Juniper Unraveling

by Keri Lake

  I wanted to touch his soul, but I didn’t anticipate the obscurity of it. The way he keeps it hidden behind a veil of pain.

  The little girl inside of me clings to the last thread of my innocence—the same one that tells me not to trust love, and that what I’ve done is wrong.

  There isn’t a bone in my body that doesn’t desire to have Six—even the parts I’ve been warned about. But I didn’t expect to feel the confusion and shame of knowing that I could’ve stopped him, but didn’t. I climaxed during his roughness, as if a part of me craved it.

  He pulls out of me, tucks his head into his knees, and slams his fists into his temples with an agonized cry.

  With remorse, I sit up and crawl across the blankets toward him. An ache throbs between my thighs and up inside my belly, but I ignore it, because I know the pain he’s suffering is likely far worse.

  The hate he has for himself is written in the tautness of his muscles, and his agonized whimper that interrupts the useless noise inside my head.

  Whatever turmoil’s settled over me, it’s not his fault, it’s mine. And I don’t know why I’m feeling this way. It doesn’t make sense to me. The perplexity lies in the black void at the back of my head—the part of my mind that fails to make itself known. The part where voices echo and faceless silhouettes whisper.

  He kicks away from me, pushing at the reach of my hand.

  Anyone else, and I’d crawl into myself and die at the rejection. But I know why Six is doing this. He thinks he’s hurt me.

  Maybe he has. Maybe that’s just the nature of us. I hurt him by inviting him to hurt me.

  The world might call us sick. Perhaps even made for each other.

  After all, good men are supposed to be made of sturdy bones and steel flesh, but Six is neither. He’s shadows and pain wrapped in a broken husk.

  But there’s goodness in him, too.

  I’ve felt it. Touched it.

  Prying his arms apart, I rise up on my knees, wrapping my arms around his neck, and he pulls me into him, resting his head against my belly. Our sweat-slick skin slides against one another as I hold him, both of us trembling.

  “I’m okay, Six. You didn’t hurt me. I don’t know why I’m crying.” I slide into his lap, feeling his arms wrap tight around my back.

  His head nuzzles against my breast like he can’t even look at me. His mind must be in absolute hell, and the unknowns swirling inside my head certainly aren’t easing his thoughts.

  Against his resistance, I tip his head up to mine and kiss him. All the feelings of want quickly intensify until the electricity hums through my body, like before.

  The only way I can make things right in Six’s head is to let him know I want him. I still do. So much so, there’s an ache in my heart at this phantom sensation of regret. It angers me. Doesn’t belong in the place between us.

  Wrapping my legs around his body, I drag his now-flaccid length across my swollen sex, and he kisses my neck.

  “I want you, Six,” I whisper. “I always want you.”

  He pulls me tight to his body, as if he could pull me inside of him and we become a single unit. As connected as two people can be.

  We sit with his hardening length pressing into me, until he fills me again, and I slowly rock against him, my arms draped around his shoulders like ribbons tied to stone. With tears in his eyes, he drives into me, studying my reaction with every thrust.

  Even at his weakest, there’s something powerful and breathtaking about him.

  Six is like a lightning storm in the desert, as mesmerizing as he is dark and violent, with the potential to destroy in one merciless strike. And yet, for some reason, I’m drawn to him by an inexplicable magnetism that electrifies me and sets me aflame.

  Two damaged souls trying to figure each other out.

  His jaw clenches with every push of his hips as he ruins the little girl I no longer am. Only this time, Six is making love to me.

  Closing the cover of the book, I trace the image of the young boy and his thick black glasses, as Six and I lie naked on the blanket, our bodies cooling in the desert breeze. “Papa gave me this book a couple years ago. A gift. He found it out beyond the wall.”

  Six leans forward and kisses my shoulder. In a matter of only a couple of hours, judging by the position of the sun in the sky, we’ve had sex three times beneath the cottonwood.

