by V. K. Ludwig
“Please tell me you are ready,” River said. “Rowan mentioned he wants to talk to us the moment we get there, and I don’t want to miss out on Oriel’s elk sausages. If we don’t hurry, there won’t be any left by the time I reach his fire pit. You should try some too.”
I shoved the computer between mattress and bed frame and climbed down. “Ready whenever you are.”
“Who died?” River asked.
“What?”
He took a step towards me and analyzed my face. “You make a grimace like a bear mauled your grandma to death. Are you not well? I can tell Rowan —”
“No clue what you’re talking about.” I walked over to the wardrobe and punched my fists into the sleeves of my jacket. “Let’s just get it over with. I hope they have some cheese and nuts.”
When he didn’t answer, I turned around. His eyes wandered over my body and allowed themselves to rest on my breasts and between my legs a few times. Like sweaty palms, they caressed me lust-filled and hungry for more. Heat spread along my thighs. As if tied to an invisible thread that tugged on me, I took a step towards him. His eyes flung up and locked with mine.
I wanted him to take me into his embrace and wrap his rock hard body around me like an impenetrable shell. My raw need for his nakedness shocked me. I needed to join my body with his once more like we did that one night. I took another step towards him, wordless, and leaned my head back ever so slightly to reveal my vulnerable neckline. Please, kiss me and make this heavy feeling disappear from my heart.
He stomped towards me. For a moment, he stopped as if to take in my scent. Or maybe he tried to detect a leftover trace of his own, which had washed away days ago. Then, he took another step, grabbed his jacket and stepped out the door.
River rumbled along the trail under huffs and puffs, and I shuffled behind him trying to keep up. He was pissed because I wouldn’t let him have me for days… But things changed now, didn’t they? My red flower had left as unexpectedly as it had arrived, and by now, no touch would have any consequences. At least not for a few days. But first, I had to ask him.
“Can you slow down please?” I shouted behind him, cold air weaving its way inside my bursting lungs.
“I told you I don’t want to miss out on the sausages.”
“Yeah ok, but…” I took a deep breath. “I think there’s something I need to talk about with you.”
“No need, princess.”
The word touched my ears and annoyance pumped through my veins. Like the tickle that wouldn’t stop and eventually turns into uncontrollable fury. Princess?
“It’s important, River. I really think we should —”
“Listen.” He turned around so fast I almost bumped into him. “Save yourself the trouble. There is nothing to talk about between us. Curiosity got the best of you, and that’s all there is to it. Now that you figured it all out, I guess it just died down. It’s ok, really. I was thinking about it myself, and I believe it’s for the better, anyway.”
How did he know I figured it out? Did he peek through the window when I searched for his Newgenics file? I bit down a wave of nausea which raged at the base of my neck. If he knew that I knew, why did the air still taste as stale as a room full of unspoken words? I wanted to find out what exactly disqualified him. Not that it would make a difference, but the question burned inside me like a lantern that refused to die down.
“I still want to —”
“Didn’t you get what I just said?” He balled his fists and drew in a sharp breath. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just pretend I was never inside you because it wouldn’t make a fucking difference.”
His body shook, and fury all but oozed from his eyes. Then his shoulders sagged, and he turned and continued on the path without another word. That’s how bad it was? He wouldn’t even tell me? Maybe some sort of brain cancer. Or a cognitive issue? My heart tugged heavy on its strings.
I followed him in silence, and we reached the village at the height of the bustle. The breeze carried gentle hums from guitars across the center; claps and laughter thundered through the alleys between the mud-caked walls.
The air hung heavy between the villagers, and scents of salt, paprika, and dried onions clung to the strands of my hair. White and gray smoke rose into the night sky from several fire pits scattered across the village center. Each one packed with sausages, ribs, and other foods as unknown to me as the songs the women sang, the men stood about rubbing their stomachs.
Other than Rowan, Bry, and Einar, the longhouse stood empty and dark, except for the gleaming embers in the fire pit. A sign they had been waiting for quite some time on our arrival. Bry didn’t gaze up when we stepped inside, but turned her head away and rubbed the sleeves along her arms. I she still upset with me?
“I was about to come up there and drag you down by your nose,” Rowan snarled. “Sit your asses down so we can get this over with.”
Get what over with? River gave me a questioning grimace, but I had as little a clue as he did. Einar stared me down from cold eyes, and Rowan scrunched his face.
My butt hadn’t even touched the wood of the bench yet when Rowan pointed at me, the tip of his finger as sharp as a dagger. “Did you give Bry from your enhanced water, so she could use it on her husband?”
Whaaat? My eyes darted over to Bry once more, but she continued to stare into the room, scratching her arms like she had some sort of pest gobbling her up. How did they find out? Ugh. Why is everyone staring at me like that?
“Um,” I said.
Sweat formed around my spine and made my shirt stick to my skin. Why did they make me feel so nervous? I have done nothing wrong. Bry asked me, and I helped her out. She had good reasons!
I jutted my chin. “I did. She came to me the day we met and asked me if she might have some of it. I figured I had plenty to spare since the Districts sent so much.”
