by M. Barnette
Before the Collapse she'd considered herself to be sexually open-minded, and she had enjoyed a bit of role playing, donning costumes and having fun. But before the Collapse it had been playing.
She'd found out that there were certain areas in which she couldn't compare to men after the Collapse. Killing and subjugation of others were two of them. And those had led to her capture and enslavement.
Sex, she quickly learned, was another game she couldn't play on an equal field.
Sex became a matter of domination, of who was stronger.
And she hadn't been prepared for that type of fight. Emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, she could have matched the Dragon toe to toe and probably won.
But that wasn't the way Roderik played the game. He played it with strength and cruelty, brute force and pain. Roderik had been powerful, deadly, and cruel in his systematic abuse, his training. The way he'd beaten down her resistances, made her start to believe a woman's place was wherever a man wanted it to be. And he'd wanted her submissive, chained at his feet as a naked slave. During the months of her captivity Roderik had driven one point home: the weak were owned by whomever was strong enough to dominate them.
Nikki was never going to be the one dominated again. Not by anyone.
The blond was drying off, water still dripping down his body.
He was dangerous, she could see that in every movement of his body. But there was something under that icy exterior that she wanted to know better. Wanted to have. Yes, wanted to own.
Not the way Roderik had owned her. No. She wanted the blond killer the way she'd never wanted another man. And watching him made her wonder exactly what kind of man he'd be in bed. Cruel like Roderik, or more like the young men she'd had in her bed before the Collapse?
Nikki could imagine unleashing the golden fall of his hair, then tying him down to the bed, using the his own hair ribbons. Then she'd play wicked games with his helpless body. Games that would have him begging for more. She'd tease him with a tuft of feathers, trailing them down his muscular torso. Then she'd play with his nipples, licking and nipping until he growled in frustration. His cock would be her toy to suck and fondle until she chose the moment and straddled his hips and rode him to their mutual completion.
Would he be willing to play such games?
A silent sigh drifted free of her parted lips. She'd probably never know. He was so aloof, so cold and unresponsive to most of their friendly overtures.
She crept away as silently as she could, going farther upstream for the water where he wouldn't see her. Where he wouldn't know she'd seen him.
* * * *
Washed and relaxed from his time in the creek, Bells put on his last change of clean clothes from his duffel. He washed out the shirt and jeans he'd been wearing, with as little of the soap as he could use. Done, he carried them up the bank to hang them over the line behind the farmhouse. It was a cool night with low humidity, so they'd be dry in a few hours.
He had to pass the grave on the way back, and that put a damper on the slightly better frame of mind his time alone in the creek had created.
Well, almost alone, anyway. He wondered why the woman had stood there, watching him. Spying on him while he bathed. What did these people want from him anyway? What did they expect? Why wouldn't they even leave him to a moment of privacy for a bath?
It irked him.
He'd also been aware of her eyes the whole time and found himself getting slightly aroused at the thought of her dark eyes sliding over his body. A feeling he'd crushed mercilessly. He'd help them, but there weren't going to be any entanglements with them. Especially not sexual ones.
Shaking off the mood, he went into the garage and checked the car. Dal had found the keys hanging by the door and they were now the ignition of the car, just where Dal had said he'd leave them. Bells was going to see if he could get the car started.
He slipped in behind the seat and caught a view of himself in the mirror. Blue eyes stared back at him from an unlined and youthful face. A finger touched his cheek. Hadn't he been older before?
Yeah. Before. Different place. Different time. Different fucking reality.
Shaking himself, silver bells ringing, he sighed, deciding he was too tired to dredge through the murk of his lost memories. It would come back, or not.
One turn of the key gave him the answer he'd expected. The battery was dead. He tried the headlights and not even a dim glow resulted. Left dead so long, the battery probably wouldn't hold a charge, but he'd give it a try in the morning.
He was still sitting there, considering what their options might be, when Anya found him.
