by Aleo, Cyndy
“Sorry,” she says, embarrassed to be caught during her impromptu concert. “I didn't think you were going to come see me after all.”
“I wasn't sure I could,” he says.
She notices that his English sounds accented now, and he seems to struggle with the words.
They begin speaking at the same time, stop, then do it again. Donovan laughs nervously, and gestures for him to go ahead.
“Why are you here?” he asks, then grimaces at how rude the question sounds. “I mean, why would you want to come back here? I was so cruel.”
“I don't want to be anywhere else,” she says. “I was hoping you didn't want me to be anywhere else.”
“I don't, but this place is—”
“This place is your home,” she interrupts, “and I accept that. And when you sent Regina —”
She pauses while he glares.
“You sent Regina to check up on me, and she told me a little while she was there. She explained that it isn't the Dziwozona blood or breeding that makes everyone live so long. It took me a little while, but I realized you were just panicking. They can take care of me here just as well as any human medicine can back home, and I want to be here with you.”
“But how can you want to live here? It’s nothing like what you’ve lived with your entire life.”
“And it’s what you lived with? Let’s face it, you lived with the progress of science and medicine a whole lot longer than I did.”
He smiles at her tentatively.
“So you really want to stay here? To live in a forest?”
“What can I say? I’ve dreamed of being a nudist my whole life. And who knows? Maybe all this clean leaving they have here will make me grow taller.”
He hesitates for only a moment before he steps forward, unable to resist touching her again. His hand strokes her face where the scar is fading to a pink the color of the fragrant peonies he has in the yard outside of his house.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Why? Did you do this? No. Stop being sorry. Start being happy that I’m here.”
His thumb slides over the few inches to her lips, stroking softly, like he’s trying to gather his courage.
She doesn't given him enough time, taking the initiative by flicking her tongue out and then drawing his thumb into her mouth, her eyes swimming with want. He groans and moves closer to her, his movements almost involuntary. He presses himself against her from chest to thigh and still he’s not close enough.
It’s been months.
Months of sleeping alone, wondering how she is. Months of listening, however inadvertently, to the sisters as they mated. Months of thinking he’d spend the rest of his life alone here in the forest with no one he’d ever let close enough to touch him the way Donovan had.
He shucks his own clothes before peeling hers off, never letting her away from his touch, even for a second. His mouth devours hers before he nips along her jaw, down her neck, skimming her collar bone.
She shivers when his lips brush over the same spot she saw Edyta drive the bayonet into Grace, and his hands tighten on her arms, grounding them both.
They’re both naked when he begins to move her to the bed, and they laugh as they trip over each other and nearly lose their balance, refusing to stop touching each other even for the few seconds it would take to move across the room.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers when she’s lying on her back and he’s hovering over her.
“Stop apologizing.”
“That shouldn’t have been our first time. I’d waited so long to touch you and I couldn’t resist any longer, but I couldn’t be selfish enough to keep you here.”
She pinches his side.
“If you don’t stop this self-flagellation, I swear I’m putting my clothes back on and marching right back out of this forest, even if it takes me days to get back to the hotel.”
He kisses her again, worrying the piercing in her lip.
“I never realized how much I’d miss this until I didn’t see it every day.”
“Is that all?”
“And until I’d seen how you react when I kiss you.”
He wants to draw this out forever, replace their first time. She’s tired of waiting for him, and shift her hips under him. He’s unable to hold back and slides inside her, closing his eyes against the onslaught of feelings.
He looks at her to see her eyes wide and bright.
“What is it?” he asks, trying valiantly to still his movements.
“I feel everything,” she breathes.
He groans and buries his face in her hair, powerless to stop moving inside her now that he knows everything he feels is spilling out so she can feel it.
He doesn’t even try to stop it, and in the back of his mind, he’s aware that the sisters are fleeing, only this time it’s from his pleasure, not his pain. Donovan closes her eyes and arches beneath him, wrapping her arms tight around his back, and her legs over his ass.
“You love me. You love me. You love me,” she chants.
He can’t believe she ever doubted that, even in his cruelty, but he lacks the ability to form words. Right now, there is nothing but the slick sweat between them, the warmth of being inside her, the feelings he senses from her: joy, relief… and her impending climax.
He thrusts harder, chasing that feeling for both of them, hers driving his and his driving hers in return until he’s no longer sure which of them will get there first.
And when she cries out, it’s the same for both of them, one climax they share that devours them both. He collapses on top of her, using the last of his energy to turn so he’s not crushing her beneath him as he tries to catch his breath.
There’s no way he can give this up again. Not now that he knows what it can be like with her. Not when he’s realized that his strange power will lead to making love to her like that for hundreds of years.
But he has to try one last time. To make sure she knows what she’s agreeing to. Because if he lets himself have this and she decides a year from now that she can’t live like this, there’s no way he’ll survive. He doesn’t think he was surviving before she came back to him.
“Just to remind you: There’s no college here. No electricity,” he says.
She rolls her eyes.“You have a house, they tell me. With Internet, even.”
“They still haven’t made a decision on boy children.”
“So you'll help them with that.”
“I don’t —”
“Jakub, I love you, and I love this forest, and I love these women, even if they are naked every single second. I want to live here, with them and with you. Will you let me?”
He answers her in Polish, in the language of his mother, his birth, and what will now be hers as well.
“Tak.”
Then again in English, to remind her of beginnings.
“Yes. Forever.”
Acknowledgments
No book is created without tons of help, and that goes triple for this one.
Many thanks go to:
Lela Gwenn, who spent hours on line with me looking at antique weapons and evaluating all the gory details of the fight scene, including anatomical plausibility and bleed-out times;
Christina and Lo of Christina Lauren, who read countless versions of “the rock scene” and tolerated my repeated emails with minute changes;
Special thanks to Lauren, who patiently evaluated my drug questions, including “which one is most likely to be available on the street?” which is definitely not what she signed up for getting that doctorate;
Eden Barber, not only for the gorgeous cover, but for extraordinary patience when I kept changing things;
Stacy Person, for texting me constantly with typos I introduced after the fact so I could clean up the final;
The incredibly patient folks on the Polish boards at WordReference, who cleaned up my incredibly rusty grammar;
SlevinAaron, for his beautiful photography that gave me the opportun
ity to highlight a Polish artist with Polish models — exactly what I wanted;
All Purgies, past and present, for general handholding and patience; and
My family, for their unwavering support. Sorry I made you read the word “cock” as written by my hand.
Notes & Translations
Having never been to Poland, some things in this book are the product of my imagination, some of research, and some a combination of the two.
The forests of Niepołomice really do exist, and are home to the Żubr, cousins to the American bison. The Zamek Królewski w Niepołomicach is a real place (in English, the Castle of Polish Kings) although I relocated it a bit closer to the forest than it actually is.
Polish to English:
Jakub, nie masz czasu na dojście do siebie. Musisz zapomnieć. (English approximation: Jakub, you don’t have time to get yourself together. You have to forget.)
Angielski: English
śliwa tarnina: a pricker bush
Chodź tu: Come here (which I grew up pronouncing “Hutch to”)
Puszcza Niepołomicka: Niepołomice Forest
Matka: mother
Dziękuje bardzo: thank you very much
Syn diabła: son of the devil (colloquial epithet)
Kolęda: technically, these are what you’d call carols or Christmas hymns in English, but there’s a lullaby to the Baby Jesus I sang to my own kids when they were babies called Lulajże Jesu
Kocham cię: I love you
Przepraszam: I’m sorry.
Proszę: Please
Dom: home
Tak: yes