River rubbed his palm over his face as if he had a thick layer of oil stuck to it. Einar’s cold stare drifted away, and he shook his head in disbelief.
Rowan took a step towards me. “I could be wrong, but aren’t people from the Districts supposed to be really smart? Why did you think she needed the water?”
“Well, she told her husband kept asking her for, well…”
“Sex?” Rowan asked.
“Yeah, that.” I nodded. “Bry said it was too much for her with the pregnancy and all. She said she wanted it so Einar would not want it anymore.”
Rowan raised a brow, and his eyes wandered over to Bry, choking the room into the silence I’ve only known graveyards to have.
“You said what?” he asked her. “Do you understand how you make us look with that bullshit story of yours? The Districts vaccinate their entire population with the lies of how we men suffocate our women with our lust. Huh. And you run to one of theirs, on the first fucking day you meet her, and tell her your husband pushes his cock down your throat?”
Cock down a throat? I’ve seen pictures of that in a forbidden magazine, but I figured it was satire. They really stuffed like that?
Bry shot up and flung her hands onto her hips. “What else was I supposed to tell her?”
“Uh, I have no idea,” Rowan shouted. “How about Hi I’m Bry, nice to meet you?”
“Oh shut up Rowan, you get what I mean,” she stomped her heel into the ground. Einar tugged on her arm gesturing her to sit back down, but she wouldn’t have any of it. “You ship our husband’s samples out with no consideration to us wives whatsoever. I am carrying Einar’s child inside of me. Our first child. But every night when I go to sleep, I wonder how many more of his children are actually out there.”
She flung her arm toward the door. Oh! Is that why she yelled at me that day? She didn’t want me to get my hands on her husband’s sample. She wanted no one to get their hands on his sample. Then she looked straight at me. Gulp! Her death-stare made me want to pee my pants. She will not tell on me, will she?
“Did you have any knowledge of this?” Rowan asked Ri
ver.
“I… I swear,” he stammered. “I had no freaking idea.”
“Are you telling me they smuggled I don’t care how many heavy glass bottles of water, and you didn’t even notice?”
River forced down an audible gulp and threw me his very own version of a death stare. One more of those, and I feared I would crumble to pieces right in the spot.
“I want everyone out, right fucking now,” Rowan yelled. “Except you, Ayanna.”
Oh no! Didn’t he say he wanted everyone out? My knees trembled, and my head spun. This day is a freaking mess!
“I’ll wait outside by the door for you. You’ll be safe with Rowan,” River mumbled and left the room along with the others.
I shoved my behind from one end of the bench to the other. Rowan paced back and forth in front of me, his hands clasped behind his back. His chest bulged and collapsed like clockwork with every calculated step of his feet.
“Do you understand why Bry did what she did?” he asked.
I breathed in relief. “Because she doesn’t want other women to have his children?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “That. Because what we have between a husband and a wife is sacred to us. The way we see it, a child is supposed to be something special a couple shares with each other. An embodiment of their love, so to speak.”
“Why do you trade it then?”
“Oh, believe me, I wouldn’t trade it if circumstances were different. But there are things we need that we can’t produce yet. Certain medications. Some technology. I love those hygiene pods of yours! I take a nice long steam shower every morning after my run.”
“Hm.”
He stopped to look at me. “I’ll just like to say that our men are not as bad as the council makes them sound. Women are not forced into marriages here. Feelings develop naturally between them, and whatever they do between closed doors is wanted by both. I get it’s hard for someone like you to understand how all this works — the bodily desire for a man.”
Oh, I got it way too well! In fact, I couldn’t think about anything else when River stood close to me. My body yearned for his touch. At least for the next four days… I gave a shrug and wrestled my face into the most innocent of looks.
“Is River treating you well?” Rowan’s eyes studied my breath, my jawline, my lips… all at the same time. “Other than the protein farm joke of course.”
“Yeah, he treats me well.”
“Not sure if he ever told you the story, but he saved my life once. Right here in this room. I assigned him as your guard because I knew I could trust him. He didn’t touch you, did he?”
“Uh, what?”
A sudden rush of blood made my ears tingle. I did a quick touch count. Yeah, he definitely touched me. No more than I touched him. But still enough to be sent to the Ash Zones a hundred times. Rowan bore his intense eyes into me like an instrument of torture that would make anyone spill his guts. Would he be able to smell the lie before it even jumped from my tongue? I had to give him some sort of satisfaction.
“I once accidentally touched him out of excitement,” I said. “But he immediately pulled away. To be honest, I think it made him upset, and he urged me not to do it again.”
He cocked his head from one side to the other as if he tasted my half-lie like a good wine.
“Alright then. You can go now and enjoy yourself. This will be your only harvest festival with us, so you better make it count.”
He dismissed me with a nod, and I hurried to the door before he would come up with more questions.
“One more thing,” his voice rumbled through the longhouse like an avalanche. I stopped, turned and held my breath. A smug smile on his face made my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.
“Don’t cause any more trouble,” he said.
“Of course not,” I said. “I promise I won’t make any more trouble.”
