by Toby Neal
I’ve spent most of the summer working on the cabin. I’m adding on a tiny bathroom with a toilet that flushes from a gravity tank, and installing a clay sink with another gravity-fed faucet in the kitchen. I’m also curing this stash of rabbit skin hides and sewing them together for a bed covering.
As if she’d ever join me on something so humble.
But I’m not doing it for her. This is for me.
It’s my place.
My life, my heritage, stolen from me and falling into ruin. I’m taking it back.
I don’t need the Haven or its people. I never did.
I unpack the last two rabbit skins, stretched over a frame. They’ve been drying in a box.
The sun is warming the clearing and it’s a fresh spring day. I don’t want to get any of the tanning materials on my buckskin shirt, so I strip it off and drape it over a low rocking chair on the front porch. My Grandfather and I made the chair, and a matching one, the year I came to him when I was twelve.
Grandfather died out here, refusing to leave when the government annexed the cabin as part of a buffer zone around what became the Haven. Protesting, he expired from a heart attack when they tried to move him by force.
At least that’s the story they told me in prison.
I have no way of knowing any different. That there’s even one chair left on this deck is a miracle.
When my friend, JT, asked me to help him at the Haven, to live with him and his family as the Scorch Flu ravaged the country, he had no idea what a painful thing it was for me. He still doesn’t.
I drape the rabbit skin, fur down and hide up, over the square wooden beam of the hitching post in front of the cabin. The beam is set at waist height and positioned near the water pump, and that's not an accident.
“Try not to lean over when you’re tanning,” Grandfather taught me. “Your arms and back are going to get tired enough from the scraping.”
He was right about that. Tanning is damned tiring, monotonous work. Grandfather was often right. Even about women.
“They’re all out to get something,” he warned. “They’ll stab you in the back and take your last meal, like your grandma did to me.” Grandfather liked to point at the knife scar she’d put on him just above the kidney on the left side of his back.
Nothing I’ve experienced has shown me any different, except the Lucianos. They love openly and generously, especially Lucy. She gives her heart away to every stray animal, to the women her brothers have married. She’d give the shirt off her back to the people left alive in North Fork.
But I don’t deserve that love, so generous and unconditional. Love has a price tag, and the cost for Lucy’s love is to return it in equal measure. I’m incapable of that.
Though Scorch Flu has proved especially deadly for my age group, I’m not the last man standing in North Fork. She can do a hell of a lot better than me—considering where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, and the things I’ve done.
Lucy doesn’t get it.
I walk away but she just keeps coming after me: teasing me with that mouth I want to taste, those long, bouncy black curls I crave to grab, and damn her hot body. She’s built like a tiny Venus.
As if I know what a Venus is with my backwoods high school education. But at least I learned to read at Rattlesnake High, and it’s still one of my favorite things to do in the evening: curl up in the Haven’s barn with a lantern and a book, my wolf, Shadow, by my side, and escape to another world.
I’ve got a jar of brains from hunting that I keep in JT’s freezer. The substance is soft and cold, pale and waxy, the texture of tofu. I scoop a glob out and rub the brains into the stiff hide. The smell is something I’ve learned to block out.
I take a six-inch metal flange, the edge of a car bumper that I cut for the purpose, and begin scraping the hide, periodically wetting it with more water from a bucket I pumped.
The rhythmic movements calm me and free my mind to think.
The Haven, that fortified, underground bunker and self-sustaining farm that JT bought, feels like it’s getting full. JT says it can hold up to a hundred people, but even the five Luciano brothers, their partners, their mother, and Lucy all in one place, feels like too much humanity to me.
Lucy, all by herself, makes it crowded.
It’s getting hot, and I’m working up a sweat as I begin another layer of scraping, flipping the skin and working from the opposite end again. It takes at least four passes to work the hide to the softness I want: soft as butter. Soft as Lucy’s skin.
Shadow lifts his head off the porch and pricks his ears.
My Appaloosa, Adelle, is peacefully cropping the grass of the clearing, a hobble on her front legs to keep her from wandering off, but she doesn’t so much as lift her head.
“What is it, boy?”
Shadow doesn’t look at me. He’s concentrating on the forest trail leading to the cabin, a path I’ve avoided adding wear to, making sure it is obscured from the back hatch exit of the Haven.
Whatever’s out there can’t be anything serious or he’d go investigate, so I keep working the hide. I scrape again, from the top, moving hard and fast, letting exercise unwind the knot that always seems to be in my gut.
And then I hear her voice.
“What is this place, Roan?”
That’s why neither Shadow nor Adele gave an alarm. They know her.
And so do I.
Tension hums through my body, tightening every muscle and ligament, bringing blood surging through me, lifting the hairs on my arms and chest. I keep moving, not looking at her until I’m good and ready.
Lucy is standing at the edge of the clearing, for once looking tentative, unsure of her welcome. The sun shines on her glossy, crow-black hair.
