by Sybil Bartel
He nodded once.
It was instant.
I slammed my hand over my mouth and shoved past him. I almost didn’t make it out of the cabin before I threw up in the scrub brush surrounding the patch of dirt we’d cleared in front of the small porch.
But I didn’t just throw up.
My stomach heaved, my body emptied everything it had, and my soul crushed in on itself.
My head was pounding, and I didn’t want to cry anymore, but I couldn’t stop it. Tears came, and they matched the vomit for intensity like it was a contest.
His hand appeared in front of me, holding a cup of water. “Drink.”
Hearing his voice, knowing what we’d done earlier, how he’d taken me…. Oh God. This hurt, it hurt so bad, I didn’t even want to think about it. He’d put tampons in other women. Women. Not woman. Not singular. Multiple. Hundreds for all I knew. Nothing, nothing about us together was new to him or special, and oh my fucking God, his question played in my head, over and over, hitting me like a sledgehammer.
Are you with child?
Are you with child?
Are you with child?
It repeated over and over like a cruel joke, and he knew to ask because he’d done this before. He had children with other women.
My stomach lurched, and I vomited again.
She vomited a second time.
She was with child.
I had seen it enough times on compound. Morning sickness, the females called it. Larger breasts, different moods, fuller hips before their stomachs swelled.
Despite the insults she threw at me, my cock grew hard at the thought of her body with my child. I held the water out again once the second wave of her nausea passed. “Drink this.”
Without a word, without taking the water, she pushed past me and went back in the cabin.
I did not follow.
Fighting for patience, I stood a moment to collect myself, but she quickly came back out with her towel and our bar of soap. Aiming for our sun shower, she threw her towel over a tree branch and stripped her shirt off.
Deeply inhaling the morning air, I set the water down on the front step and walked over as she reached for the shower release. “Tilt your head back. I will help you.” I had not yet refilled the reservoir from the well this morning. There would not be a lot of water.
“I don’t need your help.” She turned her back on me.
Ignoring her protest, I put my hand over hers on the release and grasped her hair. “Tilt.” Not waiting for compliance, I pulled slightly on her hair and released the water.
Her mouth opened to protest, but she quickly shut it as I wet her hair.
“Give me the soap,” I quietly demanded.
Defying me, she yanked out of my grasp. Working the bar into a lather, she hastily ran her hands over her long hair, but then her eyes met mine. With malice in her expression, she ran the bar between her legs. Vigorously.
Still in the jeans she had stolen from the addict for me, I stepped on the pallet with her and got in her face. “Do not provoke me.” I knew what she was doing. Every morning after I took her, we bathed together. She knew how I felt about her washing my mark off.
The soap lathering into small white bubbles, she kept scrubbing.
“That will not undo what is done,” I stated. “We need to have a discussion.” She could not have a baby out here. I was not versed in childbirth, and neither was she.
“I’m not discussin’ shit.” Grabbing the water release, she turned her back on me and pulled it.
Water cascaded over both of us as she rinsed off.
Welcoming the coolness in the already humid day, I did not step back. The front of my jeans soaked, I waited until she had the soap off her body, then I put my head under what was left of the trickle of water.
Before she reached for it, I grabbed her towel. Wrapping it around her from behind, I used my arms to cocoon her.
Her muscles stiffened, and she fought my hold.
I held her tighter. “You are angry with me. I am angry with you. That does not change facts. You cannot have a baby out here. I do not have firsthand experience in childbirth, and the hurricane months are coming. We cannot stay here.” After fifty-eight sunsets, we were also close to depleting the food supply she had stocked.
Her breathing faster than normal, she said nothing.
“It is time.” My body was strong. I was ready. “We have discussed this.” She had shown me on a map where the address was. We did not need to be out here anymore. No one had come looking for us after the initial fortnight, save wildlife and mosquitoes.
“Experience in childbirth,” she mocked. “You sure about that?” She spun out of my grasp. “How many women have you knocked up?”
“Knocked up?” I did not know what I hated more, my sheltered upbringing or her manner of speech.
“Yeah, knocked up.” She furiously rubbed the towel through her hair and over her supple flesh that was less soft than two months ago. “With child, impregnated, expecting.” She spat the last word out with anger. “Do you even know how many little Tarquins are running around River Ranch?”
I gritted my teeth. “I told you I have not fathered any children before.” Not that I knew of.
“Right.” She snorted. “But you just happen to know when a woman’s pregnant and how to put a damn tampon in for her.” She threw the towel over the tree branch and yanked her sleeveless shirt back on.
“That is why you are angry?” Was she that irrational? “You are going to bring my past to present when your father hunted us for weeks?” Temper flaring, my tone matched. “Which one of us has a past that held us prisoner inside that cabin while men searched the woods around us for fourteen days? Because no one from compound came, tracking us like prey.”
“It’s the compound, THE!” she yelled. “Always the compound, not just compound! Learn how to speak!”
“I know exactly how to speak,” I yelled back in my manner of speech before mimicking her accent. “You think I don’t know how to fuckin’ swear, drop g’s, and run my goddamn words together?”
