by V. K. Ludwig
Five minutes later we were out of the clinic and headed over to the village store, which was nothing more but a huge repurposed cargo trailer with squares cut out for windows. The moment I held the door open, and Ruth stepped inside; all eyes were on her.
Some guys hid it well and stole glances over the edges of magazines or through a stack of canned pickles. Others gorged themselves on her, letting their stares slither across her breasts and down between her legs. Those were the ones I had to look out for.
“Make it quick,” I said and pointed at the tackle in the back corner. “I’ll be over there and see if they got something new. Perhaps I’ll find gear for you, and we can take a trip to Wolf Lake for some ice fishing.”
“I only want to look around a bit and see something else for a change. Perhaps they got coffee?”
“I’ll ask Earl. Shout if you need me, or if any of these guys bother you, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” she said and strolled off.
Her hand darted for each can she came across on the crooked five-tiered shelves, the colonial red paint peeling in large flakes off the edges. She turned them around, squinted at each label as if deciphering them was a possibility, then placed them back in neat stacks.
I walked over to Earl, the owner, who leaned against the counter, his eyes glued to Ruth.
“She’s a pretty one, heh? Didn’t expect I’d ever get to see one of them Districts women at my old age. Never thought they’d look like one of ours either.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Guess I’m just a silly old man who can’t believe how many more women we got now. In my time, I would have done everything for a girl like her to choose me. She’d make a fine wife, heh?”
I followed his gaze. Ruth didn’t want a husband; she had mentioned it many times.
She stood in the corner by the wooden apple crate seemingly sniffing and taking in the scent of each one, indifferent about how every guy inside this building stared at her. I included.
For most in here, her beauty came from her tits and the fact that she had a pussy between her legs. To me, it was all that, and the way she pushed her knees inside her nightgown when she watched a scary movie with us, or that she, indeed, sniffed on each fruit or veggie she came across.
I pointed at the metal locker behind him. “Got any coffee grounds left in your treasure chest there?”
“Ay. Got a pound left from the Districts, but it’ll cost’ ya.”
He pulled a key chain from his belt, stretched his plum-shaped body as long as he could and unlocked the metal cage. Then he retrieved a dark green package, the corners banged up and held together with red electrical tape.
“How much?” I asked.
“Three-hundred.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Three… Earl, that’s what I make in a month, man.”
“What you want me to say, Adair? It’s my last bag. If you’re fancy enough to ask for coffee, you gotta pay up.”
I let a tsk hiss from my tongue. “It’s not even for me. She asked for it.”
He bounced his head from one side to the other as if weighing his options, then placed his hand onto the package of the world’s most expensive coffee. “You like the girl?”
Yes. “She’s alright.”
He shoved the package toward me. “Tell you what. You give me one-hundred, and it’s yours. For the lady. Because you like her and I want her to like you back.”
“I didn’t bring that much,” I said and held out my hand. “How about I’ll leave you fifty and come back tomorrow with the rest. I promise I’m good for the money.”
He grabbed for my hand and gave it a good shake. “I know you are, Adair. I know you are. Now get her that coffee before she likes that one over there better.”
“Which one?”
I swung around.
Tension crawled up my spine and snaked into my arms at what I saw. A guy with the face of a mailbox leaned against the shelf, hands inside his pockets and a stupid smile on his muzzle. He stood about half a foot too close to her, but that wasn’t what pissed me off.
Across from him stood Ruth, playfully tugging on the collar of her sweater and offering that fool her undivided attention. She reached her hand out for him several times, never touching him but still somehow encouraging him to inch closer. Something hot and toxic seeped into my veins and made me clench my fists.
I fumbled a bunch of bills out my pocket, smashed them onto the counter, and grabbed the bag of coffee. Then I marched right over to them.
“Is that guy bothering you?” I asked.
She folded her arms and rubbed the base of her neck, a couple of um’s and uh’s spilling over the rim of her mouth. “He didn’t touch me or anything. Tarren and I just talked.”
“Well, Tarren is standing a bit too close to you.” I pushed myself in front of him and threw the coffee onto the nearby shelf, my hands twitching and ready to throw a punch.
“I don’t want any trouble, Adair,” Tarren said and backed up until he bumped into the shelf behind him, making a couple of soap bars fall to the ground and roll into hiding. “I had no clue you are her guard. She told me she needed a new one, and I figured I would —”
“You told him what?” I asked and glanced over my shoulder, finding Ruth with her eyes staring at the ground, and her upper lip stuck between her teeth.
“What are you getting at Tarren for?” a guy asked and stepped up beside us.
“This woman is under my protection, and Tarren here was just a little too friendly with her. Not to mention a little too close.”
Tarren swung up both palms. “Stay out of it, Ben. I didn’t do anything. She was the one who approached me, and I swear she flirted with me.”
My heart pumped that toxic heat through my entire body now, and I wanted to punch him so bad. But I wanted to strangle her even more because I knew what Tarren said was most likely true.
“Arrogant pricks,” Ben snarled. “Getting all the women because you’re on Rowan’s good side. How ’bout I send you to the ground and show that chieftain of yours what good a fighter I’d make? Maybe he’ll even give me a shot at this little doll.”