“This is my place. Private property.” I straighten to my full height, which is not small, and give her a good stare down. I can’t believe the little minx has tracked me all the way out here when I specifically began restoring this place to get away from her and the Haven.
“I was hunting. And I found a path…” Lucy shrugs and approaches, and damn the way her hips sway. “Pinocchio smelled something. He led me here.” Pinocchio, JT’s brown-patched Catahoula, trots forward to join Shadow on the porch, wagging his tail.
Lucy’s wearing a scoop-necked green tee that showcases her spectacular rack, tucked into worn jeans that look painted on. She’s wearing a pair of muddy boots and carrying the rifle I gave her, a hunting piece with a nice walnut stock. She’s a good shot, and I realize that the gunshots I heard a while back and tuned out were Lucy bringing down the bobwhite quail hanging from a wire loop at her belt.
I made that wire loop for her, after taking her hunting.
I try not to remember how much fun that was. She’s good company and makes me laugh when she’s not driving me nuts—like that last time we hunted, when I almost kissed her, and ruined everything.
I’m done pretending I don’t know what she’s up to. “You followed me out here. This is my place, and it’s private.”
I can feel her gaze on my body like she’s touching me. The brat. What I wouldn’t give to bend her over this hitching post and teach her to play with fire.
“I knew you were sneaking off somewhere. I had no idea it was to play house by yourself in the woods.” Her voice is brittle, the way it goes when her feelings are hurt by something I’ve said or done—not that it puts her off. She just comes back at me another day, another way, and I’m hanging onto resistance by a thread right now.
Lucy has a full mouth with a curl to her lips that makes her look like she’s always smiling. At the smell of the tanning, her little nose wrinkles and her pouty lips pooch up. Everything she does is fucking adorable. Damn it.
“Ew! This stinks.” She looks down at the rabbit skin in my hands. “Tanning. I always wondered how you did that.”
I look over at the jar of brains. I know how to send Little Miss City Girl on her way. “I can teach you if you like. I’m just about ready for
another layer of brains. Want to rub them in? You do that, and I’ll scrape.”
Her big dark eyes with those thick black lashes lift to mine. Her nostrils flare as her skin pales, taking in the smell. She looks like a doe about to be slaughtered—not a look I’ve ever liked—and then I see determination kick in as she tightens that kissable mouth into a line.
“Brains. Okay. You got it.” She puts her rifle down on the porch, unclips the loop with the bird on it, and steps up to me.
Damn her strawberry shampoo! She must have brought a gallon of it from Philly because it’s still in her hair, competing with the smell of the tanning.
She scoops a handful of the brains out of the jar. I see her gulp, but she rubs them gamely into the skin as I hold it stretched over the post.
Up, down. Around and around.
It’s disgusting, but she’s somehow making it sexy, making it about how she’d like to touch me.
“Enough.” My voice is a croak. I hand her the smaller scraper, the one I use for the last pass. “Scrape it. I’ll stretch the skin open and tight for you.”
Everything we say or do seems to be about sex. But thankfully, she keeps her head bent, not speaking. This gives me time to look at her sweet curves.
The sun on her hair.
The smell of strawberries.
Her strong arms flex and the motion makes her round little butt push out, her breasts bounce.
I’m hard, and hurting with it. It’s embarrassing. Maybe she won’t notice. I don’t want to encourage her. I can’t let her know how she affects me.
And I can’t believe she just scooped the brains out and rubbed them around without complaining.
She finishes the scraping and keeps her head down, looking at the skin. “Do you want to do more? Another layer?” Her voice is hoarse, too.
My hands are filthy, I’m sweaty, and all I can think about is how damn close she is and that there’s a bed not far away. “That’s enough for today. Let’s wash up.”
I turn away, put the lid on the tanning mixture, and walk to the porch to hang the skin beside the others on the drying rack.
“What are you doing with those skins?” She asks, as I take a jar of homemade, cedar-scented soap out from under the porch step and walk back to the pump.
“Making something.” I don't want to tell her it’s a bed covering—I don't want to put the image of those soft furs in both of our minds. “Put the bucket under the pump and I’ll get the water flowing.”
Lucy places the nearby tin pail beneath the gush of water that splashes out as I pump the handle. She looks up at me with admiration. “I could watch you do that all day, Roan.” She says my name on a breathy sigh.
I’m going to bust my deerskin breeches. “The water’s cold. Here’s the soap.” I hand it to her.
She unscrews the lid and gets some out, rubs it on her hands and sniffs. “Smells good. You made this, didn't you?”
“I make everything out here.” It’s part of why I love this place. I enjoy being self-sufficient in all the ways I learned as a boy.
I scoop double handfuls of water from the bucket and splash it onto my torso and arms. Digging some of the soft soap out of the jar, I lather it on myself.