  “Someday, I want to go out there. To see these things he sees. To learn what happened. That day with the Ragers, it didn’t change any of that. I still dream of leaving this place.” I toy with the scar at his knuckles and dip my head to kiss it. “There’s blackness inside my mind, and I feel like the answers are out there, somewhere. I want to know what happened to my mother.” Resting my head against my propped palm, I peer up at Six, whose eyes are fixed on mine. “We can’t leave Papa, though. And I don’t know if I could kill another to stay alive.”

  His gaze meets mine, serious and unflinching. He reaches for the notebook and writes on the page: I wud 4 U.

  I stare down at his declaration and nod. “Someday, you and I will leave this place. Somewhere they don’t know us. Where no one will ever hurt you.”

  It’s the truth. We’d live wildly and recklessly. I’d kiss him all the time, not just in the stolen moments, but day and night. In the desert sun, and beneath the moon. I’d kiss him in the rain, whenever it rained, just to feel his wet lips on mine.

  Taking my hand, he sets my palm to his chest over his heart and gives a squeeze.

  With understanding, I nod and smile. “I love you, too, Six.” Rolling onto my back, I pull him into me for a kiss.

  Chapter 19

  Wren

  I press the button beside the tray that carries a round, silver object, and the lid lowers over it, spinning a glowing blur behind the small window. Seconds later, music drifts across the pole barn, and I twist to find Six frowning, like he’s concentrating on the sound as if he can reach out and snatch it from the air in front of him.

  “It’s called a CD player. Otis Redding. I didn’t know what to think of it, at first, either.” The slow and soulful tempo of These Arms of Mine has me reaching out to Six. “Come dance with me.”

  He pushes up off the makeshift bed and reaches for my hand, allowing me to pull him to a stand beside the window. His body is a wall of muscle that my gaze climbs, to see him staring down at me, and hands linked, we sway back and forth with the song.

  Settling into his rhythm, Six pulls me closer and tightens his hold, until he lifts me up off the floor, and I wrap my legs around his waist, arms around his neck. In a moment of sweetness, he closes his eyes and rests his forehead against mine.

  He slants his lips across mine in a seizing kiss—the kind that, if not for him holding me up off the floor, would have me falling into a pile of soft bones.

  Lost to his kiss, I don’t even sense that we’ve moved, until the wall collides with my back and he holds me there. His breaths turn fervent, hot across my skin, as he moves to my throat, devouring the base of my neck.

  “Slowly, Six.” The words feel like a sin coming out of my mouth, as much as I want him right now.

  That masculine growl rumbles in his throat, vibrating beneath my flesh, while his face remains buried in the crook of my neck. The sluggish and steady roll of his hips rock into me, like calm waves beating against my core.

  “Do you want me?”

  As he nods, his fingers drift up and down, across the cotton panties that are wet with my arousal, and he slides them aside.

  “I’m yours, Six. I’ll always be yours,” I whisper in his ear.

  His body shudders as his fingers stroke my libido, his lips clamped to my throat, and with the music droning in the background, keeping a steady rhythm, he drives them into me. Slowly. So agonizingly slow, I think I might combust from the craving I have for him.

  I tip my head forward to see him staring at me so intensely, concentrated, lips parted. Scarred and hungry, he is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever s
een in my life.

  ***

  I lie beside Six on his bed of sheets, my arm draped across his chest, breasts smashed against him as he holds me close. The heady scent of sex lingers on the air, reminding me of the moments of earlier. Through the window above us, the night sky is dazzling, with the bright stars that shine beside the crescent moon.

  “Come with me,” I push off him to a stand and tug his arm to follow me, which he does without hesitation, or question.

  This is what I love most about Six.

  Completely naked, I nab one of the blankets from his bed, and we sneak out of the pole barn, across the yard, to a patchy yellow ground cover of Lasthenia. Six helps me spread the blanket out, and we lie down beneath the full cover of night. Pulled in by him, just as before, I lay draped across his chest again.