She blinked.
I kept going with her manner of speech. “You think I ain’t smart enough to mimic words and spit ’em back out?” I reverted to my accent. “I know exactly how you speak. But I am not ignorant enough to presume you will respect me for adapting to your ways. I am the man, you are the woman.”
She blinked again.
The she pivoted and walked inside the cabin.
A moment later, she returned fully clothed with boots on and the canteen in her hand.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.
“Mama’s. And don’t try to stop me this time. It’s been long enough. I’m goin’ to check on her.” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “Maybe she knows how to bring a child into this world, because I sure as hell don’t.”
“Wait.” Goddamn it. The curse was silent, but no less indicative of how far I had come from River Ranch. “I will come with you.” No matter our disagreement, no matter I did not approve of her seeing the hysterical woman who had had a hand in selling her off to the biker, I would not let her walk these woods alone. Besides, I was not too proud to consider that the hysterical woman she called Mother may have useful advice on childbirth. “Let me get dry clothes.”
She did not acknowledge me, but neither did she walk away.
Stepping inside the cabin, I hung my wet jeans on a wooden hook I had fastened to the wall, and I retrieved my only article of clothing from River Ranch. Donning the jeans I had been stabbed in that now had a mended leg courtesy of my woman, I felt a pang of remorse for my heated words to her earlier. I did not hate kissing her. I hated that I was not skilled at it.
Pulling on a T-shirt and dry socks, I shook out my wet hair that was too long before stepping back into my boots. Grabbing one of the guns, I tucked it in my back waistband. Then I took one of the few plastic bottles of water we had left and I exited the cabin. Retrieving the padlock from the insi
de, I moved it to the outside and locked the door.
When I turned, she was staring at me, but she did not speak.
“Let us go.”
With merely a nod, she turned toward the narrow trail and began walking.
We traveled in silence for several kilometers. When we made it out of the thickest part of the woods and got closer to her father’s land, she abruptly stopped and turned to face me.
“Maybe you’re right.” Her gaze briefly met mine before she looked away. “Maybe it’s time you go talk to that recruiter.”
I stilled.
She had yet to agree with me that it was time. Her excuses were numerous, invalid, and based on fear—she wasn’t ready to leave, her father could still be looking for us, River Stephens could be looking for me, she had to check on her mother, my stab wounds still looked unhealed. I had not started to challenge her excuses until recently when our food supply was getting low.
Waiting to see if she had more to say on the subject, I did not respond.
“I don’t know what all it’ll entail gettin’ you into the Army, and like we discussed before, I don’t know what all they’ll want from you, official-wise, like paperwork or whatever or how we even get that kinda stuff.” She looked back at me. “But maybe it’s time you go and find out.”
When I continued to say nothing, she kept talking.
“You’ve been runnin’ in the woods every day, choppin’ wood, doin’ pull-ups on the tree by the shower….” She looked at her feet as she toed the damp earth underfoot. “You’re strong enough now, Tarquin.”
I did not disagree. I was. But suddenly, now that she was telling me to go, hesitation pushed at my conscience. “Will your mother alert your father when you call on her?”
She shrugged. “Not if I take her phone away first.”
“What if he is already there?”
“He won’t be. Last few years he’s always come at night, and besides, if he is, we’ll see his SUV.”
Then there was no more decision to make. “You will stay with her until I return for you.”
She let out a half snort, half sound of indignation. “It’s practically a twenty-mile hike one way to that Army recruiter’s. I don’t know if I can take Mama for that long.”
“You used to live with her.”
“Yeah, but that was before.” She looked up at me, and her voice softened. “Before I got used to bein’ with you.”
“Shaila—”
She held a hand up. “I get it. I won’t get you all the time, not when you join the Army and go off fightin’ or wherever they send you. I know they’ll get first rights to you. I get that’s what enlistin’ is all about.”
I did not comment.
“So let’s just stick to our plan, okay?”
“All right.” I nodded.
“Great,” she said without enthusiasm. “Let’s get on with it. You can walk me to Mama’s, and I’ll hold out there as long as I can. Which, for the record, she may be my mama, but I was never her biggest fan. Me and her? We don’t got a whole lot in common.”
“You will be fine with her for one day.”
My woman almost smiled. “You said day and not sunup or sundown. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m comin’ home to the cabin tonight.”
“I do not want you walking these woods alone.”
She scoffed. “I walked them all by myself for years before I met you. Even at night. It’s how I found you, ain’t it?” Her voice took on a tone. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll find another River Ranch castoff.”
My jaw clenched at the thought, even though I knew it was a highly unlikely impossibility. “I will come for you at your mother’s.”
She raised an eyebrow in challenge. “You can try. I may or may not be there still.” She turned back toward the deer trail we’d been walking on through the swamp. “And for the record? I ain’t mad at you for, you know, the sex.” Her voice quieted, and she looked over her shoulder at me. “It felt good, even if you didn’t wanna kiss my mouth.”
Regret formed in my throat. “I wanted to kiss you.”
She stopped walking and turned. “Then why did you say you didn’t like kissin’?”
