The Jerk

by V. K. Ludwig

  “So…” I leaned back into the couch. “What’s the bad news, then?”

  “They approached Uncle Peter and took him right in,” Rowan said.

  “But isn’t that what you wanted?”

  He rubbed his hands, clutched his fingers, and gave his upper lip a good chew. “It’s what I wanted, alright. But it turns out the group is much bigger than I expected.”

  “How much bigger?”

  Rowan hesitated for a moment. “Forty-seven men.”

  The muscles along my arms tensed and the room seemed to dim around me, perhaps because I knew all too well that a bullet was never easy to fire — left alone forty-seven.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Ruth asked.

  Her question hung in the room with such innocence, for a second it replaced all blood inside my veins with a liquid kind of shame.

  “He’ll execute them,” I said quick and to the point, because no words would make it sound any less fucked up than it was.

  Her eyes sought mine as if I could make the facts of our world less cruel or somehow less real. “All forty-seven?”

  My neck strained itself into the hint of a nod, only saved by Rowan’s voice. “Well… that’s the thing. Two of those men have wives. One of them with children.”

  “Why would married men rebel against you?” I asked.

  “What the fuck do I know?” Rowan hiked is shoulders and gave a low grunt. “All I can tell you is this: I ain’t gonna kill two married men, and place their wives and kids in a vulnerable situation.”

  Uncle Peter let his head fall into his palm, squinting his eyes and squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “If you don’t execute them, they’ll come back for you. I’ve seen it many times, and it’s always —”

  “God damnit, I said no, and it’s time for you to shut your mouth about it,” Rowan snarled.

  Uncle Peter slumped back, his lips pressed into a line so thin, no other word broke free. All the while, Ruth rocked back and forth, her listless eyes on the game of chess we had abandoned last night in favor of sex.

  “Is that all?” I asked after a while. “Or you need me to take another one for the team?”

  Rowan pushed himself up, cocked his head, and let his eyes search for Ruth’s. “Did he explain why we couldn’t tell you?”

  She blinked and let her gaze return to the here and now. “Yeah, I understand.”

  Rowan gave a couple of nods and strolled over to the door, Uncle Peter following closely behind him.

  “When?” I asked.

  The way Rowan sucked in a sharp breath showed me that my one-word-question had implied it all. The dirt. The ugliness. And the weary load that came with it.

  “I’ll send men to arrest them tonight. Their execution will be first thing tomorrow morning, so make sure you’re there.”

  They stepped outside, but before Uncle Peter pulled the door shut behind him, he turned around once more, his head low and his stare bottoming out somewhere close to Ruth’s toes.

  “Again, I’m sorry for the things I said in your presence.” He hesitated for a moment and stammered a, “I wasn’t always like that” into his scarf. Then he hurried away.

  I walked into the kitchen, filled the kettle, and put it on the stove. Tsk, tsk, tsk. The propane threw up a glistening blue flame underneath the black enamel. “Tea?”

  “Yes,” came from behind me, followed by Ruth’s arms slinging around my waist.

  She leaned herself against my back, the pressure of her cheek against my shoulder blade spreading a familiar warmth across my body.

  “What’s on your mind?” she asked.

  “Hm?”

  “I mean with those executions and all.”

  I shrugged, making her reposition her head against me. “This is the way things are out here. Nothing else to say about it.”

  She said nothing for a while. Instead, she rubbed her face across the fabric of my shirt as if she tried to cover herself in my scent, letting her hands run up and down along my back. Two seconds later, her hand fell onto the stove knob and killed the flame dead.

  “I have a better idea,” she said and pressed herself in front of me. “Let’s take a bath together.”

  “A bath? Why?”

  She closed her eyes and placed a kiss onto my lips. “Because I see you feel way stronger about those executions than you let on, and I don’t want you to worry about that today. Maybe a bath will take your mind off of it.”