“Come on, Ben, leave it be.” Tarren took a few steps to the side, his palms still up. “It’s not worth the trouble, man.”
I slowly turned around and faced Ben. “He’s your chieftain, too.”
His veins strained against the skin of his neck, and he spat over his shoulder. “Ay, the chieftain who fucks that traitor bitch of his.”
“Shut up, Ben,” Earl shouted from behind his counter. “I won’t have you talk about our chieftain like that inside my store.”
I held my hand out for Ruth and gestured her to grab it. The moment our fingers intertwined one massive pulse shot through my veins.
“Turn around,” I said and shoved her into the corner behind me, then I fell into a wide stance and pumped up my chest.
Ben took a step toward me, a dirty and mean smirk on his face. “Tell me, Adair, is she still tight down there like a young cunt?”
An unchecked squirm went through my body.
“I see,” he continued. “She didn’t let you yet. Guess River plays the game a lot better than you do.”
He blocked my punch with his forearm. A sting burned my knuckles, and Ruth let out a frantic scream behind me. All around us, men hurried over, either cheering the fight with their hollers or trying to talk it down.
Ben sent a high kick toward me, but I let my boot come down onto his ankle and brought him back to the ground.
The room around me blurred, and a rush of adrenaline pumped into my limbs. The wound on my stomach ached each time I threw a punch or angled away from Ben’s, but I barely felt the pain. Ruth was the only thing that counted at that moment.
I threw myself shoulder first against Ben, sending him into a stumble and a struggle for breath. The moment my fist came down on his neck sealed the outcome, and he tumbled heaving to the ground.
“Eno
ugh!” Earl pushed himself through the crowd with short, hurried steps, his shotgun in his hand and pointing at everyone, then Ben. “Did he cut ‘ya? You’re bleeding, lad!”
I looked down at myself and how the wound must have torn open once more, the dark blood slowly seeping through the fabric of my hoodie.
Ben’s eyes rested on it as well, and that dirty smirk of his returned once more to his face. He pulled himself up on the shelf and rammed his elbow into my wound, sending a sting into my core that all but ripped the lungs from my chest.
The shotgun cocked.
“Get them away from each other already,” Earl shouted. “Someone take that bastard and bring him to the longhouse. Nothing but a troublemaker, starting a fight like that in front of a woman.”
Two men grabbed Ben by his arms and dragged his exhausted body off. All the while, I struggled air back into my lungs to say the only thing that counted at the moment.
I turned toward Ruth, who stood shaking in the corner. With one hand pressing onto my stomach, I emphasized each word: “A new guard?”
“You need help getting her home, lad?” Earl asked, and the surrounding party broke up and left the store.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll take care of her, I can guarantee you that.”
I set into motion, each of my footsteps sending a vibration of excruciating pain into my body. Ruth followed in silence, her head low, and her eyebrows drawn.
“Adair, your coffee,” Earl shouted behind me.
“Keep it. And keep the money. I’m sorry for the damages.”
Then I mumbled into my beard. “No coffee for this one.”
Chapter 5
Ruth
Adair’s angry stomps came down like earthquakes, and I worried the living room tiles might break underneath the force. He packed a punch against the door of his room, which fell open and crashed knob-first into the wall. Plaster dust fluttered into the air.
“Get in there,” he snarled, his finger pointing like a dagger at the armchair by the window.
“But your room is off-limits to me,” I said, my voice such a squeak, I sounded like a miniature version of myself.
“If you think Hazel walking in might save you, then you’re wrong.”
He gave me a fury-dripping look and stabbed the air with his finger once more, his lips pouting in a mix of pain and anger underneath his bunched-up beard.
I walked to stand in the corner, my heavy arms dragging my shoulders toward the ground. To say it with the words of a clansman: I fucked up big time.
“What is wrong with you?” He ripped the doorknob from the wall and a piece of it right with it, sending it slamming into its lock. “You put me in a fight. But what’s even worse, you put yourself in danger. A new guard? Really, Ruth?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “We only talked and —”
“And then you mentioned casually how you need someone better than me? Why? Am I not good enough at keeping you safe?”
Too good. “Of course you are, but —”
“Did I ever treat you with anything but respect, or come too close to you?”
I wish you had. “No, but —”
“If we gave you the impression this Clan is safe, then I’m afraid you misunderstood.” He kicked his boots into the corner and threw his hands onto his forehead, acting as a curtain to the display of pain and disappointment on his face. “Rowan made it safer, yes, but young women still get assaulted, especially if they are as foolish as you. What did you want with that guy?”
He gave me no chance to respond, but instead hasted toward me and built himself up inches away from me. “You could have gotten us killed if it wasn’t for the fact that we were inside the village. And the way you gazed up at him and laughed at his jokes…”
A breath gulped through his throat, and he let himself fall back, bringing distance between us and something calmer onto his voice. “You’d flirt with any guy, wouldn’t you? Doesn’t matter if it’s me, or some fool inside a store.”
The muscles around my chest clenched, and it dawned on me that Adair’s pride as a man might have ached more than the oozing wound on his stomach.
