by Star, Amy
“Then we wait,” she said, and Dylan nodded.
Chris merely let out another huff, as if to acknowledge them and closed his eyes against the tree trunk. Dylan grumbled and staggered off to the bushes, pulling his remaining clothes from a small hollow in a dead tree. He tossed his sweatshirt to Sarah, who gratefully covered herself, and pulled on his own T-shirt and sat down next to her. Chris’ big bear head and nostrils disturbed the dust at her thigh.
“Will he…” she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
Dylan’s arm brushed her shoulder and he held the tattered remains of her shirt to his forehead, trying to wipe away as much of the sticky red blood as possible. “He’s stronger than any of us,” Dylan said. “If anyone can survive, it’s Chris.”
“I…” she bit her lip, and her eyes began to redden.
“I know,” Dylan said, and there were no more words that either could share. Only the coolness of the canopy around them and the slow steady rhythmic breath of Chris at her feet.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and held a palm to her chest to keep the sobs from overtaking her. This can’t be happening, she repeated to herself, but there was no part of her that believed it. Dylan reached around with his free hand and gripped her shoulder, pulling him closer against her. He smelled like the forest, deep and warm and familiar, despite the rank smell of blood that was everywhere. She closed her eyes and let him hold her. This can’t be happening.
*
It was late in the night when Sarah awoke. She couldn’t remember when it was she had fallen asleep. Everything had overloaded her, and she had submitted at last to the dreamless depths of a black sleep, filled only with the occasional recognition of Dylan’s warm body against her, or the panting of Chris in bear-form. She started when she realized Chris was no longer in front of them and the world was sideways.
The muscles in her abdomen sprung her upright and she realized her head had been resting on Dylan’s lap. He was cross-legged, and his hand had been brushing her hair. Her eyes still felt red and abraded by too many tears, or by the act of withholding them.
“Where-?”
Her eyes tried to adjust to the dark and she saw his white face looking back at her.
“Back at the cabin,” he whispered. “He regained consciousness earlier, a few hours ago. I helped him back up to the cabin… the bullet when through his right shoulder, tore some muscles and ligaments, but it looks okay… he’s sleeping now… still has a sense of humor, so…”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said angrily.
He lowered his eyes. “You were sleeping so deeply, even after I shook you…” he explained. “I took Chris back, bandaged the wound, and hurried back here.”
She felt a little ashamed to have been so out of things that even Dylan couldn’t have woken her. And yet, he had come back and sat with her well into the night, watching over her. She could see the lines of fatigue under his eyes, despite the cheerful expression that danced back from it. He probably didn’t get any sleep, she realized, and felt bad.
“I’m… sorry,” she said.
He shook his head and stood up, stretching his knees, and offered her a hand. The wound on his head was still open and ugly, pink and glaring in the moonlight. It must hurt like a bitch, but he hasn’t complained once. There was still traces of blood caked in his hair. He hadn’t had time to wash himself properly. He’d come straight from the cabin to her.
“C’mon, let’s get back,” Dylan said.
Inside, she changed out of the sweatshirt and put on pants and another fresh tank-top and sweater, and went to check on Chris. He was snoring, as usual, and save for the crude bandage job that was wrapped over one massive tree-trunk arm and shoulder, it was as if nothing had happened at all. It still felt surreal. Her mind tried to tape down the rewind button for her as she knelt beside him.
The gunshots, she could remember. Then running. Then the hunter bleeding terribly into the water, and the poachers raising their guns. Right. They had shot Dylan. And then you changed into a bear and tried to protect him, didn’t you, she reached out and brushed Chris’ forehead. The big man made a mumbling sound and smiled, taken with whatever dream had lapsed behind his closed eyelids. She bent down and kissed his forehead.
“Guess I owe him one,” Dylan said, and she turned quickly. He was standing at the doorway, but his eyes were locked on Chris. It had been traumatic enough for her to see Chris at the edge of his own life but Dylan had grown up with Chris, had chosen him as his patron. He hides his worry better than I do, she brushed at her cheeks, smudging invisible tears.
