The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used

by Cari Silverwood

I moved swiftly, hand out to separate them. Strange dogs bite strange kids.

  Not this dog. Besides, Isak had drawn him aside and out of reach of the child.

  It struck me.

  This… this was like some weird family holiday time. Was I in a horror movie? Would the floor open up and eat us? Were the pets at this very moment turning into zombies? I blinked, taking in our amiable dog and the fact that I had a man by my side, and we were off on some day trip to a tourist attraction.

  Twilight zone.

  By luck, we finagled a place in a day tour heading to the gorge.

  Late-morning, we were on a rickety bus heading toward those mountains, along with about twenty people in family groups and couples. Children had run up the aisles screaming and claiming seats, with suffering parents trailing after them. Isak had shot baleful glares at them.

  We sat at the back on worn seats, and the air stayed warm, even as we headed toward what should be a higher altitude.

  Empathy, Isak needed to develop that, otherwise we would all be punching those who irritated us. People helped people who were strangers because of it. On news reports we often hear miraculous stories where people risk their lives to save others.

  This bus tour represented normal life. A rattling bus, shouty kids, tolerant parents, and an overly cheerful bus driver with weird random facts about koalas, gum trees, and goannas to share with us.

  I smiled and relaxed back into the seat.

  Except, as the tour guide mouthed off about history and nature, and the kids kept squealing and yelling, Isak greatly resembled stone.

  The bus reached the first visitor area where we were to disembark for a walking tour. A mother went by our seats with her son in hand. He gave us that big-eyed treatment children bestow on scary adults as well as on anything else that sparks their curiosity.

  We were the last to exit. As I rose, Isak’s hand gripped my wrist.

  “Answer me this.” His brow wrinkled, cleared, and he spoke slowly. “Am I an animal?”

  What. The. Fuck. Where had that come from?

  “Of course not,” I blurted, while trying to think of what I should say – being truthful was not on my agenda in that instant. This was a loaded question.

  What did he want from me? Was any sort of truth worth saying? Or would it get me killed, or worse?

  Not that I thought he would murder me on the spot. Mine was a visceral reaction to a disturbing question that had me stumbling as I went ahead of him down the bus aisle.

  He wasn’t an animal, I decided without voicing it.

  But he was worse than one when off the drug. Animals did not regularly hurt and kill for amusement, although predators in the animal kingdom might toy with their prey. They did not fuck for revenge or for fun. They did not fuck then kill.

  And I was never telling him this. Besides, he must know already. The thorns of prior murder, sex, and mindfucks pricked at me. Like the crackle of footsteps creeping up from behind in a horror movie. The axe in the dark. The mirror leading to Hell. Whenever I recalled his past, our past, I regretted it.

  After a light lunch, the group headed up an easy track. It took two hours of casual walking to reach the next camping ground. Group conversations sparked, rambled, wafted by us, leaving Isak and me as rocks in a sea of humanity. The children would all be older than eight or nine years? Any younger and they’d need to be watched constantly and carried.

  I heard the rumble of Isak’s voice, and my stomach contracted, because the start of his sentence harked back to that last question.

  “Not an animal?” he mused. “You lied.”

  Luckily, we were walking fairly separated from the groups ahead and behind us.

  “Fuck, yes, I lied,” I whispered, sotto voce and only to him. Something had burst within, forcing me. This was not a command from him, it was pent-up anguish and anger. “I did. How can you do what you did and not be labeled a…” I looked about. “A bad word. Animal is too good for you.”

  Done it, then and there. I just signed my death warrant.

  “You know I’m not going to kill you.”

  Startled, I looked at him.

  “Yes, I can sometimes guess your thoughts when they’re strong ones.”

  Fuck.

  “I’m not that now. Remember? Teach me.”

  Like teaching a rock or a corpse.

  I must not think that. He is a man. I can do this.

  We reached the next stop on the Great Walk through Carnarvon, and most had no intention of going further, but Isak decided to walk a little further and higher along with about half the tour group and the guide. We had an hour, no more, before we must return.