"We've got supper ready if you want to eat."
He did, but not in that house. “Put it on the porch."
"Sure.” But she didn't leave. “About earlier..."
"Forget it."
"Really, I am sorry."
Bells looked at her. “Okay.” He knew he was being insufferable, but he didn't want to talk. Not now. Not to Anya. He didn't want her to start crying because he knew he couldn't stand seeing a woman cry. Young or old didn't matter, it scorched his heart to hear a woman crying. Yet another random bit of self-knowledge from the void that existed where memories should be, but weren't.
Frowning, Anya shook her head and walked away.
A frown he could handle. It didn't threaten the way tears did. Tears made you do things you regretted later. Or made you say things you wished had stayed behind your teeth, locked in your head where no one could hear what a fool you were.
He got out of the car and started searching for anything he might be able to use against a future breakdown of the truck. If Hawk and Dal ever came back from their game of snipe hunt with the King's Rangers.
There were jumper cables in the trunk of the car. A few roadside flares, a jack, and a first aid kit with unexpired antibiotic cream and bandaids. He could put the jumper cables to use tomorrow. Maybe the battery would hold a charge long enough for them to get where they were going, some place called Horton. He snorted. That he could remember the same way he remembered everything that had happened since he'd opened his eyes to the sight of the Milky Way spilled across the sky. But where he'd been, what he'd been doing before then ... that was a total blank.
Considering a few of things that did float up out of that unremembered past, perhaps it was a mercy he didn't recall more.
He scraped out cobwebs and dust from a milk crate, put the stuff he'd found in it, and started gathering up a few tools. A fairly new set of screwdrivers, a metric socket set and a moldy rubber mallet.
Done, he headed toward the house.
As he'd asked, his dinner was sitting on the porch.
So was Nikki. Pretty Nikki with her soulful dark eyes and soft chestnut hair. She smelled of sunshine, faint traces of some floral scent, the soft musky perfume that was purely female.
"I stayed out here to keep the flies away,” she told him with a little smile. There was a sparkle in her eyes, and for no apparent reason he could figure out she blushed a bit and turned her attention to a fly that was trying to land on his plate. She didn't seem the shy type.
But the trace of color burning on her cheeks was alluring. His heart stepped up its pace, and something south of his belt buckle gave a twitch of awareness.
Not happening, he told himself. Not here, not now, and sure as hell not with her.
"Thanks.” Bells picked up the plate and started eating, trying to distract himself from where his thoughts were slowly attempting to lead him.
We are not taking that road, Billy-boy. Not a fucking chance.
The food wasn't very hot, but he didn't really care. He'd eaten worse. Hadn't he? Yes, he was pretty sure he had.
"Hawk wants to stay here tonight."
He nodded.
"You going to sleep in the house?"
"No."
"I'll find you a blanket and pillow."
"Thanks, but no.” He didn't want to sleep with anything from the peo
ple they'd just buried. Why he couldn't have said, but the thought was repugnant. Disturbing. Almost a desecration in his mind.
"I'll get them from the truck."
His gaze went to her face, “All right then."
He ate while she rummaged in the back of the truck, pulling out the same blanket he'd used the night before, dragging a pillow out of a plastic trash bag. He found himself wondering what dead family those things had come from and had to force the thought aside.
"We got these from a looted store. I ... thought you'd want to know."
He met her richly brown eyes, nodded. “Thanks."
* * * *
Nikki sat down on the porch near the blond. The way he acted regarding the house, and everything connected to the dead family other than the food, was really odd. Sure it bothered her, but it was a fact of their existence, and she'd gotten practical about things since the Collapse. They were dead, and she liked to think that John and Carrie would have offered them help if they'd been alive the same way she and the rest of them tried to help other survivors, whenever and however they could.
The same way they'd helped Bells.
"If you're still hungry when that's gone there's some left."
"I'm good,” he told her as he swallowed another mouthful.