  Warmth blossomed somewhere between my third and fourth rib. I noticed right away; it didn’t come from my bruise. Neither was it the kind of heat I felt when we fucked. Even after I stared at her beautiful face for what must have been several minutes, I didn’t understand what it was or where it came from.

  But I realized at that moment how this month we had spent together made her know me better than anyone else. Perhaps even better than I knew myself. I spent the entire time of filling up the tub contemplating if that was a good thing… or not.

  It took almost fifteen minutes to fill the old clawfoot tub, the drain covered in age-old rust and the white glaze inside roughed down.

  Ruth let her clothes glide to the floor without a second thought, leaned over the edge and let her hand swish through the water. “We better think of an excuse right away in case Hazel comes back.”

  “I took a bath and couldn’t get out without help because my ribs hurt so bad?”

  Her nose scrunched up. “Nobody would believe that.”

  “Alright.” I stripped down and tossed my stuff into the hamper in the corner. “How about you wanted to take a bath, and I wanted to be around in case you have a concussion, so you wouldn’t drown.”

  She stepped into the tub, lowered herself down, and leaned back against the metal. “Still a pretty bad excuse, but I don’t think we’ll find anything better.”

  I climbed into the water and gestured her to move. “I’m no expert, but I think you’re supposed to sit in front of me. You know… the strong man in the back, supporting your body and all.”

  She grabbed my cock and gave a tug, a playful grin shoving the corners of her mouth. “You don’t always have to be the strong one. How about you shut up, sit down and let me hold you for a change?”

  The moment I sat down between her legs, she angled her knees and pulled me back against her. Dribbles of water resounded from the tiled wall, slashing and slurping until our bodies settled.

  For a while, there was silence between us, the only audible noise in the room our breath rushing through our nostrils, and the occasional squeak whenever one of us dragged the skin over the old enamel.

  She filled her palms with water and let it run down my neck, stroking my hair with her wet fingers and pressing the fullness of her breasts against my back.

  I grabbed behind me, leaned my head back, and pulled her down for a kiss, my cock growing harder each time our tongues slid against each other, until the head poked out right at the surface.

  Her hand stroked along my body, and she wrapped her hand around my shaft. “I don’t think we’ve done it in the bathtub yet.”

  Two weeks ago, I would have grabbed her, turned her around, and banged her until the water swept over the rim of the tub. Flooding the bathroom and all. But something inside me longed more for this intimate moment we shared than a good fuck in yet another exciting location.

  I grabbed the soap from the tray, pulled her hand off my cock, and handed her the bar. “How about you wash me?”

  Her hand stalled right in front of me, the scent of lavender and lemongrass foaming against her wet fingers.

  “You want me to wash you?” she asked, the pitch of her voice rising with each word. “Instead of having sex?”

  What is wrong with me? “Uh-huh.”

  She dug her fingertips into the bar and wiggled it for a moment as if her hand wanted to give me a quick suit yourself where her mouth couldn’t find the words.

  If I would have turned around, chances were I would ha
ve found a set of furrowed brows and a lopsided smile dangling from her lips.

  With a tug, she opened up my hair, dived her hand into the water and dribbled it over my scalp. She placed a quick kiss onto my head, then rubbed the bar across my hair with one hand, the other one striking through strands of hair.

  I placed my palm onto her knee. “Can I ask you something?”

  “As long as you’re not asking me to marry you.”

  Her words pinched my ribs.

  My eyes burned. Must have gotten soap in them.

  “Nope, it’s not that,” I said, my throat increasingly dry no matter how much steam surrounded us. “I’m just wondering how you think this will go between us after you had your period for the first time.”

  She rinsed the soap off my head, the strands of my hair squeaking against her palm as she squeezed the water out. “What do you mean? We will have to stop, of course.”

  “And how will that work? Are we going to live here together like roommates? Pretending this never happened between us?”

  “Well, you said you can’t get us any protection, and we can’t risk you getting me pregnant.”

