by Amber Burns
“They have gone,” he said quietly.
He extended a hand her way, and she grabbed it eagerly. He hefted her up easily, his strong arms popping with muscle as they worked to pull her to her feet. She swallowed and brushed leaves from her hair. He grinned, reached forward, and carefully plucked a long twig from behind her ear.
“Oh,” she said, for it was the only sound her trembling pink lips seemed to remember how to make.
Rowan dropped the twig to the forest floor and stared at her for a moment, his chest rising and falling. Then he stretched, throwing his arms above his head and tilting his bearded face back towards the tops of the trees. As he reached upwards, his shirt rose and Nina caught a glimpse of his chiseled stomach. A tattoo of a snake curled its way across his lower abs, its tail disappearing beneath the waist of his pants. She swallowed, feeling warmth blossoming in her center.
“Alright,” Rowan heaved, shaking his body out and running his tattooed fingers through his hair. “See,” he said, turning to Nina matter of factly. “These are the sorts of things that happen when we try to play the big hero out here.” He gestured to the vast expanse of dark and green that surrounded them. “This here? This is Nature. And she is a beautiful beast. She can be sweet, but the number one thing to always keep in mind is that she is in charge. The second we start thinking otherwise, the very moment we think that it is us, and not her, who’s got the upper hand… that is the very second that Nature decides to snap us out of it, teach us a lesson to remind us that she is the real master, and we are but tiny creations of her own.”
Rowan cleared his throat and leaned forward. He fished Nina’s walking stick off the ground; she had discarded it in her panicked tumble. He straightened up and extended it to her, his eyebrow arching up his face in a way that made Nina’s knees give out slightly. She grabbed the walking stick and gripped it, feeling woozy as he flashed her a half smile.
“Ready?” he asked.
Nina licked her lips, squeezed the walking stick, stared into the coal black eyes of this stranger. She let her green eyes fall down his form, catch the shape of his abs pressed against his shirt, observe the way his thighs trembled with muscle beneath the tight hug of his jeans. She looked back up at him and found that his own eyes wandered the expanse of her body. She cleared her throat, and he snapped back to attention, his dark pupils finding her own.
“I’m ready,” she responded.
“It is going to definitely take us longer now,” Rowan began, slowly starting to lead the way back up the incline they had tumbled and slid down in their race away from danger. “So get ready to hike. And I mean really hike. We have got a good couple hours ahead of us.” They took a few staggering steps upward, Nina struggling not to slip down the hill in her bare feet. Rowan turned suddenly and fixed her with a serious stare. “And I mean it when I say it’s gonna be hours,” he affirmed. “So it’s a good thing that I’m in good company.”
And with that, he turned and continued hiking upward, leaving Nina wondering whether or not he had truly meant the words he had just said. She ran the sound of his voice over and over again in her head as she pulled herself upwards, her muscles burning, her fingers cramping in the cool evening air, wondering, trying to understand, exactly what he had meant by the simple phrase. Was he simply making an innocent comment? Or could he have been hinting at something more?
On they journeyed until dawn began to whisper the promises of its arrival, spilling dusty purple light across the very tops of the trees. Nina rubbed her hand at her eyes, forcing them to remain open, shoving the sleep that clouded her view out of the way. When she dropped her hands tiredly from her eyes, she stopped short. Her jaw snapped open, and she shook her head. Was it a mirage? Could she be so exhausted and hungry that she was actually imagining seeing things? But no, she noticed that Rowan had turned to look at her, a large grin spreading across his face. In front of her stretched a cleared plot of land, and in the midst of it, a cabin. It was built expertly, polished log upon polished log, glass pane windows, vegetable garden stretching out before it like a welcome mat. A water spigot gleamed proudly in the early morning light, and horses whinnied in salutation to the dawning of a brand new day. Rowan dropped his walking stick and spread out his arms.
“This,” he smiled softly. “Is home.”
The sun cracked her yolk across the pastel palette of the sky and the daylight spilled over the man with the outstretched arms, tangling in his disheveled hair, glinting in his eyes. He tilted his head back and breathed in deeply, audibly, and it was as if every cell in his body grew invigorated by this simple breath. Then he dropped his arms, opened his eyes, and looked to Nina.
“Well,” he said. “What do you think?”
Nina turned her gaze from the cabin to the muscled, disheveled man and promptly passed out.
4
“Are you alive?” A rough voice found Nina’s ears.
Light tickled the edges of her vision, and she stirred then awoke to a throbbing headache, pain radiating through her temples with alarming power.
“Holy fuck…” she grumbled, forcing herself to sit up. The room spun, and she immediately slammed her eyelids shut again. “Okay… what the actual hell…”
She breathed deeply and tried to use her hands to pull herself upwards and into a sitting position. Her fingers were shaking so badly that she could barely move her hands, let alone use them to support her body. With no other choice, she reluctantly crumpled back down into the pillows. Wait… pillows?