She knew he didn't want her there, it was plain from the way he sat, turned partly away, staring out into the growing darkness.
From the barn Chet gave one of his war whoops. “There's a generator out here! We can watch a DVD!"
Nikki groaned audibly.
The intensely blue eyes turned to regard her without any trace of emotion as Bells said, “Don't be too upset with him. He just misses how it was. If he can watch a DVD he can pretend everything's the way it used to be for a couple of hours. Some people just need a taste of the past so they can keep dealing with the present and not go crazy."
The woman was struck dumb by the quietly spoken revelation.
He got up out of the chair, taking his empty plate.
"Let me. Anya boiled some water and put dish soap in it, but it's in the kitchen.” She took the plate from him and he didn't resist her efforts. She didn't know why he wouldn't go into the house, but she wasn't going to make him do it either.
From inside they could hear Hawk talking to Dal about the things they should try and find. Guns, ammunition, any and all food and useful things they could trade. Clothes, shoes ... even the toys the children had in their room.
"We're vultures living off the corpse of civilization,” the blond murmured. “We can't help ourselves, but that's all we are. We don't build. We don't try and stop the downward spiral. We just exist from day to day.” There was a faint self-depreciating smile on his lips, but the eyes were cold as glacial ice. “I'm tired of being a vulture."
Before Nikki could say anything he stepped off the porch, leaving the woman to stare after him in stunned silence.
Chapter Five
They hooked up the generator and watched two movies, neither of them familiar to Bells. He'd heard Nikki's laughter, the sound bright as crystal in his ears. It had strangely awakened something in him, a desire to hear her crying out as he moved inside her.
It was a desire he squelched and firmly shoved aside even as he wondered why he was thinking about her so much. He was also wondering why fucking her would be a bad idea. But the mess that was his mind supplied several answers.
Vague memories of Kimiko floated up from the mists and he understood.
Their eyes were alike. Sable brown. Warm. Expressive.
He shook himself and tried not to think about it anymore, but it wasn't easy. She laughed a lot as they watched the DVD, and he even heard some quiet giggles from Anya. But Anya's laughter didn't spark the same heat in his groin as Nikki's did. Hearing them both happy after the tensions of the past day did make him smile slightly into the darkness.
He loved to hear women laughing. If they were laughing and smiling, all was right with his world.
Screams and tears. Fear. Sadness. Those emotions set him off, brought the Dragon out, and that was something he tried to prevent unless it was absolutely necessary. Once free the Warrior's Fire, the passion within his soul, was difficult to put back under wraps. Like the proverbial genie in the bottle, it was easier to get it out than it was to cage it afterward.
And for some reason that wouldn't rise up out of the mists of his lost memory, he knew he had to keep the Dragon chained. It was yet another one of those irksome things. Knowing something had to be a certain way, but not knowing the why behind that knowledge.
As the first movie ended the women broke into loud peals of laughter that put a broad, pleased smile on his face and let him relax a little more. Chet's deep roar of amusement, Dal's rolling laughter, even Hawk's chuckling all added together, soothing some of the wariness that seemed a permanent fixture of his body. Always on the alert for danger, it was just another facet of his past with no explanation.
He pulled the blanket Nikki'd gotten for him tighter around his lean frame and jammed his head back into the pillow, shifting a little to get more comfortable. He frowned at the bite of something hard behind his skull and rose up enough to flip all his braids over the pillow. A smile twitched his mouth as he heard the soft chiming.
Sleep, he told himself.
And that was exactly what he did.
* * * *
Nikki peered out of the window.
The house was dark, the second movie at an end. Chet was quietly snoring on the couch, Anya was sprawled out on the floor in front of the TV where she'd fallen asleep. Dal was sleeping in a recliner, one arm thrown over his head, a half smile on his lips.
She could still smell popcorn they'd made in the microwave, running it from the generator along with the TV and DVD player. It had been surreal, the near normality of the situation. Of the popcorn and camaraderie, the easy laughter they had shared.
