by ID Johnson
Shaking her head, Rain turned her back to him. The water had started to numb her toes slightly, and she’d need to finish rinsing away the soap suds and get out before she couldn’t walk anymore. Deciding she’d likely gotten all of the mud off and the residue from the detergent, she said, “I’m done with the soap.”
“All right. You want me to just stick my hand out, and you can put it in my palm?”
“I guess,” Rain said, wondering if that was the best way to make the exchange. “I mean… I’ll have to see where I’m going.”
“I know. But we’ve basically established there isn’t much on me you haven’t already seen, and I’m doing my best to respect your wish not to have me look at you. So… I’ll just trust you’ll keep your head up.”
A half-snicker, half-snort expressed itself before she could stop it. “‘Kay,” she said, as if it was no big deal for her to step over and hand him the soap bottle without her eyes drifting below the river’s surface.
Staying low herself, just in case he accidentally turned around, Rain took a deep breath and faced him. He was about ten yards away from her, his hand out behind him. Thoughts of what she could do instead of handing him the soap came to mind, and she had to pause to clear her thoughts. Never in her wildest imagination would she have ever conceded she might miss IW, and she wasn’t really missing it now. She was missing him. Even though his strong hands had been bound to the seat every time they’d been together, she’d held his hand in hers enough times since they left Gretchintown to know what it would be like to have those fingers graze her skin, to have him free to touch her body, and those thoughts raced through her mind as the simple act of placing a bottle of soap into his outstretched palm became much more complicated than it needed to be. Rain was suddenly glad the water was chilly; maybe it would clear her mind.
Finally reaching him, she put the soap in his hand and backed away. “Thanks,” Adam said, his voice soft. For a moment, she dared to think perhaps he was having similar thoughts about her. But then she remembered the distance that had fallen between them the night before, his inexplicable, sudden silence, and how it had hurt her in a way she couldn’t put into words, so she hurried away, turning from him so he could wash off in peace.
Rain stayed buried in the water up to her neck, her mind wandering back to the night before as she went over every word that had come out of her mouth and still had no idea what it was that she’d said to make Adam react the way that he had. She’d been trying to be nice, to pay him a compliment, to let him know how much she cared about his happiness, but he had seemed to think her words were rude or meant to hurt him, and she had no idea why.
“All right. Ready to get out of this glacial fjord?” Adam asked with a soft chuckle, bringing Rain out of her thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Definitely.”
“Cool. You wanna go first, or do you want me to?”
Thinking it would take her forever to get her feet moving on the slippery rocks when they were so cold, she muttered, “You can go ahead.”
“All right. But no peeking. I mean it, Rain. If I catch you checking out my backside, then you’re just gonna have to let me watch you get out of the river, too. Fair is fair now.” He was teasing, she could tell by his tone. Rain laughed politely, thinking maybe he was trying to cheer her up. Maybe he realized he had been aloof the night before and their relationship was strained, and he didn’t like it any more than she did. Or maybe she was imagining the whole thing. Either way, she could appreciate him trying to make her smile, even if the result was forced.
“Okay,” Rain said--because, apparently, that’s all she knew how to say anymore--and then her mind slipped back to the conversation from the night before. Why was Adam upset that she wanted him to find a woman that could make him happy?
Vaguely, she heard the sounds of him making his way back to the shore, not paying much attention to him, although the more she attempted to ignore the fact that he was walking out of the river--that he was naked and walking out of the water, which would allow her to peek over her shoulder and see this magnificent backside she hadn’t seen but knew existed--the harder it was to fight the underlying thoughts.
Rain tried to think about something else, anything else. When the sounds of the water splashing dissipated, she assumed that meant he was out. She planned to give him a chance to get dressed before she turned around, but the temptation was so great, and her mind was lost on so many other things, that the undercurrent got the best of her, and she found herself turning her head quickly in his direction.
She’d read once about a creature in mythology from thousands of years ago that could turn a person to stone just from a single glance. That’s how she felt when her eyes landed on Adam’s bare bottom--as if she couldn’t pull herself away. He was right; it was magnificent. Pure, rippling muscle like nothing she’d ever even imagined. But beyond that, there were the bruises. How many days had it been since he’d gotten an injection? Over a week. Yet, even at this distance, she could see layers of blue and purple marks, surrounded by the green and yellow remnants of older sites that were now healing. Trapped between the desire to run her hands across his smooth form and to cry over his pain, Rain simply couldn’t look away, her eyes bulging and her mouth open.
Until Adam looked over his shoulder. His eyes popped out of his head as well, but then he started to laugh. “Really, Rain?”
The spell was broken, and she managed to pull her face away, turning around completely as blood rushed to her face. The urge to sink herself far below the surface of the water and just stay there until Adam gave up and went away was overwhelming. How had she allowed herself to look in the first place? Much less get caught.
“Damn, Rain. Here I was thinking you’d do whatever it took to make sure I didn’t get a chance to see you undressed and then I catch you staring at me like you’ve never seen a man’s bare ass before.”
