Scared blue eyes found hers as the light went out of them.
She was overtaken, not killed. One blow to the back of her head that drove her to her knees, then a backhanded punch across the face that sent her to the ground. She didn’t even recall being moved away from the fighting.
The sky was so blue. It was the first thing she saw when she regained consciousness. Blue sky, tree branches and leaves above her. Then a sneering face looking down at her with an ugly grin, and then another one. She closed her eyes, cold fear clutching at her belly. She knew what was going to happen.
She thought she could endure it, stoic and silent. She was wrong.
Anna jerked awake with a panicked gasp, cold sweat beaded on her hairline. She half-sat in her sleeping bag, caught somewhere between waking and dreaming. Nightmare images merged with reality for a long moment, pulling her eyes to the surrounding trees in a desperate scan for enemies. The breath she’d been holding escaped from her mouth in a pathetic whimper, a foreign noise that shocked her into awareness.
Elin knelt beside her. “You’re awake?” she whispered.
It took Anna a beat to nod. “I hope so.”
“Do you want some water?”
“Please,” she croaked, embarrassed.
Elin crawled away, then returned with a canteen of water. She gave it to Anna and scooted over to sit with her on her sleeping bag.
“Is this okay?” She eased a careful arm around Anna’s waist.
“Wonderful.” Anna put the canteen down after a couple of deep gulps, not wanting to take a trip to the bushes in the still-dark night. She sat in silence and worked on steadying her breathing, still keyed up from the nightmare and the emotional turmoil of the past day and a half.
“Do you think you can get back to sleep?” Elin stroked Anna’s side and back through her T-shirt, tracing random designs with her fingers.
Anna relaxed into the contact. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Would it help if I stayed?”
Warmth rushed through Anna’s body at the affection in Elin’s gaze. “You need your sleep. We don’t want to both be dead on our feet tomorrow because I had a nightmare.”
“I could sleep next to you.”
Anna bit her lip, overcome by Elin’s offer. She glanced over at the lump Kael made in their double sleeping bag. “That’s okay, Elin. I think Kael would miss you.”
Elin gave her a sweet smile. “Kael would want me to be here with you tonight. Trust me.”
Anna looked over to Kael again, this time glimpsing shining eyes in the darkness before he rolled over onto his back. To Elin, she murmured, “I’d like that. Very much.”
“Come on, then.” Elin took the canteen from Anna’s lap and placed it on the ground. “Let’s see if we can both squeeze into this sleeping bag.”
Anna flushed at Elin’s words. She didn’t even have the presence of mind to hide her expression of dazed arousal, drawing a soft giggle from Elin.
“Lie down, baby,” Elin said. “I’m looking forward to holding you, too.”
Anna moved to the very edge of her blankets to make room, and Elin crawled under the thick material and turned on her side. She wrapped her arm around Anna’s middle, pulling her close. Soft breasts pressed against her back and warm hips cradled her bottom. Anna released a deep sigh, desire mingling with comfort to create a pleasant heat in her belly. She twitched in surprise when Elin brushed the hair away from her neck to drop a gentle kiss on her shoulder.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore,” Elin whispered.
The way she said it, Anna almost believed her. Not knowing how to respond, she pushed her bottom backwards in an effort to get even closer. Elin pressed her palm flat against Anna’s belly, drawing her near, and a moment later, Anna felt a careful leg ease its way between her calves. She lifted one leg slightly, and Elin slipped her thigh between Anna’s, entangling them in a thorough embrace.
“This feels so good,” Anna murmured some time later. “I never thought I would feel anything like this.”
Elin nuzzled her earlobe. “Just wait until you get to the really good parts.”
Anna broke into a grin and felt her face glow with embarrassment. She really didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.
“Has anyone ever held you before?” Elin asked.
Anna shook her head. “Garrett and I hugged a few times. It always felt a little awkward. My uncle really wasn’t affectionate.”