But it hadn't felt complete. Not with Bells out on the porch alone.
She sighed, wondering curiously if Hawk was right and they just needed to give the blond a bit of time to get accustomed to them. She certainly hoped so, because she found herself liking the quiet man more with each contact she had with him.
Chet's louder snore brought her out of her reverie and sent her gaze to the stairs, making her wonder if she shouldn't be watching from a room up there. But Hawk was upstairs sleeping in the master bedroom. No one had died there so he hadn't had any reservations about using the big bed. He'd even encouraged her to join him if she wanted to, making an open-ended invitation that she could take however she wanted.
But it was a quiet blond loner she really wanted to curl up beside. She couldn't have said why his presence out on the porch made her feel even safer than she'd ever felt with the Fenyx and Tiger as her protectors, but it did.
Perhaps it was the aura of power that surrounded him like an intangible cloud.
She had searched the chairs on the porch and not seen Bells, so she started scanning along the porch. He was asleep not far from the front door, wrapped in the blanket, moonlight falling across him. Asleep he looked even younger, hardly more than a boy. But she knew better. There was something about him, an indefinable quality she couldn't name that told her, for all his too youthful looks, he was even older than Hawk.
A lot older.
"He's beautiful, isn't he?"
Nikki gave a squeak of startlement at the soft whisper from Anya.
"You noticed too, huh?"
Anya nodded. “I don't think he likes me, not after how I treated him."
Nikki gripped the other woman's arm. “Remember what Hawk said, he just needs time. He's not all that friendly with any of us."
"He likes you, Nikki."
The woman's eyes widened, “Now why would you say that?"
"I've seen him watching you. And he actually talks to you. He hasn't said much of anything to Chet or Dal, and hardly anything to me."
"I didn't notice,” she admitted.
; Anya looked out the window, “I wonder if all the Immortals are handsome. Hawk is, and Roderik would be if you couldn't see the hate in his eyes."
"I don't know. But even Dal's better looking than most guys."
Anya smiled, “Yeah, he is."
"He likes you, Anya."
"I know."
Nikki smiled. “You going to ask him to marry you when we get to Horton?"
Now it was Anya's turn to look startled. “No. Well...” Her gaze dropped as she thought about what Nikki had said. “It's crossed my mind, but, I'm not sure it's a good idea. Not with me already baking a bun here in the oven.” She rubbed her hand over her belly and smiled, her face going soft, warm with the full realization she was going to be a mother. It made Nikki smile, too.
"You be my bridesmaid?"
"Sure!” Nikki replied, giving the auburn haired woman a hug.
"I mean, if he says yes."
"If you two are going to talk about me you might want to do it in another room. Man needs his rest,” Dal mumbled.
Anya's face went beet red. “How much of that did you hear?"
There was a soft chuckle. “I'll let you know when we get to Horton."
"Oh, God...” Anya groaned.
"You sure got pretty tits,” Chet said.
Both of the women giggled, Dal snorted.
"Talking in his sleep again,” the man remarked. “We better all go back to sleep before we wake the Chet-dog. We start it barking and Hawk's going to skin us all alive."
"Well at least he doesn't pee on the carpet, but Dal's got a point,” Anya agreed as she gave Nikki a quick hug. “I don't want to wake Chet up because that will be the end of any sleep for the rest of the night. You know he'll want to watch another DVD."
"Very true,” Nikki replied.
Anya returned to where she'd been sleeping.
"Night, guys,” Nikki said. “I'm still on watch."
"Yeah,” Anya replied, grinning. “And I know exactly what you're watching, too."
The other two quieted down, falling back to sleep.
Cradling the shotgun in her arms, Nikki went out the back door, a flashlight they'd found gripped in her hand. It worked but the light was dim. Between it and the nearly full moon she had enough light for a little stroll out back so she could pee. They'd found some beer in the house and they'd all had a share of the three six-packs.