I don’t look at her, but my movements slow.
My hands slide up my arms, feeling the heavy muscle, the hard ridges of my abdominals, the arcs of my chest, the knots of my nipples. Without meaning to, I’m touching myself in front of her, as sexy and slow as I can make it, imagining her hands on me. When I sneak a glance at her from under my lashes, she’s staring at me, pink mouth ajar, eyes glassy, and it makes me even hotter.
“I’ll do your back,” she whispers, as I splash water on myself to rinse off.
“Only if I can do yours,” I say, taunting. I almost bite my tongue off as she grabs the edge of her tee, tugs it out of her jeans, and whips it off over her head, tossing it toward the porch.
Lucy has an hourglass figure. Full breasts strain her black lace bra. Her waist is so tiny my hands could span it and meet in back. The flare of her hips, the curve of her ass make my hands twitch with the need to grab her.
I love everything about her extreme curves, and have since the first day I saw her. And she knows it.
She stares at me defiantly, her cheeks red, but she doesn’t back down. “You first.”
I turn very slowly, and she scoops a double handful of water and pours it over my back. It trickles down my spine and into my breeches. Goose bumps erupt everywhere that her small hands, slippery with soap, slide across me.
She’s moving slowly, the same way she scraped the rabbit skin: up and down; back and forth; around and around.
I’m thankful I’m turned away from her because she couldn’t miss the erection straining the front of my pants.
Finally Lucy rinses me, one handful of water at a time, as I stand like a statue: a painful, throbbing statue.
“There. Done. Now do me.” Her voice is husky.
I turn slowly, and her eyes drop to take in the obvious. “I’m only human,” I say. “You don’t really want me to do…this. I’m not the man for you.” I have to keep her away, even though every atom in me is straining toward her, iron to a magnet.
“Roan.” The pleading in her voice twists my heart like wringing out a washcloth. “Please.”
I reach out a hand and touch the pulse at the base of her throat with two fingers, resting them lightly in the hollow above her breasts. Her heart pounds beneath my fingers like the fluttering of every small and terrified animal whose life I’ve taken.
“Are you afraid of me?” My voice has dropped to a whisper.
“I’m afraid you don’t want me,” Lucy whispers back. “I’m afraid you don’t feel the same.”
I can’t let this go on.
To hell with the consequences.
To hell with JT and her other brothers. I’d fight them all for her, if it came to that.
And to hell with the fact that she could do so much better. It doesn’t matter. For whatever reason, this girl has chosen me.
I take a step to stand so close that her face is level with my chest—she’s so much shorter, a little woman I can tuck into my bed and cherish in a hundred ways. But so strong! She’s tougher than her brothers, any day, and so full of passion.
I lift Lucy’s damp hand in one of mine and scoop out some of the soap. I rub our hands and interlaced fingers together, sliding, touching, working up a slight foam, all the homemade substance can produce. Our hands rise parallel to our bodies, interlaced as we play with each other’s fingers. Her brown eyes hold mine, bemused, and she sways toward me, her breathing hypnotic.
I stretch our clasped, soapy hands wide and give a tug. She falls forward and lands flush with my body, up against me like paint on a wall. She gasps a little bit, and I lean down into that small sound and take her mouth.
She couldn’t possibly have been eating strawberries too, but god, that’s what it seems like as I taste her, fall into her, consume her. She’s everything I needed, all that I’ve wanted, all that she’s promised me all these months—and as she melts against me, her knees sagging, I know this is all she’s craved too.
“Lucy,” I breathe into her mouth. “I want to touch you. But this soap…”
“Touch me,” she says. “Dirty me up with it, and wash me down after.”
“If your brothers could hear you…”
“Screw my brothers,” she snarls, and wraps herself around me. God, she’s fierce, a tigress, and I can’t stop myself from taking all she’s giving, and giving it back in return.
We’re both soaked, a writhing, yearning mess of soap and water, when a yap from Shadow on the porch brings me around like a slap in the face. I’ve got Lucy in my arms, her center against my crotch, her butt resting on the precarious bar of the hitching post, her legs wrapped around me. Her hands are tangled in my hair and my hands have her by that butt while my mouth is on the cherry of her nipple through her bra, but Shadow’s warning re
minds me that we’re out in the open, where anyone can see us.
And we’re vulnerable. Outside the protective walls of the Haven, anyone could find us, making out and distracted, and with the Scorch Flu ravaging the country, even remote spots are places human wolves can hunt.
And I remember who we are.
Lucy’s the beloved, prized, coddled baby sister of the Luciano family.
And I’m a half-breed with a record, and nothing to offer but a few rabbit skins.
“Enough.” I kiss her luscious mouth one more time, before sliding her to the ground. “You need to go home, Lucy. We’re done here.”
CONTINUE THE JOURNEY WITH
SMOLDER ROAD!
Coming June 2017.
