True Refuge

by Annabelle McInnes

  When she crushed her petite body against his, Nick turned and wrapped an arm around her as well.

  There they stood, braced against a steel wall, inside a bunker deep below the ground, finding solace in their hold, the three of them further binding themselves to one another in an indestructible trinity.

  Euan’s bigger body meant he towered over Nick, but especially Kira. In that moment, he felt the fragility of not only her frame, but also her mind. Nick’s too. He needed to pull himself together. Man the fuck up. Both Kira and Nick needed him and he had to be their rock, the ground they would plant their feet into to keep themselves rooted to reality.

  He’d fight like a gladiator for Nick. For both of them. So, with inhuman strength, he squashed the desolation inside him and focused on what was still in his arms.

  Nick. Kira. But it was Nick who looked beyond exhausted. Beyond what a man’s body and mind were capable of enduring. His features were haggard and worn, but in his eyes there was now hope rather than the aching emptiness. It lightened Euan’s heart considerably.

  Kira’s face was buried in Nick’s chest, the man’s face lost in that wild mass of spun gold, breathing in her essence with deep, sustaining lungfuls.

  It was Kira who broke the wordless sanctuary they had buried themselves in.

  ‘Are you okay with being in the middle, Nick?’ she asked, her words a soft murmur.

  Nick flinched. ‘I’m not—’ he began.

  Kira knew the trail of his painful thoughts.

  ‘I’m fine, Nick. A bit of a red mark. I knew I was safe the whole time. I knew you would wake up and realise what had happened. I wasn’t afraid. Never afraid. Not of you. Ever,’ Kira told him while pressing her body deeper into their embrace.

  He felt Nick nod against his chest in reply and pull Kira tighter against him.

  Euan felt as weak as a newborn calf, yet instinctively he knew it was still dark outside, so he wordlessly shuffled them both back into bed.

  The worst was over. The demons were purged, the monkey from Nick’s back killed and buried. Though Euan wasn’t sure if sleep would visit him after the vision that had met him when he woke, he held hope in his heart that finally—fucking finally—they could begin to move forward. Begin to live a life together.

  All three of them.

  Kira climbed on the bed and snuggled into Nick, forcing his hand to wrap around her reclined body. She kissed him on the cheek before closing her eyes.

  He flicked off the light and settled into bed. Like Kira, he claimed Nick’s body with the ferocity of a child with his favourite toy.

  He thought he’d never sleep again, assuming that tonight’s events would be burned onto his brain for eternity, but as he held Nick in a vice-like grip, Kira the same on the other side, he realised he was not alone in protecting Nick. He was not by himself in holding him, caring for him, loving him. Kira might not feel those types of emotions for them yet, but Euan felt that, with time, they would form an unbreakable triad that supported, worshipped and guarded one another.

  For the first time in maybe his whole fucking life, Euan finally felt as though he wasn’t alone.

  Chapter 21

  Euan had been right—sleep eluded him. Though he was physically exhausted, his body fatigued and his mind desperate for slumber, he was unable to drift into unconsciousness. His brain was tormented with images of Nick’s breakdown, his tortured cries of anguish and his desperate pleas to escape his pain. Euan could still feel the imprint of his heaving chest, his wet cheeks on his skin.

  He needed alcohol.

  There had been only a few times since those last news flashes and social media feeds when Euan had allowed himself to indulge in such mind-numbing, blissful escapism. He remembered when only the emergency broadcast was left on the radio and the streets were empty of cars, he’d left his apartment to seek a means to blot out what he assumed was going to happen. He’d coughed blood onto his shirt sleeve the entire journey to the liquor store, convinced that during the last days he’d suffer on earth he would not be coherent enough to experience them. He knew what to expect—the excruciating internal pain, the burning sensation all over his skin, blood oozing from every orifice and finally death as he drowned while his lungs filled up with his own blood.