  I should be talking to him about morals or some such philosophical crap, but I simply could not. Not now. Not yet.

  The walk was tougher and ascended more steeply than before. We stopped at a small lookout with the others.

  Isak and I wandered further and sat a meter back from where a ledge dropped away past a guard rail. The forest floor and the gorge were a couple of hundred meters below. The few children who were with us talked excitedly and ran about pointing at things while chewing on snack bars. Birds tweeted or cackled echoing calls, and an eagle soared on the warm breeze. A little yellow-gray bird the guide called a weebill hopped about in the branches of a shrub.

  The view was stupendous.

  But the weight in my heart was greater.

  I was lost. What was I doing? What did he really truly want? He would not kill me, okay, fine, but I needed to be elsewhere. A million miles from him.

  He was a monster – not just an animal. Did he not see this?

  Maybe he couldn’t even understand what he was?

  I stared out over the ranges and forest below, at the river snaking its way into the gorge, glinting with sunlight, and yes, I despaired. Sweat stuck my T-shirt to my back, dribbled over my nape. I fanned myself with my new hat with the Carnarvon Gorge logo. This was a country I thought I could grow to love – vast and full of exciting and unknown creatures and nature, as well as sweat, and yet I was lost in a way that felt impossible to rescue myself from.

  Talk to him. Begin somewhere. Pretend this is a casual chat with a friend.

  Stupid idea. I tilted my head and eyed him.

  A baseball cap lay beside his splayed hand, propped on the rock, earth, and grass. A pair of bought, not acquired, sunglasses shielded his eyes. His ruffled, yet short, dark hair framed his face. He’d had it cut and dyed days ago. A muscular, fit, confident man, was what most would see. His long navy shorts were incongruous – revealing as they did the hair on the calves of his legs. It turned him innocuous and normal – a potential boyfriend, a lover, a man who would help granny across the road.

  The barely scuffed sports shoes were also the footwear of a dad and not a killer and torturer of women.

  Isak, the conundrum.

  “You want to know what anyone who knew your past would call you?” If they were asked. If they knew what I knew.

  His mouth twisted, but he didn’t look at me. “I can guess. I shouldn’t have asked you. That was weak of me.” He’d whispered the last bit. Now he looked my way. “I’ll choose a word. How about—”

  A scuffle of feet and the voices of two laughing boys caught my attention a second before one of them ran past, between us and the edge. He stumbled to a halt, giggling as the other boy rushed about behind us and made mock grabs.

  “Go away!” the first shouted, still laughing.

  This is dangerous.

  A parent yelled at them to get away from both the edge and us just as the boy chasing the first made another fake lunge. The grinning boy in front of us, stepped sideways, tripped, and fell backward. In his attempt to scramble from the edge, he hit a steel support with his head, then somehow tumbled through above the first rail on his back, and he rolled. On that small slope, his twisting attempts to stand only made things worse.

  By the time I was lunging forward, he was disappearing from view, and his legs we
re the last of him to leave this earth.

  A hundred-meter fall – he would never survive. His play partner shrieked, and Isak had thrown himself forward sliding on his belly beneath the railing, shirt rucking up, arm outstretched.

  Reaching…

  He caught him by the ankle. Caught the stupid kid. I was swearing under my breath, hands over my mouth, until I remembered to help. I lurched forward but already Isak was hauling him back to safety through the railings. The kid shook as he struggled to rise, with Isak and myself holding him and making sure he would not trip again.

  “Ohmigod, thank you!” A man ran over. “Thank you. Thank you. Ryan, you come here!” His face was drained of blood, and he trembled as he tousled the boy’s blond hair. “God damn it. We almost—”

  Lost you? Yes. The father was contrite enough for a million sorries. I wished him well with his crazy hellion boys. Poor man.

  He shook Isak’s hand, nodded, and with a grim face he smiled at me, then drew his kid away along with his brother. The stern talk to his sons was still going on as the tour guide checked on them, and then on Isak.