She hadn’t--except for in her anatomy class, and those were pictures, videos, and holograms, not the real thing. Even if she’d seen a thousand bare male asses, she would still have gawked at his. “I’m so sorry,” Rain said, still not turning around. “I really didn’t mean to.”
“I’m just teasing you. It’s all right,” he said, a slight chuckle still reverberating under each word. “I’ve got my pants on now if you want to get out of there before you freeze to death. And don’t worry. I won’t look.”
Rain turned around then to see he had his back to her as he slid his shirt over his wet torso, his hair dripping down to wet the collar. They’d dry pretty quickly once they got moving again, but at least they wouldn’t be covered in mud, assuming they could avoid wet patches in the road, at least until they reached the River Red. Then… who knows what might happen.
At the moment, she had another dilemma, though. Fair was fair. “We made a deal,” she said, already heading toward the shore. The idea of a man seeing her naked made her face flush even darker, but if anyone had to see her without her clothes on, she was glad it was Adam. He was already familiar with most of her body anyway, wasn’t he? Besides, was it possible he might not be so upset with her for whatever she’d said to hurt his feelings if he could see she wasn’t so bad looking? She wasn’t perfect by any means, but she’d always been pretty happy with the shape of her body. Maybe he would like it, too.
“Rain, I’m not gonna turn around,” he said, sitting down and pulling on his socks and boots.
The fact that he didn’t seem to want to see her undressed stung slightly, but Rain couldn’t make him look at her. She reached the edge of the water and stepped up onto dry land, thankful that she began to feel her toes again as soon as she made contact with the grassy shore.
Squeezing the water out of her hair, she made her way to the clothes she’d laid out, wishing she had a towel, but that was an item too bulky for their packs. “You sure?” she asked, bending down to pick up her bra. “A promise is a promise. Last chance. The ladies are going back inside.”
“Yeah
, I’m sure,” Adam said, dropping his head. He was dressed now, ready to go, just sitting there with his back to her, his hands crossed over his knees.
“Okay,” she said, but she didn’t move to put her bra on just yet. For some reason, she waited, just staring at the back of his head. Slowly, as if he had no control over himself either, as if she wasn’t the only one possessed by an urge completely beyond understanding, he turned and looked over his shoulder.
Rain felt his eyes on her for a few seconds, longer than he likely intended, before he turned away. The expected embarrassment didn’t come, though. She didn’t feel as if she’d done something wrong or as if she should try to cover her body from him. Instead, she felt as if her body was meant to be shared with him. Pulling a deep breath into her lungs, Rain put her bra on and then continued to get dressed, sitting down to put her socks and boots on and running a brush through her hair before she worked it into a ponytail. It only took her two or three minutes, but Adam didn’t say a word the entire time, leaving her to wonder whether or not he regretted giving into that impulse or if he just didn’t know what to say.
“You guys about done?” Mist shouted. “You aren’t over there making babies are you?”
Rain groaned before calling back, “Mist, you know we couldn’t be doing that. We still have our IUDs in, silly!” which got a laugh out of Adam and made Mist laugh loud enough that Rain could hear her through the trees. Since she and Mist were only in the practice stages of the Motherhood, both of them had inserts that prevented them from getting pregnant. Rain knew how to remove them because of her medical training, but they couldn’t be taken out by just anyone or else it could be a huge problem for the woman who had it removed. Not only could it cause a significant amount of bleeding, the Mothers had installed a tracker inside of each device so that if one came out, they’d know immediately. It was all part of the control they exuded over all the women of Michaelanburg. They wanted to know who was pregnant and when so they could dictate which babies lived and which ones went over the Bridge. Allowing a woman the freedom to potentially carry her own baby in her womb was akin to inviting chaos into their ranks, something the Motherhood would never do.
“You ready?” Adam asked, standing and putting on his pack before he slung his rifle over his shoulder and took a few steps toward her.
Rain finished zipping up her pack and nodded. “I think so.”
His hand jutted out in front of her. Rain looked at it and then raised her face to look into his. That smile was back, the one that instantly put her at ease. Putting her hand in his, she let him pull her up until they were mere inches from one another. Rain swallowed hard. Now would be the perfect time to let him know how she felt. All she’d have to do was lean in and press her lips to his.
A second passed by, then another. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, his eyes heavy on her face. She didn’t breathe, didn’t move. “You’re so beautiful, Rain,” Adam said quietly and then let go of her hand and stepped away toward where Mist and Walt were waiting.
Rain’s eyes didn’t move to follow him. She’d missed her chance, but the fact that he’d also had the opportunity to kiss her if he’d wanted to and had let it go told her more than she was willing to accept at the moment. Despite the compliment, a feeling of heaviness settled into her lungs as she bent over to grab her pack and put it on. He might think she was beautiful, but he must not think she was a good enough person, or the right person for him. Or else… he would’ve kissed her, wouldn’t he have?
Rain had no answers. She was exhausted and still had a long way to go. The sun sank below the tree line, leaving them in near darkness. Just as they made their way back onto the road that led north to Oklasaw, the sky behind them lit up and a booming in the distance reminded them that they were being chased.
