. “Morning, you.”
“Hey.” My smile is beaming. I haven’t stopped beaming since last night. I’m pretty sure I beamed in my dreams. My fingers curl into the material of his form-fitting black t-shirt (we have FT again this morning) and I push up to press my lips to his.
His mouth brushes over mine, catches my upper lip, slants to the corners, his words sliding between the spaces of those soft kisses. “Everything okay?”
“Perfect,” I murmur.
His hands cup either side my head as he looks at me. “Sure?”
He’s talking about last night. I resist the urge to roll my eyes at his worry. It’s sweet, actually. “I’m not a fragile buttercup, Gabe. You didn’t break me.”
You made me whole.
“It’s just…” he breathes out, his lips twisting into a half-grin. “I didn’t want to leave you, after. I wanted to hold you in my arms the entire night, you know that, right?”
“Get a room,” Jessie quips as she walks out the door. She has no problem rolling her eyes at the two of us, followed by a wink.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Gabe says to me.
I slip my hand into his and drag him along. “One day when we’re old and gray with more rooms than we need, we’ll think fondly on that cold slab of rock beside a deep, blue pool.”
Gabe’s chuckle rumbles with warmth. “I already think fondly on it.”
Two hours later, my cheeks flush with memories of last night as I find a spot on the rock slabs and stretch out. As predicted, the numbers of our rebellion have grown to include Rose, Emily and Georga.
The girls are chirping about the dance and who said what and who looked at who when Emily drops a bombshell. “Luke Williams offered for me.”
The responses trickle in.
“That’s amazing!”
“Luke? Seriously?”
“Congrats.”
Georga arches a sceptic brow.
“She hasn’t accepted and she isn’t going to,” Rose retorts. To Emily, she adds, “Why did you even bring it up? You’re not still thinking about it.”
I generally try not to impose uninformed opinions on other people, but Rose has a habit of rubbing me the wrong way. “Luke seems sweet,” I tell Emily.
“He didn’t even apprentice,” Rose says scornfully. “He works at the market stalls.”
I glare at her. Now this is personal. Gabe didn’t apprentice. Neither did I. “What does that matter?”
“It matters,” Rose snaps. “Everyone knows they Tithe in pairs and every pair has its own power dynamic that will sink or raise you.”
This is crazy. “You think Luke will be Tithed just because he works at a market stall?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she says. “But I do know who definitely won’t be Tithed. Jacob Darnley, apprenticed to the medical clinic. Chris Simmons, apprenticed to strategic services. Just to name a few. Ironcross hasn’t put three years into training our best and brightest just to Tithe them to the damn wall.”
I’m momentarily stunned silent. The truth will do that to you. “Still, your heart has to be the final judge.”
“I don’t love Luke,” Emily says softly. “He doesn’t repulse me. Other than that, I don’t really feel anything.”
I turn to her, confused. “So you’re not considering his offer?”
“Come down from your cuckoo cloud,” Georga drawls. “This place is a cattle bazaar, not a love machine. You don’t honestly think you can just throw thirty people into a mixer, blend for two weeks and spit out fifteen soul-mate pairs.”
“I’m not an idiot,” I mutter. “But there’s still time to find someone that makes you feel something, someone you may come to care for. I mean, what’s the alternative? Spending your life with some guy you barely tolerate?”
Georga shrugs. “Or not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks June.
Georga looks at her. “You all assume being Tithed is the end of the world. Maybe it’s just the end of—” she throws her arms out wide “—this world.”
“I always knew there was something wrong with you,” Rose says with a derisive laugh. “Well, you’re welcome to stay single and get yourself Tithed. Hope that works out for you.”
“I wasn’t asking for your permission,” Georga says.
I crawl over the rock slab to where Jessie is sunning herself, sprawled on her back in short shorts and face turned up to another seamless blue sky. “You’re very quiet.”
Her head rolls my way. “Just thinking about what Rose said.”
“Rose says a lot of things.” Most not worth too much thinking over.
Jessie goes up onto an elbow, fingers planted in her hair. “That thing about the power dynamic of pairs, how it could sink or raise you.”
“That’s our Rose, cutting straight to the hard, cold bone.”
“It’s a valid point.”
“I guess.” I study Jessie for a moment, realize how seriously she’s taking this. “You’re not worried about you and Harry, are you?”
Her eyes lower. “No.”
“Hey…” I give her arm a shake. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, it’s not important.”
“Jessie!”
Her eyes lift to me, her mouth working before the words finally slip out. “I know where Harry and I stand. We both have a younger sibling. He’s apprenticed at his parents’ bakery, I’m a seamstress, nothing special there. We’re balanced and it could go either way for us, but you’re an only child, Senna. That makes you pretty safe. Gabe comes from a big family, him and the twins, one of them will almost certainly be Tithed sooner or later.”
She pauses, watching me.
My hands fist in my lap.
When I don’t respond (what am I supposed to say?) she goes on, “That’s what I was thinking. Will you raise him? Or will he sink you.”
“That’s brutal,” I say through gritted teeth. “Maybe we just cancel each other out, did you ever consider that?”
Her gaze softens on me.
She doesn’t have to say it and she doesn’t. I’m really not an idiot. Sink or cancel, there goes my single-child advantage. And neither Gabe nor I are apprenticed. Farming is considered a vital resource, but it doesn’t take any special talent to feed chickens or pick fruit or collect eggs or shovel manure.
My throat thickens with emotion. “I don’t care. I’d rather be Tithed with Gabe than give him up.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you dump him.”
“Good.”
She lies down again, eyes turned to the sky. “Like I said, I was just thinking about things.”
And like I said, whatever comes out Rose’s mouth is generally not worth that kind of effort.
This entire conversation feels dirty, like a stain I desperately need to scrub away. I bury it in a dark corner of my mind where I never have to look at it again.
We have another seminar scheduled in the auditorium after lunch.
All four the Alders are seated up front, facing us, as well as Lt. Palmer whom we haven’t seen since our arrival. As is Kane, which it even more unexpected. He looks quite comfortable there, in his charcoal suit and white button down and too long hair.
I tear my eyes from Kane and latch onto Emily and Luke, sitting together two rows down from me across the aisle. Does this means she’s seriously considering his offer? Emily is rather pretty, straight red hair and pale green eyes. And there’s nothing wrong with Luke, if you like tall and gangly and a little goofy. From what I remember of Luke from school and what I’ve seen here, he’s as sweet and even-tempered as Emily.
I wonder if that’s enough to grow into happiness resembling love, maybe even love.
Then I’m wondering if happiness resembling love and maybe love is enough?
This is an ugly face of the Tithe I’ve never seen up close. Gabe’s parents seem genuinely in love and the way I remember it, so were mine.
Alderman Brisken steps up to the lectern, white-haired and shaggy-browed. He clears his throat, which doesn’t seem to help the croak in his throat as he greets us a good afternoon followed by the assumption, “I hear you’ve all settled in well and are comfortable. Lt. Palmer informs me he’s had no visits and no complaints.”
Jessie leans in to whisper at my ear, “If we knew Lt. Palmer was the complaints officer, there’d be a permanent line outside his door.”
I nudge her to be quiet and she immediately leans the other way to whisper at Harry’s ear.
“Now I’m sure you’ve been wondering at Mr. Marques’ inclusion in the proceedings this year,” Alderman Brisken continues in his scratchy voice. “We haven’t made the formal announcement yet, so you’re the first to hear. Mr. Marques has been elected into the Aldermanship as a Junior Alderman in training. He is a promising young man with incredible integrity, wisdom and foresight. It is my dearest hope…”