I stared at her grass-green eyes. I did not regret how I took her earlier, but maybe I regretted my words. “You were not satisfied with me. You wanted more.”
Her face fell. “I’m always satisfied with you. I just wanted you to kiss me.”
“You wanted more,” I corrected.
“If you wanna call kissin’ more, then yeah, I guess I did want more.”
“I gave you a release.” What more did she want?
She exhaled as if for patience. “I know. You always take care of me like that, and trust me, I appreciate it.” Her cheeks reddened, and she averted her gaze. “That’s one of the things I love about you.”
My heart beat faster, and my pulse quickened. I did not say anything. I did not move.
She stepped forward and placed her hand on my chest. She looked up at me, and sunlight hit her face. It highlighted her smooth skin and flushed cheeks, and it made the red strands in her hair more pronounced. I did not know a prettier woman.
Her voice quieted. “You know what I’m gonna say, don’t you?”
My cock stiffened, and my hands fisted. “No.” Possibly.
“I love you, Tarquin Scott.”
I swallowed.
“I love you like a sunrise, and I just wanted you to kiss me so I could feel your love for me, because I know I may never get those words from you.”
I grabbed her chin and jaw in one hand. Then I gave her words I did know the meaning of. “I am inside you.”
Having nothing greater to give her than that, I kissed her.
He kissed me passionately, and I melted. But then he pulled back, and it was over much too quickly.
My face flushed, my skin heated, desire pulsed painfully between my legs. Despite every hard inch of him being inside me so many times today already, I wanted more.
I always wanted more of him.
He was my addiction.
I didn’t know if that was normal, or even healthy, but I didn’t care.
Tarquin Scott was my world, and I wanted to keep him forever.
That’s why I’d been trying to put him off going to that recruiter’s, but even I couldn’t deny we were short on time now. I hadn’t gotten my period in two cycles, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out I was pregnant.
With his baby.
My heart melted at the very thought the same time fear snuck around the joy and gave me anxiety. I wasn’t stupid. I knew I couldn’t safely have a baby out here, and we were getting low on food.
So the recruiter.
It was time.
Wary, turned on, thankful for his kiss, I put my hand in his and squeezed. “Thank you.”
With blue eyes so clear they were almost haunting, and muscles that seemed twice as big as when I first saw him, he stared down at me. “For what?”
“Kissin’ me.”
He looked away. “I am not skilled at kissing.” His voice dropped. “That is why I said what I said.”
Confusion turned to understanding. “You said you didn’t like kissin’ me because you think you’re bad at it?”
He didn’t look at me. “Yes.”
“Please look at me.”
Slow, deliberate, he turned his head, and a storm of unease rioted in his eyes.
I cupped his jaw as scratchy two-day growth tickled my fingers. “You’re the best kisser I know, and I love every second of every one of your kisses.”
He inhaled as a slight frown formed, but the storm in his eyes, it quieted. “It is time to go.” He grasped my wrist and gently removed my hand from his face, but then he didn’t let go of my hand.
Truth be told, I didn’t want to go just yet. I wanted to stand a bit longer and simply hold his hand. Because just as I was holding his, he was holding mine, and that wasn’t something he did often. Small acts of affec
tion were not in his repertoire because Tarquin Scott didn’t touch unnecessarily. So when I got a gesture of affection like this, I wanted to hold on to it. Literally.
But he had a long walk ahead of him, and the path through the scrub brush, if you could call it that, wasn’t more than a single foot wide and we couldn’t walk the rest of the way to Mama’s hand in hand.
“Right. Time to go.” Reluctantly, I let go of his hand and stepped forward. “But remember everythin’ we talked about when you get to the recruiters.”
“I will remember.” His voice was not loud, but it carried from behind me at the same time as it sounded like it was a part of the Glades, like he belonged here as much as the slash pines and mangroves.
A pace ahead of him, I wasn’t laying eyes on him, but awareness crawled up my spine the same as it did every time he was near. I was so attuned to him now, my body knew when he was close. I had to shove down the urge to turn around and launch myself into his arms. Not to mention I was fighting off a horrible feeling of dread that made me want to turn us around and head us right back to our cabin.
Forcing myself to stay focused on the conversation, I pushed the unease away and reminded him of what we’d talked about last week. “Don’t forget to take everythin’ they say with a grain of salt. I don’t want you signin’ anythin’ you ain’t one-hundred percent sure of. Even if they offer you money or some kinda sign-up bonus. Don’t give them your John Hancock just because they make it sound like they’re doin’ you a favor.”
“John Hancock?”
“Yeah, your signature. Like when you write your name, but in cursive, not print, so it’s, you know, fancy and official.”
“I do not have a signature.”
“Everybody’s got a signature.”
“I do not.” He was quiet a moment, then, “I do not know how to write.”
Shock stopped me in my tracks, and I turned to face him. “Really?”
“I am illiterate,” he said without shame or intonation or any emotion whatsoever. “I do not know how to read or write.”
“But the map. We looked at it together. You said you memorized the way to the address.” How could he not know how to read or write?