Turning to see what the commotion was, Rain saw what looked like fireworks in the sky over Dafo, but she knew that it wasn’t a celebration she was witnessing--it was a battle. The Mothers had arrived in Dal’s territory, and they would do whatever was necessary to get past the meager blockade. Then, they would be coming for her and her friends. As much as her heart hurt for the new friends she’d made at Dafo, when Mist shouted, “Run! Rain! Run!” she turned back around and did the only thing she could. Rain started to run.
Chapter Fifty-One
The steady pop pop of gunfire, peppered with the louder, less routine sound of blasts going off and bombs whizzing through the air before they crashed into the buildings in front of them was invigorating to White in a way she couldn’t put into words. The sting of smoke hit her nostrils the way florals enticed most women; the battle raging in front of her was as comforting to her as a warm blanket to a babe on a harsh winter night. She’d been born to wage war; it was in her blood. Though she hadn’t had nearly enough opportunities to stand across the battlefield from a foreign aggressor in her forty-five years, she was here now, having finally talked President Violet in to allowing her to go, and the idea that Dal’s forces would crumble before them so that they could continue in pursuit of the rebels had her full of energy, despite the fact that she hadn’t slept in days.
The helios were staying far back from the line, their only purpose to drop supplies and personnel, but Dal had still managed to send some sort of heat-seeking weapon in their direction, striking one of them in the tail. It had spiraled around a few times before the pilot managed to get it back under control and took off toward Michaelanburg. The trail of smoke following the bird made her think it wouldn’t make it all the way home, but perhaps a crash site further in the forest would prevent Dal and his goons from getting their hands on the equipment. “Make sure I am informed immediately if that helio goes down,” White said to Jaguar, who hadn’t been happy to see White get off of the bird a few hours ago.
“Yes, Mother,” she said, her voice still showing her annoyance at having her command taken from her. It wasn’t necessarily that Jaguar was doing a poor job; it was simply that White needed to be here, to oversee the attack, as much as she needed to breathe.
Not that anyone was particularly impressed with Jaguar’s performance, either. She hadn’t managed to catch up to the four renegades, after all, even though over a week had passed since the insurrection began. White was confident she would’ve already brought them in, had she been the one to initially give chase, but there was no going back in time to fix that now. The task before them was simple enough. Get past Dal and his meager guns so that they could continue their pursuit. It was simple enough. While going around Dafo would be simpler, this was faster, and more entertaining.
Looking through a pair of hand-held magnifiers, White watched as the long-range explosions were hurled through the air at the remains of what used to be powerful skyscrapers, now leaning and broken, only their rusty frames sticking out of the ground, colossal remnants of what used to be a powerful nation. If she could tell where the return fire was coming from, she’d have a much better handle on the situation, but it seemed to float from building to building. Whenever her artillery took out one location, it simply moved to another. It made little sense, unless Dal had so many guns trained on them, he could afford to fire at them one at a time. Perhaps that was what he was doing.
He hadn’t done any major damage, though, other than the shot to the bird. Taking out a couple dozen Mothers here and there wasn’t going to slow them down. If he wanted to stop them, he’d have to hit their transporters, and she didn’t think he had the fire power left to do that. The larger vehicles were kept back away from the city proper, finding routes around the enemy territory rather than through it.
Invading Dafo and finding Dal’s hiding spot would bring her nothing but pure bliss; she’d love to watch the Mothers line his followers up and execute them one by one, in a similar fashion to the way she’d taken out that rebel at the beginning of the insurgence. But she didn’t have that sort of time on her hands at the moment. She needed to get through this hellhole and find Rain and the others. “Press ahead,” she s
aid, leaving it to Jaguar to actually pass the order along. “I want all units to move straight ahead, converging on the road that leads north out of town. Make sure that all tracking devices are turned off on the lead elements. If they have tech that can read our location, we’ll need to make it obsolete.” Something that girl in the holding cell back at headquarters had said made her wonder if there wasn’t a device giving their location away. She’d be leading her troops slightly blind without following them on her own tablet, but it was worth the risk to make sure they weren’t announcing their presence to the renegades.
“Yes, Mother White,” Jaguar said, stepping away to speak to her commanders. Night had fallen, bright flashes from explosions lighting the sky, mostly those fired from the Mothers into the buildings across the way.
Before the women even began to move forward, a loud explosion sounded from the building in front of her, about six hundred yards away, as one of their larger artillery shots hit its mark. The building groaned for a second and then, in a rumble of fury, sank quickly in a ripple, the collision of concrete into the earth shaking the ground beneath her feet as a plume of dust and ash filled the air, slowly drifting their direction. Whether or not that had wounded Dal’s forces remained to be see, but it couldn’t have helped his cause. “Move forward--now!” White shouted. Jaguar’s commanders reacted, and a steady stream of Mothers stepped out of the trees, land riders and motorbikes hurrying some closer to the front. White wanted to get through Dafo and on her way to catching up with the rebels within an hour; the time for playing games had long passed. She was going to find Rain and her companions and put an end to this before they reached the River Red--before the sun rose again.