  Another pinch, and then a tingle of embarrassment which swept over me like the restless surface of the water inside this tub. I had no right to get upset about this. After all, I couldn’t get any woman to marry me so far, and Ruth had made it clear from the beginning, she won’t make any difference to it either.

  “I’m just saying it will be difficult,” I said and sunk myself deeper against her. “You showed me something that will be hard to give up once the time comes.”

  She let out a giggle, grabbed the bar and let the bubbles fill her hands. Then she rubbed the foam deep into my beard, stroking through the unruly bristles and caressing the skin underneath.

  “You mean sex!” she said.

  Her voice had carried loads of confidence when she said it, yet it wasn’t quite enough to make that pinch between my ribs retreat.

  For the last couple of weeks, I figured I was the luckiest guy of the single clansmen in this village. Now, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Of all the intimate moments Ruth and I had shared, this was my favorite one — the only one that didn’t include my cock between her folds.

  I grabbed her wrist and placed a soapy kiss onto the back of her hand. “Exactly. Sex.”

  Chapter 13

  Ruth

  Forty-five men kneeled on the ground with their hands bound behind their backs, their foreheads sinking deeper into the leafy soil with each sob that trembled their bodies.

  Some gave frantic grunts muffled by the fabric between their gums, their voices grating and rasping and choking. Women, men, and children had come together by the longhouse, playing onlookers to their sealed fate.

  Adair and I stood underneath a tree, several feet behind the last row of people yet still offering a disturbingly good view of what unfolded in front of me.

  “You can turn around, you know,” he said, the tremble in his fingers proof of how much he wanted to take me into his arms. Hold me. Protect me from what Rowan called reality. A couple of months ago I would have looked away, pretending these things happened at the Clans and the Clans only.

  I turned to Adair. “Shooting them is a kinder death than burning them alive, isn’t it?”

  He hesitated for a moment, then gave a nod.

  The stench of vomit and feces hung in the air, sucking the blood out of my limbs and turning my stomach into a liquid churn. When Rowan stepped down the stairs of the longhouse, silence embedded itself across the village like an intangible weight. Women pushed their children behind them, their eyes staring down at their feet.

  Darya walked up beside us, her hands trembling against Rose’s body, the baby’s head pressed tightly against her mother’s chest.

  “This is terrible,” she said, her voice shakier than my knees. Then she hushed Rose and bounced her up and down, more to her own comfort than the girl’s, who gazed around the village unfazed.

  “But they plotted against your husband,” I said.

  She placed her hand onto my shoulder and leaned in closer. “I wasn’t talking about them.”

  “Why don’t you go home?” Adair asked her, stretched out a finger and let Rose wrap her tiny hand around it.

  “I wish I could just walk away.” She jutted her quivering chin toward Rowan. “But he will need me once this is over. I’ll be over there if you need to find me.”

  At that, she left and followed the outline of people, positioning herself closer to the longhouse and the chieftain.

  The moment Oriel walked up and handed Rowan a gun, people across the rows sucked in a breath, short and sharp, their heads held lower than just a second ago.

  My eyes focused on the shiny metal, and the way Rowan opened and closed something, turning the weapon in his hands. He eyed it repeatedly, his head cocked and his posture strong.

  “You’ve killed before, haven’t you?” I asked.

  Silence loomed behind me, not even interrupted by a shift of his weight or the clearing of his throat. When I turned around, his eyes caught mine, their occasional blink the only thing that hadn’t gone stiff and unmoving.

  “How many?”

  He took a step back, leaned himself against the tree trunk, and crossed his arms. His finger wandered in front of his lips and hushed me, then he pointed straight.

  Rowan towered over the first man in the row, his outstretched arm pointing the barrel of the gun at the trembling skull. Strained breaths sucked into his chest, lifting it strong and wide, only to let it collapse under a mix of exhaustion and constraint.

  His gaze drifted off for a moment. Once it returned, his voice resounded through the village. “In the name of our founding fathers, I, Rowan, thirty-eights chieftain of the Woodlands, sentence you to die.”