“How do you feel?” she asked, pushing off the bed.
“Hungry, of course,” he said, but at that instant he blinked rapidly and his hand shot out, gripping the doorframe. “And… probably concussed,” he snickered.
Sarah sat him down on the chair in the living room and dressed the wound on his forehead. Another centimeter or two and the bullet wouldn’t have grazed his skull… it would have entered it, she gulped. It was still gaping, which meant she’d need to sew it. Anticipating the worse, she heard Dylan croak with little joy in his throat.
“Sewing kit. Behind the glasses, top cupboard,” he said, and opened Chris’ blue tackle-kit while she brought down an old Altoids container that had needles and thread in it. “And… bring that lighter, by the stove.”
“What are you-”
“I need you to do something because I can’t do it myself,” he said, abating the fear in his voice by focusing on the movement of his hands. Cleaning the bullet graze on his forehead had caused it to bleed again lightly, bright red like watercolors. “How’s your needlework?”
She fired up the kerosene lamps and put them around the table, trying to get as much light as possible. Meanwhile, Dylan took a pair of needle-nose pliers from Chris’ tackle-kit of fish hooks and used it to bend the sewing needle into an elongated U shape, and then slip one of the higher tensile threads through it. Next, he held the needle with the pliers and used the lighter to coat it with flame. Puffing his cheeks and blowing out through a small O in his lips he handed her the makeshift suture.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she said.
“This…” he said, “this is not my kidding face.”
Sarah reluctantly took the needle and thread. “Maybe you should lie down?”
“I think… if I do that, I’m going to throw up,” he wheezed.
“I’m…” she tried to decide on the best way to get at the wound with a careful hand. Resolutely, she swung a leg over top of him and sat down on his lap, straddling him. He gave a little squeak of surprise, but she shushed him. “I’ve never done this before,” she said. “If you don’t want crooked stitches… or to lose an eye, for that matter, then… hold me still. And you hold still, too.”
It was not the most orthodox medical procedure but he reached out and his warm hands steadied on her naked thighs. She felt a shiver and swallowed around the lump in her throat. His hands felt good on her skin, like an electric current, and she almost let out a little sigh of pleasure as they squeezed her soft skin as she made the first pierce of the needle.
Dylan didn’t make so much as a sound but simply stared straight ahead at her collarbone, as if staring through her. He’s not looking at me, she thought. He’s looking past the pain. The first stitch was clumsy and difficult. It was odd to push a needle through the skin, especially live skin, and it made it all the stranger that Dylan didn’t react at all. She couldn’t tell if she was hurting him, and bit her lip.
“You’re doing great,” he whispered, when she was halfway through.
The only hint of life from him was when his grip on her thighs tightened, and she looked down and realized that over the course of stitching him, his hands had accidentally moved further up their thighs, his fingers already underneath the thin fabric of her shorts. Any closer…, she felt her heart beating faster.
But then it was over, and she had tied the last stitch. Reluctantly sh
e stood up, and felt his hands fall away. There was still a ghost sensation of them on her thighs, and she sniffed to avoid the annoying flush that seemed to sweep her whole body.
“All good?” he asked. “How do I look?”
“Wrecked,” she said honestly.
“Good, good. I would hate to feel any worse than I look,” he joked.
She absently put the make-shift suture away and poured water in the kettle and put it on top of the stove which was already warm. Dylan went to the small washroom and she heard water from the creek splashing on his face, and then he returned with a fresh shirt on, and several steri-strip bandages over the gash.
Neither of them spoke as Dylan collapsed on one end of the couch, and Sarah took the other, and handed him a blue cup full of tea – it was infused with several dried herbs that Chris himself had picked and left out in the sun. Dylan could detect sage, ginger, yarrow… even something tart, like rosehips.