Chapter 19
On to something
River
“Not to play devil’s advocate here, but I almost regret Rowan did away with the spanking of women.” My words choked on my anger. “If he didn’t, I’d pull you over my knee right about now and slap that skinny ass of yours. Nobody ever deserved it more than you.”
She chewed on her bottom lip and avoided my gaze. Ayanna fucked up big time, adding another hot drop to my already boiling water. With a dry-aged elk sausage in one hand and a mug of sweet honey mead in the other, I gestured her to follow.
“Want some?” I asked, going straight for the gravel path back to the cabin.
“You know very well we rarely eat meat.”
I couldn’t have cared less about her strained voice. She got what she had coming. I hope Rowan gave her a good dress down.
“Uhu,” I said and took another bite of the sausage. “I do. I just thought you might want to try something new. Don’t you like trying new things? After all, you can take a nibble and then spit it out.”
“That’s wasteful.”
I turned around and held the maple-smoked thing under her nose. “Exactly my thoughts! A good sausage going to waste, all because you can’t stick to the choices you make.”
“What are you talking about?” She wrinkled her forehead. “And where are we going? This is the way back to the cabin.”
“That’s right, princess.”
“Stop calling me princess! I hate when you do that.”
I turned around and kept on walking. “Whatever you say, my queen.”
With each of her steps, she breathed heavier, stomping herself into a near frenzy. I continued on the trail with a smirk on my face, bathing in the annoyance she had for me as if it was a cold shower after a seven-mile run.
Monk waited by the door of the cabin, rolled up in a tight ball and waiting for me to let him in. With winter less than a snowflake away, he stretched himself out in front of the stove the moment we got inside.
“Oriel and Adair will be here any minute, so we better get you ready.”
Her innocent eyes widened, and for a second I wanted to pull her against my chest and press my mouth onto hers with all my force. And no matter how much she tried to push me away or wiggle out from underneath my arms, I wouldn’t let go.
I knew better, of course. Now that she had a taste of what it feels like to be a woman, she had retreated to her numb shell. And I, the left behind idiot who had experienced her sweet body once — never to be repeated. Fuck my luck!
“Ready for what?” she asked.
“Try these,” I threw a small pair of leather breeches onto the floor. “You can’t walk around out there like a burlap-wrapped potato. Everyone will spot right away that you’re from the Districts.”
“Out where?”
I pointed at the drawstrings on the side. “We can adjust the width with those. If it’s way too long, we’ll just cut it off.”
“I’m not wearing a dead animal.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and threw me an angered look.
“I didn’t ask you to wear it. I told you to wear it. Now put that thing or —”
“Or what?”
I took a step back; for the first time in days, she didn’t shrink away. I leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Or I will grab you by your hips, throw you onto my bed and rip that pants off your body. And just so I’m clear… this time I won’t be gentle, because that train has left the station.”
I remained towered over her for way longer than necessary. To intimidate her a bit. Or, that’s what I told myself. In reality, I took in the scent of her freshly washed hair and the thin layer of sweat which had formed on her skin. Did I push her too much? Perhaps things would have been different if I had given her more time.
No, that’s bullshit. She wanted the best of both worlds, and I was naïve enough to give it to her. What made me think a bastard like me could whoo a girl from the Districts?
“This thing as well.” I grabbed a bullet-proof vest from the trunk beside my bed, and a pair of decent boots from the wardrobe. “It’s dangerou
s to go there with a group of four men, but it's even worse when one of them looks like a woman.”
“River, you’re scaring me.” She fought back a tear. Oh no! Don’t you go all crying on me again! Shit! Once that tear rolls down her cheek my brain’s gonna turn to mush.
“Look,” she continued. “I get you are upset because I snooped around behind your back instead of asking you directly but… Can you please tell me what all this is about?”
I took a deep breath. “I spoke to Adair and Oriel yesterday, and we decided we would… hey, wait a minute. What did you mean by snooping around instead of asking me directly? Asking me what?”
She sniffed. “About your databank profile. I tried to talk to you about it. But the first time, Silas had that seizure. And earlier when we walked to the village, you said there is nothing to talk about, so I just left it at that.”
My head spun so hard I expected to fall on my ass any moment now. If this wasn’t about her regretting what happened between us, then what?
I quickly pulled a chair across and plunged myself down. “Then let’s talk now. Whatever it is you wanted to ask, I’m all ears.”
She stood in front of me like a drowned rat, her eyes red-streaked and her pants unbuttoned. “You don’t have a Newgenics profile.”
So that’s what this is all about? That I’m not in the databank? I clenched my jaw and sucked in my cheeks. Why did she look me up in the first place?
“No, I don’t.”
Her gaze darted across the room, buying herself more time. She grabbed herself a chair as well and pulled it in front of me. Leaning against the backrest, she placed her cute little feet on the edge of mine. “Why not?”
“I wouldn't meet the requirements, Ayanna. Dyslexics aren’t allowed to donate since it’s hereditary.”
Confusion washed over her face. “Dyslexics?”
“Well, my brain is wired differently. Or, that’s how they explained it to me when I was diagnosed as a kid. Reading and writing were always tough for me. But my brain makes up for it with creativity. That’s why I engineer all the improvements here. And I’m good with numbers too.”