  “This is a better view. There’s nowhere else in the world you can lie in the desert like this.” I trace the ruined skin of a scar over his heart, staring up at the stars. “I’ve always thought the stars were people we love. It’s weird, but I feel connected to them, somehow. Papa says, a long time ago, a star exploded in a supernova, and the pieces came together to form earth. Which means we’re all made of stardust. Born from the same star.”

  Lifting my head from his chest, I stare down at Six, as he tilts his head back, looking toward the sky. His eyes find me again, and I smile, leaning forward to kiss the scar at his heart.

  “Sometimes, I wish you could talk, Six. I wish you would say one word to me, just so I could hear your voice. But then you look at me, and I realize, I don’t need you to say anything, at all.” I run the pad of my thumb gently over his eyelid. “Your eyes tell me what I need to know.”

  Gripping either side of my face, he drags me to his lips and rolls over top of me, and the stars above us bear witness as he makes love to me again.

  Chapter 20

  Dani

  The rigid surface of the chair presses into my bottom, and I shift in the seat, wincing at the dull cramping ache that shoots up into my belly. Doctor Falkenrath dictates while the recorder captures his observations, and I stare down at the blank page before me that should be filled with notes and measurements.

  “Did you get that, Dani?” His question wedges into my thoughts, and I lift my head.

  “I’m sorry?”

  In his full suit, he twists around from where the gore of the last hour is spread out before him, in the grisly remains of the man on the table.

  Through the window of his mask, I catch his eyes dipping toward the notebook and back.

  “Stop the recorder.”

  I press the button as requested, and a wave of tension slides along my muscles.

  He removes his gloves and strides toward the sink. The abrupt flip of the faucet tells me he’s angry. Frustrated.

  I’ve been waiting for this. The confrontation. The moment when I’ll unleash hell on him for lying to me.

  When he returns, though, the fury I expected to see in his eyes isn’t there. “What’s troubling you?”

  Training my gaze on the blank paper allows me to keep Abel at the front of my mind, instead of the concerned expression on Falkenrath’s face that somehow stifles my thoughts. I won’t say a word about Ivan and what he did to me in front of all those boys. It’s become clear to me that Falkenrath would rather cower than help me, anyway.

  “I read Abel’s file.”

  I don’t even care that he knows. I don’t care that he’ll be angry at me for sneaking out of the lab, and I don’t care if he sends me off to the experimental labs at this point. I’ve become nothing but a hollow shell to the tortures of this place.

  “You disobeyed.”

  “And you lied.” The sting across my eyes angers me, and I blink to hold back the tears. “You lied about my brother. He’s dead. I saw it.” Clamping my eyes shut, I will away the image of his face—the one that’s stuck with me, overshadowing the pain of Ivan’s roughness and agony of my humiliation. “You said he’d be safe. And protected. You said he’d be happy. That he’d never know fear, or pain, again!”

  “And you told me that you believe Heaven exists. So I never lied to you.”

  His words crash over me, and I bury my face in my hands so he can’t see the tears that give way. I’ve wept most of the night and into morning, and these new tears are nothing more than the exhausted remnants of what’s left in me. Everything else is numb.

  “And you said you don’t believe in Heaven.”

  “I said I stopped believing in God.”

  “One doesn’t exist without the other.”

  “It exists for you, though. It exists for others. It existed for my wife. And my daughter.”

  I lower my hands, looking up in time to catch the furrow of his brow behind the plastic of his mask.

  “I may not be able to save myself. But I’d like to think others can. That the ones who lived selflessly and loved unconditionally …” The quaver in his voice catches me off guard. “… will know eternal peace and happiness. Where there’s no pain. No more suffering. No more of this world.”

  In the quiet that follows, I let his words settle inside my mind and absorb a small bit of the soul he’s bared to me. “You had a family.” It’s not a question. “What happened to them?”