I took a step toward him and pointed at it. “We need to stop the bleeding.”
He hesitated for six of my ear-shattering heartbeats, then he grabbed the hem, pulled the thick fabric over his head and dropped it next to us on the ground. A fine mist of sweat had settled on his strong chest, which lifted in an irregular and pain-shaken pattern.
“Will you let me clean it for you?” I asked.
Wordless, he pointed at a little wire basket on his nightstand, packed with first-aid and wound care items.
I brought it over and placed it down in front of him, then I kneeled down. His eyes wandered to the triangular, wooden box which hung above the fireplace, the white stripes yellowed and the blue faded.
I grabbed the brown iodine bottle, stopping my other hand inches away from his skin. “Can you spread it open for me? I need to soak up the blood and sterilize it once more.”
Two fingers wandered toward the wound, spreading it open less than an inch above the belt on his pants.
I took some white dressing, bunched it up between my fingers and carefully worked it into the wound, making him flinch and moan. Once soaked, I pulled it back out, dropped it into the basket, and pumped the spray bottle twice.
“Fuck!” he shouted and pulled his hand off the wound. “A warning would have been nice. It burns like a motherfucker.”
“Sorry. I didn’t expect a clansman would fuss so much over a bit of iodine.”
I inched my lips closer to his wound and breathed across it in gentle strokes.
The rise and fall of his chest stalled, and he leaned his torso back slightly. “What are you doing?”
“I’m blowing it. The sting will go away faster like that.”
“Please get up. I don’t want you to blow me down there.” He bit his lips and scrunched up his nose. “I meant… I don’t want you to blow me anywhere.”
“Because it’s so close to your penis?”
He threw both palms onto his face and let one, long guttural moan vibrate through his hands. Once he dropped them by his sides again, he stared down at me, desperation written all over him.
“What is it with you? I’m standing here, bleeding because of you, and you’re doing it again.” He picked up both hands, stiff and shaky, as if he considered wrapping them around my neck for a second. “I get this is amusing to you, but you can’t toy with us like that, just because the council didn’t let you play doctor when you were a toddler.”
His words drove heat right into my cheeks. If I could have turned myself invisible, I would have, to escape the embarrassment that swept over me. Maybe if I had made myself clear, Adair wouldn’t have gotten hurt because of me.
No matter how much I meant what I was about to say, my voice still wouldn’t dare to come out as more than a whisper. “I want you to touch me.”
“Say what?”
“Touch me. I want you to do it.”
I gazed up at him and met his blue eyes, which stared back down at me, squinted as if they searched for the truth.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” He shook his head, grabbed me by my arms, and pulled me up. Then he took a step back. “Is this some sort of side-effect from coming off that water? Is anybody writing this shit down or at least tracking it?”
“Let me close this for you.” I pointed at his stomach, leaned over and fumbled a stitch-band from the basket. “And it’s not a side effect.”
He didn’t shrink back when my hands reached out for him, and applied the stitches across his wound, finishing it up with an extra-large band-aid on top to keep it all in place.
“Do you want to touch me?” I asked him.
He folded his arms in front of his chest and swung one hand up in a circular motion. “How about we rephrase that into something more general? Do I want to touch a woman? Of course, I do, what do you think?”
<
br /> “Why are you so surprised that I want to touch a man then, or want him to touch me back? It’s a natural desire, after all. Maybe I am a bit overwhelmed by it because it’s new to me, but that doesn’t make it any less real to me than it is to you.”
“But you’re putting yourself in danger over it. You wanna tell me that’s normal?”
“Only because you continue to refuse!” I shouted, my frustration over it now palpable on my tongue.
“You meant it all this time…” His eyes darted between me and the door as if he expected someone to catch him in a moment of approaching weakness at any second now. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
I walked up to him until my breasts felt the warmth emanating from his body. “Yes.”
He lowered his head and let his face disappear along the side of my neck, his breath sending a shiver across my skin. “And you’ll stop this foolishness if I give you what you want?”
“I promise.”
A deep inhale staggered through his chest.
Adair wrapped his hand around the back of my head and pulled me against him, the muscles on his chest strong yet somehow conforming to the shape of my body against his. His other hand folded around my waist where it gently wandered underneath my shirt and stroked my skin.
My legs buckled beneath me, and the world threatened to give in as well, but I didn’t care. The heat I felt when I was near him now filled my core and poured in rapids all over my body, a feeling I had longed to experience for years. Now I understood better, but not all. Yet.
“Kiss me,” I whispered.
Our eyes locked and his pupils ping-ponged across my face as if they wanted to escape how I admired him but somehow couldn’t leave. He hesitated once more.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Three breaths.
Then he pressed his mouth onto mine, and I caressed his lips with my tongue and teeth, just like I read in all those books the council had burned most of years ago.
“Ruth,” he whispered, followed by a moan that set his entire body into vibration. I let my hands fall onto his belt and search for the buckle, tugging and pulling and pushing until it opened and his pants dropped to his knees. Then he mumbled something I could barely understand, yet still made the blood in my veins freeze. “Stop…”