“I think they’ll come back,” he muttered, after they had been quiet for several minutes.
She turned, her eyes following him over the lip of her cup as she sipped. His black hair was still wet where he’d washed the blood off it, and she caught the edge of his green eyes glaring into the empty fireplace. Behind them, an ember popped in the stove. A drop from the faucet landed on her dirty plates from morning before.
“Why do you think that?”
“They were poachers, weren’t they? That’s the only explanation… and now they know that there’s a bear on this island. Shit, two bears. More than that, they know that the bears are also… us. This is bad, Sarah.”
She merely nodded. She’d already grasped the gravity of the situation, but she let him get there on his own. “And Chris injured… maybe, even killed… one of them,” she breathed aloud. The image of the screaming young man trailing blood was still blazoned like a terrible nightmare in her memory.
“I suppose that’s the one thing we have in common,” he said, “shifters and poachers. Hurt one of us and we’ll hunt down the people that did.”
She shivered, despite the warmth of the hot tea in her hands. “I’m… scared, Dylan…”
He looked toward her, and set his tea on the small oaken table. “I know, me too.” His face straightened in the shadows of the lamps, his gaze a green reverie suddenly frozen like a river mid-winter. “But I won’t let them hurt you…”
She was momentarily alarmed by the devotion in his voice, the firm commitment that seemed unwavering, almost as if she were staring at another person, someone she had never met. Maybe, she thought reluctantly, I haven’t.
“You, or Chris,” he added, and looked at her.
She set her tea on the table as well and watched the steam rise into the air. The ghost sensation of Dylan’s hand on her thighs returned, like a phantom limb; something that wanted to exist, even out of its non-existence. Or its death, but that thought made her immediately sad again and she scooted closer to him. She was intently aware of the fact he was watching her – staring, in fact – as if he couldn’t keep his eyes from her. Or if he did look away, that something tragic would happen.
It was like a kind of heat, like the bright penny of the sun was staring down at her, and she couldn’t bear to meet it lest she go blind. But she didn’t have to. She felt something else, his hand reaching toward her and she let the tips of his fingers guide her face toward him. His face was static, neutral but there was a power behind it that leeched out through those eyes. The gash on his head flickered like a white moth in the lamplight.
Her throat moved again as she tried to say something, but her eyes were already blurring with tears – it was so unlike her. She had always prided herself in being strong, all through her training, even when she’d been thrust from the comfort of her clan to this secluded island, even when she’d seen the hunters departing and one of them raising a rifle.
“You saved him,” she heard Dylan say, and was momentarily taken aback again. “I heard you… I think I was still groggy from the bullet. Chris must’ve changed forms and attacked them… but it was your voice that pulled him back.”
“I… I didn’t know what else to do.”
Dylan smirked and his fingers left her face and fell back in his lap. “Chris has always been the voice of reason. I was the troublemaker when we were younger. Always was. It wasn’t that I tried to look for troubles or make messes… they just always seemed to follow me. But Chris, he was always there to save me. Fix things. I guess I needed that,” his voice drifted, “but that’s my problem. Fact is, the only time Chris becomes as reckless as me… is when someone he cares about is in danger. If you hadn’t called his name… called him back…”
She lowered her eyes. She hadn’t thought about that. It had simply been an impulse to tell him to run. It was pointless to worry about what might have happened – she couldn’t bear that, and more tears began to stream down her face.
“Why are you crying?” Dylan asked, leaning in.
How could she tell him what she felt? She wasn’t certain she even had the words herself, and even if she did, her throat felt constricted, too tight, as if fear had swollen her voice and strangled it out. She merely lifted her chin again and leaned her head toward his. It was like kissing a statue, he was so surprised; her lips met his, warm and smooth, and one of her hands unconsciously went to his face.