The jarring flood of recollection rocketed Nina upwards and threw her eyes wide open. Her heart beat rapidly, and she glanced left and right, trying to make sense of her surroundings. She noticed the fire crackling in the hearth. She smelt coffee sizzling somewhere. She discovered she was tucked carefully under quilted blankets, real feather pillows wedged beneath her back, and that was when the dark man’s face came into view, hovering a few inches away from her own. He wore a concerned expression, his eyebrows arching upwards, his forehead twisted with alarm. Nina breathed out and tried to focus on his coal colored eyes, everything else was spinning so quickly she felt she had to focus on something neutral or else risk being violently sick all over the brightly colored patches of material that lay across her legs.
“Well you’re alive,” Rowan was saying, but his voice sounded distant, very off. He stood to his full height and wiped his hands down his jeans. “That’s good. I was seriously worried for a second there.”
Nina blinked rapidly, trying to remember how it was she had come to be tucked into blankets in front of this man’s fire.
One second I had been staring at the cabin from the edge of the forest, the next… what? What had happened after that? She closed her eyes, trying to stop the spinning, trying to focus on the passing of events.
“There’s coffee,” Rowan’s voice called from some very distant plain. “And I’m cooking up some bacon right now. I hope you like bacon. Well, it doesn’t really matter if you like it or not, now does it, because you have gotta get some food and nutrients in you and this is what we have got right now, so.” She heard shuffling, lifting, the sound of fat sizzling over the open flames. “Mm,” Rowan grinned. “That smell. There is nothing in the world as comforting as the smell of fresh bacon frying, I tell ya. God, that brings me back to being just a little kid again.” He rotated the spit and settled a hand on his knee. “And there is nothing like some salt and fat to really put some life back into ya, that’s what I say,” he said gently, glancing over his shoulder at the red headed girl lying prone on the couch.
His gaze caught her delicate face, and he found himself unable to look away. Her skin looked as soft as petals and as smooth as polished stone. Her eyelashes were the color of lightning and they brushed across her cheeks like a whisper. And her hair, her mane of impossibly fiery hair fell over her shoulders, set loose by her endless tumble through the darkened woods, and cascaded over her cheeks, her chest, like an electric waterfall. The bacon burned and crackle
d to the fire place’s floor, and Rowan jumped.
“Shit,” he whispered, yanking the spit from the flames.
He frowned and swallowed, steadying himself. Easy now, he told himself. Easy.
He fitted another slab of thick, freshly butchered bacon onto the pointy end of the spit and eased the meat back into the heart of the fire. As the fire crackled and the meat spat thick droplets of fat into the flames, Nina kept her eyes squeezed shut, her mind racing through the events of the night before. Had she simply been so tired that she could not remember walking across the clearing and winding her way through the vegetable garden and into the house? Had she actually been half asleep for much of the walk, stumbling in a dream like state onwards, only kept upright by the aid of the walking stick? Or had something happened, something perhaps more sinister, something that had forcibly erased her ability to recall her journey into bed the night before? She squinted her eyes more tightly closed still, willing her brain to stop spinning, her brow furrowing and collecting beads of sweat as she tried desperately to latch onto some semblance of an understanding of how she had ended up here, on this couch.
“Mmm!” Rowan almost purred as he pulled the cooked bacon from the flames and waved it slowly through the air, cooling it down.
Then he reached an eager hand forward and plucked the meat from the roasting stick. He grinned as he set it down on a small plate, next to a slice of roughly chopped toast. He grabbed a mug of coffee and the plate of bacon and then stood carefully, gingerly balancing the full cup of coffee so as not to spill a single drop, as he crossed the room and stopped next to Nina. As he came near to her, Nina again opened her eyes. His dark face flashed into her view, and she was suddenly filled with a feeling of cold, sobering horror.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. She sat up very straight, her spine tingling. She pulled the blankets tightly to her breasts and stared straight ahead. “You gave me Rohypnol.”
The words landed so fiercely on Rowan’s ears that he nearly dropped the carefully balanced cup and plate. His eyebrows shot upwards and nearly scraped his hairline, and he staggered back in absolute shock.
“What?” He barked incredulously.
He stared at the redheaded girl yanking the quilted blankets more tightly around her skinny form. She turned her head and fixed him with a blank slate of a stare.
“You,” she said, her voice even and calm. “You gave me Rohypnol.”
Rowan jutted his head forward and squinted at her. Am I hearing her right? Is she hallucinating? He placed the coffee and the breakfast on the floor and put his hands on his hips.
“What are you talking about?”
Nina’s upper lip curled in a snarl and her eyes filled with disgust.