“I’m sorry,” Elin said as she kissed Anna’s earlobe again. “I’ll be sure to remedy that in the future. Deal?”
Anna beamed out at the trees. “Deal.”
In the silence that followed, Anna had time to think. She didn’t dare close her eyes, afraid of what she might see if she did. The memories were just below the surface of every thought she had, every breath she took. She sighed in frustration.
“Do you want to talk?” Elin asked in a whisper, and tightened her arm around Anna. “About anything.”
“I don’t know how to talk about it,” Anna admitted in a broken whisper. She had never wanted to talk about it before, but something in the safety of Elin’s arms almost had her willing to go there.
“Take your time. Say whatever you want to say.”
“I should be over it by now.” Anna stared out at the dark forest with a sad smile. “You know what happened, right?”
“I have a good idea.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m the first woman to go through that.”
“That doesn’t make it any less horrible.”
“It was always this specter hanging over my head, you know?” She kept her voice low, not wanting Kael to overhear them. “It was the reason I never strayed far from my tribe alone. But when it actually happened, I just lay there at first. It was like I just couldn’t believe it.”
Elin stroked Anna’s belly. “I can’t imagine.”
“I don’t want you to even try. I never want you to know.” Anna shook her head, frustrated with her inability to express her jumbled emotions. “I had no idea what it would be like. I thought it would be just another injury, a battle scar. I thought I would be able to handle it better.”
“Even the strongest people…that’s a lot more than a simple injury. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, Anna, it’s going to hurt. It can hurt for a long time. Please believe me that everyone, even the strongest person you could imagine, would hurt after that.”
Anna closed her eyes, letting her mind travel back in time. Her nightmare. That day. “They were so mad at me. I fought with a baseball bat then, too, and I killed one of their companions. Hit him right in the head. I heard his skull crack.”
Elin flinched, and for a moment Anna was frightened that her innocent friend would pull away from her in revulsion. Instead, she tugged Anna closer. “Had you ever killed someone before?”
“He was my first.” Anna flashed back on his face for a moment, his dark hair. “It didn’t even feel real to me.
I was knocked out only a minute or two later.”
“So they took it out on you.”
Anna rolled onto her back. Elin drew away to let her adjust, then repositioned herself with one arm across Anna’s chest and one leg insinuated between her thighs. “See?” she murmured as she settled her head down on Anna’s shoulder. “You’re getting good at this cuddling thing.”
Anna held her breath as her body reacted to the new position, humming in pleasure when she finally exhaled. After only a slight hesitation, she eased her arm around Elin’s narrow shoulders, grateful that Elin couldn’t see the rising color of her cheeks in the dark. “You make everything easy. Even talking.”
Elin lifted her head so she could look into Anna’s eyes. “I’m glad.”
Soaking up the warmth of the soft body pressed against hers, Anna stared up at the stars that were visible through the treetops over their heads. “I thought they were going to kill me,” she said eventually. “The third one, especially. He had a kn
ife. That’s how I got the scars.”
Elin pressed the palm of her hand flat against Anna’s upper chest, just above the breast that bore two jagged white reminders of that day. “I wondered.” Her voice took on a profound sadness, and she nuzzled her face into the side of Anna’s other breast. “You’re beautiful, you know.”
Anna bit her lip as traitorous tears slipped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t feel that way sometimes.”
“You are. So, so beautiful. Inside and out. Every line, every curve, every scar.”
“You’re the beautiful one.” Anna blushed at the boldness of her words, but Elin made her confident, and she let herself be carried along by that feeling. “I’ve never met such a beautiful person.”
Elin gave her a loving smile and leaned up to plant a slow kiss on her lips. Anna closed her eyes at the first touch of Elin’s mouth, trembling when the warm lips didn’t pull away until after long moments of breathless connection. Her heart thumped hard beneath Elin’s hand.
“How did you escape?” Elin asked when she’d settled back down with her head on Anna’s shoulder.