  Clearing his throat, he shuffles toward the sink, washing his hands again like he’s forgotten he just did them. Or maybe he just needs the distraction. “Both of them contracted the contagion. My wife was bitten first and passed it on to my daughter. Day and night, I did what I could to save them. But in the end, they succumbed.”

  For the next few minutes, I sniffle and take deep breaths, trying to keep as indifferent about my brother’s death, because maybe he’s right. Maybe Abel is in the only safe place left. It’s a losing battle, when all I want to do is curl into myself and cry for him, though. “My brother hated the dark. So did Sarai, but she always went to my mother at night. Abel came to me. He’d crawl into bed beside me, and we’d stare up at the stars. I told them they were our family, and my father, looking down on us. I told him he should never fear the dark, because that’s when he’s most protected. He’s a star now.” My willpower is the only shield that keeps me from breaking down. “Your family. You loved them?” I ask, desperate for distraction.

  “Very much. More than anything.”

  “I’m scared. This is the first time I’ve ever felt truly alone.”

  “It’s okay to be scared, Dani. Ironically, it’s fear that gives you courage. And for the record, you’re not alone.”

  Chapter 21

  Dani

  My body jostles with movement, breaking me from dreams, and I open my eyes to the gray wall before me. As I snap my head back, a jolt of panic climbs my spine when I find Doctor Falkenrath at the side of my bed, the light from the lab filtering in.

  “You slept through the morning horn. Is everything all right?”

  The dryness in my throat feels like a thick sock, as I try to swallow and sit up in bed. “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear it.”

  “I’ll be waiting in the surgical suite. Get dressed. There’s a new subject waiting there, and I’d like you to document him.”

  With a nod, I slide my legs over the edge of the bed and wait for him to exit. Once he’s gone, I slip into the bathroom to relieve myself, and clutch my stomach as I sit on the toilet seat. Peering down into the bowl, I notice a red tinge in my urine and wipe to find bright red blood streaked across the paper. I didn’t yet have my menstrual cycle, but I was familiar with my mother’s, as I often had to rub her lower back to relieve pain. It’s possible I’ve begun, or it could be the result of Ivan’s torment.

  Multiple times a week, for the last two months, I’ve been ordered to meet Ivan after lights out in the S block building. Our trysts are usually short and rough, and the night before he was particularly cruel. I could smell the liquor on his breath, the bitter scent of whiskey that Doctor F keeps in his office. There are times when he inserts objects for his own amus
ement, but the night before, he opted for the baton at his hip, pushing the ribbed handle up inside of me. I’m certain that’s the cause of the blood.

  I dread our meetings, even the times when Ivan brings me gifts of food and pretends to be nice. The night before, he told me he’s developed feelings for me, and that if I ever leave him, he’ll hunt me down and feed me alive to Ragers. I don’t honestly believe he has feelings, to have developed them for me. Ivan’s spent far too much time as a soldier, living among men, and I’m nothing but a nugget of entertainment. A vessel that he can use to release his pent up frustration.

  While I hate being an object of obsession for him, it’s served to keep me alive.

  I make my way into the surgical suite, but pause the moment I open the door. The stench that hits my face is unbearable, striking my stomach, and the tickle that rises into my chest sends me rushing back into the anteroom, with Doctor Falkenrath calling after me.

  I just make it to the wastebasket, expelling what little broth I ate the day before. Over and over, I heave the contents of my stomach, until only the acid burn of bile is left, and I catch my breath.

  Doctor Falkenrath steps inside the room, having already removed his suit. “You’re ill.”

  “I’ll be okay. It’s just … that smell. What is it?”

  “It’s nothing you haven’t smelled before. Perhaps you need to eat. You missed breakfast.”

  “No. I’m not hungry.”

  “Come with me, Dani.” He leads me into the lab and gestures for me to have a seat at the table there. After rifling through cabinets, he returns with a needle and tourniquet, as well as a red-top tube.