  Outside in the streets, it wasn’t like it was depicted on movie sets, where wrecks and abandoned vehicles lined the walkways and footpaths. Reality meant people had time to die and so had no need to dump their cars unheeded. Granted, it was usually only a few days at the most, but it still meant they stayed inside with loved ones, to die in their arms, or hold others while they slipped away in theirs.

  Euan remembered when he’d waited for the sickness to take hold of him. He’d sat on his couch with six bottles of Jack Daniels and slowly obliterated them one by one over the course of three days. When he’d come out of his drink-induced coma, he realised not only that he was not dead from the virus, but he had survived his own self-induced poisoning.

  Things had been quiet then, and he’d been able to scavenge to survive well enough. It was a few weeks before those who were left were forced to search for food and supplies. Water had been the biggest requirement for those who were healthy enough to leave their homes. Then, as the perishable foods began to disappear, the fight for survival began.

  When he’d heard of the survivors’ camps, he’d been skeptical. When an airborne virus had wiped out so much of the population, why the fuck would anyone want to congregate in mass groups? But society was still functioning on a basic level in those first few months—albeit without running water, electricity, mass food production and advanced medical care. It wasn’t until the motherfuckers gained access to the weapons that things really started to disintegrate. Bloody fights for leadership raged. Then the survivors began to realise the limited quantity of women in their numbers and all hell broke loose. Euan had found Nick during those last dark days and had taken him to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, where they survived by their wits and scavenging abilities. It had worked too, until even that became too dangerous for them, with territory wars between gangs starting to take hold.

  They’d packed up their belongings and had begun to wander like refugees in search of a better life they thought they’d never find.

  It was another few months before they came across Lenny and his crew.

  Now, like those first few nights as he waited for death, Euan wanted to obliterate the realities of the world around him and bury himself in drink.

  His bare feet were silent on the carpet as he padded towards the kitchen in the hunt for his prize. The ventilation system whirred, the battery packs and their changing systems hummed. Somewhere close, a clock ticked. The temperature of the room was mild, but he was cold, his fingers felt like ice.

  He wondered if after tonight, they would ever be warm again.

  ‘Hey.’ A soft, feminine voice brought Euan from his dark thoughts. He turned as a tiny vision walk towards him in a worn nightdress and messy white-gold hair. Euan had to breathe through the burn of the sight of her.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied just as softly, though at a much lower octave. ‘Nick?’

  ‘Asleep,’ she answered with a small, relieved smile.

  Euan nodded in satisfaction. At least Nick was finding a small measure of peace after the night’s terrors. If he slept without dreams. He hoped those would be a thing of the past now.

  The overhead LED lighting cast a cool white glow over Kira’s tanned shoulders. It danced off that wild mess on top of her head.

  As Kira walked further into the light, Euan could see the markings that Nick left. Red and purple bands made from a man’s hand blemished the beauty of her elongated, delicate throat. Though he was glad Nick’s episode might mean he didn’t have to concern himself over his violent outbursts anymore, the image of those brutal bruises were a black mark on his heart.

  Euan left the kitchen area and met Kira in the middle of the room. She halted at his approach, quiet as he to
ok her chin gently in his fingers and tilted her head so he could inspect the exposed skin.

  ‘Just a red mark,’ she told him as she tried, and failed, to move her chin from Euan’s grip. ‘It will be gone by the morning.’

  She was lying. It would be torture for Nick to see those dark blooms caused by his hand.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.

  When she was unable to shake her head due to Euan’s firm grip, she replied, ‘No. Not at all.’

  Euan narrowed his eyes and studied her. Her dainty nose and high cheekbones gave her an elfin look. Those blue eyes glinted in the overhead lighting, and as he studied them, he knew she was telling the truth.

  ‘I fucked up. I knew what he needed, I was just too much of a pussy to give it to him,’ Euan told her honestly, surprising himself as the frank words tumbled from his lips.

  Kira reached up and wrapped her elegant hand around his wrist. He was reminded of how they had looked encasing Nick’s forearms when she’d been held immobile under him.

  ‘It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault,’ Kira whispered, letting him keep his hold on her face while she stood unwavering before him.