  Isak had his hand shaken and back pounded by several others. The grazes on his knees and hands were enough to make a woman fuss over them and wash them with water. Bandages were suggested but Isak refused all those offers with a wry smirk.

  “No, I am fine.”

  Once that storm had passed, we joined the tail of the group. Heading back down was a priority now the guide thought we might kill ourselves.

  “Kids,” I muttered, still traumatized by how close that had been to death. Death on a Sunday afternoon, on a beautiful Sunday. At least I thought it was Sunday? The days blurred, and I had no watch or phone.

  “Yes.” His quiet introspective reply had me wondering what was going on in Isak’s mind.

  He had saved a life today.

  Was he more than I thought him? Was he salvageable?

  No one else could have moved that fast, of that I was certain.

  CHAPTER 15

  ISAK

  Once we boarded the bus, I sat us at the very back, still running that scene through my mind, remembering the sensation when I wrapped my hand about the boy’s ankle.

  He’d been in shock, I’m sure, as we pulled him to his feet.

  The touch of the child’s hand had been electrifying. The iron in his grip. The gratefulness in his eyes. It had been a long time since I had touched another person like that. I’d saved the boy’s life, and I had no idea why I’d been so galvanized, so driven to lunge for him.

  Yet I had done it.

  The touch lingered.

  The memory of the weight of the hand, the softness, the hardness of bones inside flesh. The smallness of a child. Was this a connection all humanity felt? My palm looked the same as ever, where I held it relaxed beside my knee.

  Was this what I had lost in the mind-rush of the mesmer?

  Sighing, I turned over my hand.

  As the bus rattled and swayed down the road, Red’s knee bumped against mine. The tour group had come together in some sort of joint appreciation of my actions since I helped the boy. I registered their appreciation as a wave of... warmth? A side-effect of my power.

  Beside me, rocking with the sway of the bus, were Red’s thighs in those pale gray jeans, and her lap with her hands folded in them. She was mine, and always would be, but did I now have a new key?

  Touch. If it affected me, it must affect her. I dredged my memory to recall how it had been with Megan before the wedding disaster in Cuba.

  A key. Not sexual touch, not fucking, or not always.

  Was it the way to her heart? The heart was the part of her that I could not take. I needed something more than her list of how to be good. That was artificial. This spoke directly to the senses. And it was more subtle.

  Saving the boy was curious, because I could not quite see what it was about it that I liked.

  I reached for Red’s hand to cover it with mine. When I squeezed, she gasped. A quiet intake of air, and not something induced by a mesmer command. This was just her responding to my touch.

  I thought to smile, but smiles never felt right, and I let it fall away.

  The voices of those in the bus bounced about, wrapping the two of us, whispers and laughs, taunts, and earnest words, making it clear how silent I and Red were most of the time. We lay in a bubble of silence.

  Talking. Touching. I squeezed her hand again, thinking I should try talking also. She seemed stunned by the handholding and kept her gaze fixated on how our fingers wrapped together.

  Her hand did look cute, but not as pretty as the bulge of her breasts against the T-shirt and the faint lines showing where her areolas were, despite her bra trying to hide them.

  I shifted, wanting to press our hands between her legs and get her off, but knowing it would be impossible to hide that from the whole bus. We had hours, and it would be nighttime before we reached the town.

  I cleared my throat. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “What?” Her brow creased in consternation. “Really?”

  “Yes. It will pass the time.” I leaned in and whispered to her ear, giving the lobe one tiny lick. “Either that or I make you come without touching you, and you know I can.”

  It would mean she would have to try to not betray her arousal.

  “So tempting.”

  “Okay,” Red said quietly. “Eff you, though.”

  I did smile then. I’d watched her eyes brighten with an awareness of her attraction to me, then her dismay, then that stunned realization that I could and might do it… All so perfectly amusing.