“I knew it,” she began, her voice hard and accusatory, dripping with hatred. “I knew only fucking asshole losers would be living like this out in the middle of fucking nowhere, all be themselves. Yea. That’s right. You found me, and you lead me on a wild mother fucking goose chase through the night to make me really fucking tired and unaware. And then you guided me back to your place. And that’s when you slipped me the fucking Rohypnol shit, and that’s why I can’t remember getting into the house, and into this shitty bed. Holy shit,” she spat, her voice raising to a higher, more dangerous pitch. “You’re a real piece of fucking scum.”
Rowan dropped his hands, and his eyes widened into deep pools of black.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey now there. Easy.”
Nina laughed violently; there was no humor in the outburst. She rocked herself onto her side so that she sat, bundled protectively in the blankets, facing him straight on.
“Easy?” she yelled. “Easy? You want me to be what, totally like, fucking calm or something now? Yea I don’t think so buddy. I don’t think so. Holy shit. I cannot, like, believe this. I cannot believe this. You fucking wipe my memory so you can what? Kidnap me and hold me hostage as your little fucking sex slave in the middle of the woods? Do you not seriously see how totally like fucked up that is?! And then you want me to calm down, take it easy? Okay, like, bullshit, dude. Total fucking bullshit. You’re… wow. Wow. Like wow.”
Nina’s shoulders heaved up and down, causing her long red hair to bounce slightly over her body. She shook her head and bit her lip.
Rowan stared, completely perplexed and taken aback by the situation. The words slowly made sense to him as the seconds passed. And then he relaxed. His shoulders dropped, and his eyebrows crept down his face and back into their usual position. His lips twisted into the whispers of a half smile.
“So, let me get this straight,” he began. “You think that I gave you that date rape drug?”
Nina stared daggers at him, her green eyes burning with hatred.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Rowan continued. “And you think I did that, all because of some huge plan to make you into, what, my own personal hostage sex slave or something?”
Nina’s nostrils flared, and she puffed out angrily, blowing her hair away from her face.
“Not ‘or something’, dickhole,” she retorted. “Exactly that.”
Rowan stared back at her for several long seconds. Then he could no longer help it. He burst out laughing.
Nina watched him in absolute shock. He laughed heartily, his face cracking into comedy, tiny tears appearing in the corners of his eyes. Eventually, she felt her own anger ebbing away slightly, only because of the sheer ridiculousness of the picture before her. This big, muscular man, tattoos creeping down his arms, dark hair rolling past his chin, choking and spluttering and crying because he was laughing so hard.
“Oh,” he heaved, finally gaining control of himself again. “I’m sorry.” He wiped a hand across his eyes, collecting the discarded tears. “I am sorry,” he repeated, more calmly now, fixing Nina with a look of naked sincerity. “I just… sorry, but don’t flatter yourself. That is not at all what is going on here. I did not give you any sort of memory altering drug, or any drug, for that matter.”
Nina stared at him, confusion beginning to work its way again up into her mind.
“No?” she said, her voice still hard, her arms still wrapped tightly around her body. “Then what happened?”
“What happened,” Rowan said, suddenly very serious. “Is that you passed right out and smacked your head on the side of a tree.”
Silence spread out between them and netted the words that had fallen from his lips. The truth hung there in the air as the night flooded back into Nina’s mind. She remembered the dawn cracking itself across the sky. She recalled rubbing her eyes. And then, the sudden dizziness, the rush of extreme and concentrated exhaustion, and the sensation of falling, the ground rushing up to meet her… then nothing, until waking up moments ago. She stared at Rowan, expressionless, and felt a deep crimson blush creep its way across her cheeks.
“And then I picked you up and carried you back here,” he said softly, looking at her with true concern. “You had some blood on your head, and I cleaned that up, no need for stitches, luckily, but I was pretty damn worried, girl.” He shook his head and blew air through his perfect lips. “I’m glad you’re awake now. I bet you’re feeling pretty damned dizzy and weird though, so I get why you thought… well, what you thought.”
Rowan stood again and crossed the room to stand by a large metal canteen. He grabbed a china glass from a shelf above and tipped the canteen forward. Clear, cool water spilled from the mouth of the canteen and splashed into the glass.
“Here,” he said as he crossed the room and squatted by Nina.
He held the glass out to her. She dropped the blankets and took the china cup in both her hands and brought it to her lips. She drank. The water felt like a cool, sweet kiss, pure and refreshing, it rushed down her throat and eased the throbbing of her head ever so slightly. She finished the glass in one breath and then dropped the china cup back into both her hands, stretching it forward for more. Rowan filled the glass and began to speak again as he crossed the room and back towards her
side.
“It’s good that you rest and drink up and what not, because I would be betting from the way that you hit that tree, you are likely suffering from at least a stage two concussion right now, possibly even a stage three.” He returned the china cup to her hands and gently wrapped her fingers around it. She felt a subtle warmth spread itself out across the bottom of her belly as his inked, tan fingers pressed against her own. “And you need to be sitting here and sipping fluids, sure, but you have also really gotta put some food into you.”