  Euan looked over her head to the hallway towards the bedroom and ignored her comment.

  ‘Have any alcohol, sweetheart?’ he asked her instead.

  He could feel her studying his face. The burn of her assessment was acute. ‘That isn’t the solution, Euan,’ she told him, without fear of the consequences.

  He removed his hold on her chin and found his hands tightening into fists at his side. ‘Yeah? You an expert on that?’

  Kira was stalwart. ‘We all need an outlet. For our pain, our heartache. What we just saw was—’

  A sudden and unchecked burst of rage filled his chest, and he was surprisingly unable to rein it in. ‘What we just saw was a man disintegrating before my eyes because I fucked up and left him on his own to get beaten and raped. What we just saw was a woman who, coincidently, I also swore to protect, falling prey to the repercussions of that decision. What we just witnessed was all my fault. Every. Fucking. Moment.’

  Even though Euan had kept his voice low so as not to wake Nick, she was close enough to suffer the full force of his outrage. She blinked from the venom in his voice, but instead of cowering like any other person on the face of the earth would likely have done, she straightened her shoulders and lifted that chin. She met his blazing eyes straight on.

  ‘Nobody is infallible. No person is perfect. We all make mistakes—’

  ‘Those mistakes get you hurt? Someone you love hurt?’ he interrupted.

  ‘No,’ she answered slowly. ‘But look at the decision I made to approach you. That could have ended far worse for me. Or I could have just let you pass, hide down here without meeting you. Maybe I would have lived a long life on my own. Maybe I would have cut my hand and died from septicemia. Maybe I would have put a bullet in my brain from being so lonely.’

  ‘Christ, Kira. What the fuck?’ he interjected, shocked at her candour, blindsided by the flashing memory of the woman from Nirvana, her lips stretching over the barrel of his gun. He couldn’t comprehend Kira doing the same thing.

  She pressed on, regardless of his volatility. ‘Euan, you can’t tell the future. You can’t know what will happen day to day.’

  When he tried to interrupt her once again, she hushed him with a scalding look and a raised hand. ‘You realise that everything that happened to you and Nick up to this point led you to me, right? Does that make everything you’ve done between now and then so terrible?’ He watched her throat work. ‘Well, does it?’

  ‘You know it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish what happened to Nick never took place,’ he growled in response to her insight.

  ‘Of course. What I’m trying to say is that we all have to make decisions that may turn out good or bad. And we can’t be too hard on ourselves when they don’t work out, especially when we had the best intentions.’

  She was right of course. But because it was too painful to process right then, he decided to focus on more appealing aspects of their argument.

  It had been a long time since he’d gone toe-to-toe with a woman. He’d forgotten how a verbal fight could fuel his blood. Kira’s cheeks were flushed from her temper and her eyes sparked acid with each word. She was so clever. So intuitive. So damn fuckable that Euan had to remind himself he wasn’t an animal that could claim a mate instantaneously.

  When he took a step towards her to close the tiny gap between them, her breath caught in her throat for an entirely different reason.

  ‘Euan?’ she questioned, suddenly unsure of the sharp change in the conversation’s direction.

  He eyed the rise and fall of her loose breasts behind the bodice of her nightgown, the flush caused by his intense gaze travelling from her cheeks to her marked throat to spread down and out of sight behind the stained lace.

  As her breath hitched, he wrapped one hand around her tiny waist and pressed her trembling body against his. He only wore a pair of briefs to bed, so he felt the heat of her skin through her nightgown keenly. Where his palm resided at the small of her back, he relished the shiver of sweet feminine anticipation as he coerced her body closer to his.

  Her delicate throat was exposed due to her short hair. One lonely bruise had blossomed along the muscle that stretched from her shoulder to her ear. It begged to be cosseted. Tended to. Cared for.

  Euan had to bend to reach it, and Kira remained motionless as he did so. Slowly, when he finally reached his destination, he let his lips brush her ethereal skin, the tiny hairs prickling under his delicate touch. His tongue escaped to caress that mark with light, wet strokes, exceeding the careful consideration that such a blemish required.