  At that moment, I wished I would have clenched my eyes like the others had around me.

  Phwet.

  The sound of a muffled bullet.

  Half a second later, crows lifted into the sky as the body slumped down, fell to the side and jerked for what seemed like an eternity.

  A chill needled my temples. Inside I screamed, but on the outside, my lips parted with the absence of any sound. I struggled against the knot in my throat, trying to rasp in air where my muscles wouldn’t let me.

  The lined-up men now sobbed louder, screaming against the gags in their mouths and rocking their bodies back and forth. Sweat and fear filled the air around me, along with the biting taste of urine coming from those who screamed the most frantic.

  Rowan’s voice resounded once more, a little slower now but not a bit less biting. “In the name of our founding fathers, I, Rowan, thirty-eights chieftain of the Woodlands, sentence you to die.”

  Phwet.

  Another shot dulled my thoughts.

  Thump.

  Another body tipped and tumbled.

  Traces of blood veined through the snow and sprinkled the blanket in red. Delirious grunts grew louder once more.

  “In the name of…”

  Rowan’s voice faded into the background as my feet shuffled and stumbled backward, only for Adair to wrap himself around me. He took me into his arms and cradled my head like his most precious possession, then picked me up and carried me away. Everyone’s eyes lay on the execution as he disappeared with me behind a hut. Mine only lay on him.

  I couldn’t hear what he said, though his lips clearly moved. He shook his head, a sh… forming on his mouth. I rubbed my face against his neck, swallowing my sobs and screams, taking in his clean, lavender, and bee’s wax scent.

  The very next moment, he pressed his palm onto my other ear, sheltering my senses from the harsh world he grew up in. Then he pushed his back against the hut and let us sink to the ground, cradling me on his lap, his lips sealed but the vibration of his vocal cords humming a calming tune.

  A comforting warmth settled inside my chest. There was a certain satisfaction to it all; a friend helping a friend. A lover p
rotecting his mate. Then another thought pushed out from a long-ignored area, somewhere in the neglected depth of my consciousness — a husband loving his wife.

  I expected my body to tense at any moment now. Adair wasn’t my husband, and I would never be his wife. Remember, no strings attached.

  The tension never came.

  “Can you take me home?” I whispered.

  I could sense the clean-cut nod which brushed my cheek. He pushed us up from the ground, and I swung my legs around his waist, my head still cradled against his shoulder.

  He peeked around the corner of the hut. Observed the onlookers and everything around them. Then he took a deep breath and walked off with big steps, bringing distance between us and the clans-people, glancing over his shoulder at every other step. His hand remained on my ear, muffling the never-ending gunshots which followed us all the way home.

  The moment he shut the front door behind us, I slipped down, pushed myself onto my toes, and pulled his head in for a kiss. My breath caught the moment our lips touched, but I kept on going, letting my tongue disappear inside his mouth in search of his tongue. He moaned when they found each other, wrapped his arms around me, and pressed my body against his.

  “I think you should lie down and rest,” he mumbled over the corner of his mouth.

  I shook my head and let my fingers intertwine with his, tugging his tired body across the living room with several strong jerks.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Sleep with me.”

  His feet stopped dragging, and he picked up speed. “Now? Are you sure?”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck. Nibbled and licked his earlobe. “Pleeease…”

  “Fuck, I love when you beg me for it.”

  He picked me up once more, slower and with a certain strain to it, now that he had carried me all the way home. But he didn’t let that stop him and walked us into his room.

  After he placed me onto the mattress, we undressed each other down to our skin, our eyes darting across the familiarity of each other’s bodies.

  Desire surged through me at the sight of his half-erect penis, and a familiar urgency to feel him inside me pumped through my veins. I turned around, pushed myself up onto my knees, and arched my back. At his moan, I slid my palms over the cold sheet and let my breasts sink into the mattress.