“Wait,” he said, softly, and touched her hand. She pulled back, an inch from his face, her eyes fastened to his, irretrievably. “You’re scared…”
“Scared, yes,” she agreed. “I don’t want to be…”
CHAPTER FOUR
Her eyes were pleading, wide and suddenly vulnerable in a way Dylan had never seen before. It gripped at his heart that there should be anything in the world that might make her vulnerable. She was the decisive one, the honest one, the strong one, like Chris. He cursed the poachers in his mind, not just for shooting at him or for injuring Chris, but for wounding Sarah’s bravery such that she looked at him now with a child-like apprehension.
“Never,” he managed to choke, and this time, it was Dylan who leaned in.
Sarah’s head tipped back gratefully as he plunged his mouth against hers, rough and textured, and his eyes shut. She let out a long ponderous moan, mingling pleasure and surprise, and tilted her head back further, as if offering herself to him.
His hand touched her cheek again as his mouth worked against hers, kissing her frantically, until she opened her lips and he licked them inside and out. Another long moan and she shivered, as if overtaken by a freshly kindled desire. Her tongue moved out to meet his, and they grappled in the lamp-light, the wet sounds of their kisses filling the small room. His hand moved lower, over the supple flesh of her neck, along her collar-bone, and gently traced her small breast through the fabric of her tank-top.
She stifled another moan as his thumb circled the small bud of her nipple and it hardened under his touch as she stuck out her chest, craving more of him than he was giving. His whole hand began to knead her breasts, and she placed her own hand over top of it, guiding it in a swift motion. She gasped as his hand dipped lower and moved under her shirt, and almost rocked backward with the sheer pleasure of his skin against hers.
“Harder,” she whispered in his ear, “rub them harder.”
Dylan’s breath was sharp as he kissed at her neck, eliciting more sounds from her, and he pulled her tank-top off over her raised arms in a jerking motion. Sarah’s breasts caught the lights and pooled shadows in their arcs. He moved from her neck, tracing her jugular vein, over top of her breast bone and she looked down dreamily at the top of his head as his mouth took her breasts. She made a sound that was like pain as his tongue circled over her right nipple, causing it to harden and grow dark before her very eyes, and another spasm rocked her body as his hand slid around her waist, trapping her in the wet embrace of his lips.
Gently, he pushed her back, until her head was propped against the end cushion of the couch and she turned her head to one si
de and let him lick her body in its entirety. Her skin was the color of peaches in the light, and he worked on her noisily, his tongue carving his own name on her in a dozen ways, until at last, he moved over her navel and his lips brushed the fine white hairs above her pelvis.
“I’ve never…” she began.
“Can I try something?” he asked, another whisper, and she nodded, biting her lip and letting out a timid sigh, spreading her mouth in an expression of pleasure.
His fingers plied at the rim of her shorts, inching them further down over her waist until she was only in her thong and his hands went to the black lace of them as well. She let out a little gasp as he pulled them over her knees, revealing the full dark beauty of her sex. Both of his hands cupped her knees and caressed the inner softness of her legs. She awkwardly slanted both legs, as if to cover herself, some latent Victorian sensibility suddenly awoken. But it was too late, his hands moved further down, brushing the soft white flesh with his finger tips, and causing her to squirm as she widened her legs until her pubis was a small mound in front of his nose.
She had little pubic hairs, a little field of straight black hairs that all converged at the tip of her clitoris. He leaned in without warning and the top of his tongue scoured over the top, forcing back the fold, and she squirmed again, both legs locking against his head and her hands digging into the fabric.
“Oh, geezus,” she gasped.
Dylan seemed to smile and began to lick at her labia, forcing back the layers of skin as he tasted her and she moaned deeply and looked down her chest at him, her hips already rhythmically moving with the motion of his tongue. She felt her loins filling with a kind of energy, a linger of passion that promised to burst at any moment. She reached down and gripped the top of his head with one hand, pulling him harder and harder into her, willing his tongue into the opening of her vagina where he pulsed against her insides – entering some sort of Braille that only he, only Dylan, would ever be able to decipher.