  Euan heard her breath escalate and he let the effect of that audible excitement gather in his cock. He didn’t pull back as it swelled under the loose-fitting fabric, and he didn’t change his position when he was certain his erection was firmly pressed against her soft belly.

  His free hand rose to gently stroke the skin of her bare upper arm with his fingertips. He smiled to himself as Kira quivered under his onslaught to her senses.

  ‘Euan …’ she breathed uncertainly.

  ‘Shh,’ he crooned. His cock throbbed incessantly, his need to have her underneath him escalated to the point where he was fighting his own desire with brute strength. However, he did nothing more than trace that bruise with his tongue, brushing his fingers along the skin of her upper arm, relishing the soft puffs of breath against his dark chest hair.

  ‘I need you,’ he whispered into her hair.

  ‘Need me?’ Her voice was expectant.

  ‘To help me keep an eye on Nick.’

  ‘On Nick?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He could have almost chuckled at her breathless disappointment.

  She rallied and moved out from under him, brushing the hair from her face with a frustrated hand. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Kira.’ Euan demanded her attention and her gaze once more.

  When their eyes met, he saw nothing but unbridled longing emanating through the depths of blue. She was bereft without him, his touch. He could see it, feel it in the sexual tension that saturated the room. When she licked her lips, he could do nothing but flare his nostrils and inhale the intoxicating feminine musk that she emitted without thought.

  ‘Yes?’ she answered with breathy false impatience.

  ‘Soon,’ he answered cryptically.

  Kira blinked in adorable incomprehension. ‘Soon?’

  ‘Yeah, sweetheart. Soon.’ He turned to saunter to the hatch that opened under the bed in the main room of the house. He needed fresh air, and a cold shower. He needed to take his dick in his hand and squash the yearnings that were surging through him like a tidal wave of suppressed hunger, desperate to escape its confines.

  He would bury himself soon in her wet heat, reap the joy of satisfying her needs both phy
sically and emotionally. Even though she might be clever, she wasn’t able to hide the desperation for physical contact and yearning that her body desired. She wanted to be cared for, indulged and loved just as fiercely as Nick had needed those words from Euan tonight.

  He hadn’t lied. It would be soon.

  Chapter 22

  It was cut, of that Euan had no doubt.

  The camera was a little thing. It was hidden in a wooden box made to accommodate it. Enclosed, but for a tiny hole where the glass lens peeked though. It had been bolted securely to the tree trunk, high up in its branches. The wiring that supported its connectivity was insulated and buried in the ground.

  Its obscurity was seamless. Unless its exact presence was known, it was almost impossible to discover, making the purposefully severed wire all the more sinister and concerning.

  Euan moved his eyes to search the thick mulch at his feet. Even more distressing, there was no trace of their assailant. The rain had washed all tracks from the soil.

  ‘Do you think they chose the storm deliberately to cut this? So it would hide their footprints?’ Nick asked from the ground where he was bent to inspect the wire.

  Euan didn’t answer immediately. His gaze wandered through the trees, down the overgrown driveway, to the bend in the road where the path was lost to the undergrowth.

  He wanted to say no. He wanted to ease Nick’s fears, the frisson of worry that tempered his voice. He yearned to tell him that they were safe, that there was no danger lurking just out of sight, out of reach.

  But it would be a lie. And Nick would know it.

  ‘Can’t say for sure Nicky, but if I had to guess? I’d guess yes,’ Euan muttered reluctantly.

  Nick cursed under his breath. Euan found himself nodding in agreement.

  Nick spoke as he stood, brushing the dirt from his knees. ‘Are we gonna tell Kira?’

  Euan swallowed at that question. The threat to her and Nick was growing each day. Whoever cut this wire knew what they were doing, and it was likely they suspected where this feed would lead. Did they also know who lived in the home? Did they realise what was hidden under layers of steel and earth?