  “Make it good,” I said, insinuating bad things would happen if she bored me.

  Her breasts rose then fell as she inhaled, exhaled in an audible rush. “I was born in Washington and went to school—”

  I snorted. “Fast forward to more recent times. Why did you join the CIA? Who was your first lover? Enthrall me.” I pressed our hands to the V of her legs, in just the right spot, watching her tongue flick out across her lip and back in. If only I could grab that…

  “Right. Ahem. Restarting then.”

  I half-listened as she talked, finding her physical presence as interesting as her past. After all, her past was gone. I draped my arm over her shoulders to draw her closer, allowing my hand to dangle. As if by accident, I let the motion of the bus brush and tap my fingers against the side of her breast.

  That smallest of touches kept her simmering with desire.

  When the driver announced we would be late getting into town, the sky was already darkening. Anticipating this, I had phoned ahead. The kennels would keep the dog until the next day. Accommodation was booked for everyone on the bus. Tonight, no matter what this hotel room looked like, I would make her stand against the wall again, for my viewing, and tease her – touching her only with hands, tongue, and teeth.

  I only wished I had some nipple clamps. Perhaps I could find pegs. Another clothes hanger? A corner store might still be open.

  Now was the prelude.

  The bus lighting was dim, and by six o’clock I’d been teasing her endlessly with glancing touches and the mildest of mesmer inducement – my fingertips bumping at her shirt and with light kisses to her neck whenever I spoke, with the press of our hands over where her clit was beneath those sexy jeans.

  The closer we became, the more I knew her. Every aching pulse of her clit made my dick do the same.

  I had been training her for years, and I reaped the benefits.

  Her answers to questions became more and more disjointed.

  “Touching you in public – the feel of you under my hands…” My lips glanced along the curve of her lobe, and I lightly kissed her ear.

  “Shhh.” Her breathing was shaky, her fingers grabbing mine then letting go.

  “I liked hearing about what you used to do.”

  “Have you never heard of casual conversation?”

  “Maybe. Is it good?”

  She m
ade an exasperated noise. “It is a part of being normal!”

  “I see. I promise to learn it then.”

  To relearn. Maybe I should.

  “Start again, and I will listen and not touch you.”

  The bus rocked and shuddered and hummed into the night. Headlights flashed by, lighting up the interior.

  I did exactly what I said I would. I listened to her until she yawned and leaned into me. For the last of the journey, I sat very quietly with her head resting on my shoulder, watching her sleep.

  Her red curls spilled across my shirt and tickled my neck, but I didn’t move – apart from to gently pull out a few strands to let them uncurl and run from my fingers.

  The one problem was the man in the seat across the aisle. He was absorbed in his phone and the screen glowed with videos – saved ones perhaps, since reception was poor. Mostly it was porn. This I was not disturbed by.

  Not until…

  The screen angled our way. The video was of a woman driver, filmed from above and outside the car. A dildo was between her thighs, and she was partially naked. A man’s hand was on her as was hers. Though her face was not in the scenes I saw, this was Red.

  The truck driver’s vid had been uploaded. If the man opposite had made the connection, he showed no sign of it, and the camera angle made it unlikely her face would be visible.

  Later that night, I did what I’d planned to – I stripped her then told her to stand at the wall so that I could tease her nude body until she was wrecked by need. I made her worship my length, to suck me inside her heat with those soft, rose-petal lips. Greedily, I watched my cock vanish inside her and blessed that roving wet tongue of hers, and then I filled her mouth while I held her hair and neck to the wall.

  After she swallowed and begged for more, I checked her below, kissing her while using two fingers like a dipstick.

  I felt the squeeze of her wanton pussy.

  “More,” she croaked.

  “More?”

  I kiss her. Hear her moan, watch the movement of her mouth as I do a few pumps with those fingers. “Definitely…” A long and brutal kiss, suck out those fingers, casually paint the side of her ass with them where it bulges against the wall. “Turned on. Good. Stay that way. Bedtime for you.”