The question snapped her back into the moment, hitting her directly in the gut. “Garrett.”
“He found you?”
“He stopped them. One of them had left, and the other two were arguing about what to do with me. The man with the knife wanted to kill me. The first one wanted to take me with the other women from my tribe.”
She had lain on the ground, bleeding and in pain, listening to the two men argue her fate. She remembered praying they would just kill her. “Then, all of sudden I heard a sound. One of the men was on the ground.
Garrett killed the other one in front of me. He shoved his knife right into his stomach.”
“Thank God he was there.”
“Yeah. Thank God.” Recalling that terrible day, she felt a familiar pang of guilt. “It was too late to save the others. Garrett had been knocked out during the fighting, and they left him for dead. That’s how he came to survive and save me.”
“And then you lost him.” Elin’s voice broke with sorrow on her next words. “God, Anna, I’m so sorry, baby.”
“It was my fault.” Anna closed her eyes, even as she felt the unburdening of a giant weight from her soul at the confession. “There were only three of them, not many. They ambushed us while we were eating. I don’t know what happened. One minute we were fighting, then the next…Garrett got hit. Right in the head, like the man I killed. I watched him fall. I knew right away that he was dead.”
“That’s not your fault,” Elin whispered. “You were outnumbered. Please don’t ever think it was your fault.”
“He saved my life. I couldn’t save his.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to stop something horrible from happening.” Elin stayed curled around Anna’s body, her steady heartbeat thumping against Anna’s side. “You can’t play God, no matter how much you may wish you could. And that means you can’t accept that responsibility, either.”
“But I did play God.” Anna swallowed in a desperate attempt to moisten her throat and ease the way for a final confession. “I went crazy. I killed every one of them. I still don’t know how I did it. It was like I was possessed. Judge, jury, executioner…they killed Garrett, and so I made sure they died.”
“Do you feel guilty about that?”
Anna met Elin’s gaze in the dark. Her eyes shone with empathetic emotion. “Only that I don’t feel more guilty, I think.”
“Do you feel better now that you’ve said it out loud?”
Anna didn’t even have to think about that one. “Yeah.” She stared deep into Elin’s eyes. “Do you…are you—” Do I disgust you?
“I love you, Anna.” Elin brushed away Anna’s fears with three little words. “You’re a survivor. You’ve got a good heart. You’ve had a lot of bad things happen to you, but you’re a good person. I know I haven’t known you long, but…I love you very much.”
Anna started to cry, but these were different from any tears she’d ever shed before. It was joy. It welled up inside of her, filling her heart until she had no choice but to release the pressure through quiet sobbing. “I love you, too,” she managed to say, and grabbed Elin with both arms, holding on tight.
Elin cooed nonsense words of comfort into her ear and stroked her hair, slow and measured, until Anna nearly felt hypnotized by the peace her touch instilled. “Close your eyes, baby,” she whispered after some time, and Anna was helpless to do anything but obey. “Let’s see if we can’t get a couple more hours of sleep, okay? I promise nothing is going to hurt you tonight.”
Believing every word that came out of Elin’s mouth, Anna slipped into an exhausted, but surprising, slumber. There were no more dreams that night.
Chapter Four
Two days outside of Sullivan, an hours-long hike through thick forest ended with the most spectacular view of a sparkling blue lake. Kael broke through the trees first and stopped, staring out at the water while he wiped sweat from his brow. Elin and Anna followed, and their friendly chatter died as they took in the blue horizon.
“Wow.” Elin put her hand on Kael’s lower back and grinned behind his shoulders at Anna, who stood on his other side gazing open-mouthed at the stretch of water.
“I don’t know about you girls,” Kael drawled, “but I could really use a bath.”
Elin grabbed his hand and lifted it into the air, ducking her head to take a whiff of his underarm. She wrinkled her nose. “That’s the truth.”
He spun around, grabbed her around the waist, and tickled her sides. “You’re feeling a little sweaty there yourself, sweet girl.”
Anna grinned at their easy affection and swiped the back of her hand across her forehead. Droplets of perspiration rolled down her hairline, a testament to the arduous walking they’d done that day.
“Well, you’re making it worse!” Elin twisted out of Kael’s grip and took Anna’s hand. “A bath sounds fantastic to me. How about you?”
Without waiting for an answer, she led Anna down the gentle hill to shore, calling back to Kael over her shoulder, “It’s okay to swim here?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone around. We should be fine. How about we walk out to that vantage point before we get in? Then we can easily see if anyone’s approaching.”
Elin nodded and tugged Anna along to the spot Kael indicated. Anna kept her eyes forward, already feeling awkward about the idea of bathing in front of Kael. She had never gotten naked in front of a man before.
The idea of seeing him naked was also vaguely unsettling.
Elin stopped when they reached a stretch of land that jutted out into the water and formed a wide area of treeless shore. Stepping in front of Anna, she took both her hands and gave them a gentle squeeze.
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
Anna managed a weak smile. “Nervous, yeah.”
“About Kael? Or are you still nervous about being naked with me, too?”
“I’m not nervous with you.” That much was true. Her comfort with Elin was absolute. And it wasn’t that she didn’t trust Kael, but memories of her worst flashback still lingered in her head.
She started to explain, but Elin looked over her shoulder to Kael and exchanged a nod with him. “Anna, there’s something we want to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“Sweetheart, I want you to look at Kael.”
“Elin?” Why should I look at him? Has he started undressing?
“Please just trust me.”
Anna turned to see Kael standing less than ten feet behind them. He rubbed at the back of his neck with his hand, uncharacteristically shy, then he dropped his hands to grip the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it off over his head. He wore a sports bra beneath.
Anna blinked as the sports bra was torn off and discarded. She didn’t see it fall; she was too focused on the small, delicate-looking breasts Kael had revealed. Female breasts.
K
ael stared at her with a naked vulnerability that shook Anna to the core. All at once the cocky, self-assured man who had defeated four thugs with unthinking ease was reduced to trembling hands, tense broad shoulders, and a reddened face.
Uncertain of what else to do, Anna continued to watch. The blue jeans went next, eased down over narrow hips and kicked away by a long leg. Coarse dark hair covered pale shins and thighs, disappearing beneath the navy blue boxer shorts that Kael wore. Anna met Kael’s uneasy gaze and gave him an uncertain smile.
Kael hooked both thumbs in the waistband of the boxer shorts and pushed them down to fall around his ankles. His eyes dropped as well, and he stared so hard at the ground that Anna swore he would split the earth open with his gaze. It only took a moment for her to shift her attention to the triangle of curly dark hair between Kael’s legs, where she didn’t see what she had expected to see.
She looked at Elin in numb shock. “I don’t understand.” She glanced back to Kael, who was trying and failing to look nonchalant about his nudity. Her nudity. With some confusion, she remembered the way that Elin had ridden astride Kael that first night. She shook her head, unable to put the pieces together in any way that made sense.
“Kael feels more comfortable living as a man,” Elin explained in a gentle voice. “It’s really a lot easier when people assume she’s male, and people always do.”
Kael folded her arms over her breasts. “I’m going to get in the water,” she mumbled. “You two can follow me when you’re ready.”
Anna was silent as Kael stalked to the shore and strode into the water until she was waist deep, then dove beneath the surface to swim away from them.
“I know this must come as a surprise,” Elin said, “and I’m sorry we lied to you. But since she escaped, Kael has always presented herself as a man. You’re only the second person to know, after me.”
Anna shook her head. “But I saw…you were—”
Elin raised an interested eyebrow. “What?”
Anna wore a fierce blush when she realized what she was trying to explain to Elin. “Um, no. It’s nothing.
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