Night-time had flung a cascade of stars across the sky. How long had we lain here? Had I lost track of time completely?
If I didn’t get some drug into him, if this kept up...
But I couldn’t go anywhere. Not without permission.
Fuck. I ground my forehead on the grass.
There must be a way.
“Hungry?” I tempted him, this man who’d regressed so far that words might soon lose significance for him.
He grunted and licked me again.
“I’ll get us food? Food?”
The wait to see if he could understand was agonizing. If I lost this opportunity there might be no other.
Only a grunt came back...but it’d sounded like an affirmative. I chose to believe that, hanging onto my interpretation as I searched for where he’d tied the chain together. The knot was tight but I picked at it. My fingers wore away from the roughness of the hemp. Several minutes later, I was free. I crept to my knees, whispering again, food, then standing, stumbling.
His eyes were closed. Though my legs shook, and my knees gave way every few steps, I made it to the SUV. My hand didn’t seem mine. Numb and swaying in place, I searched blindly beneath the passenger seat and found my bag. The remains of the roast chicken lay on the ground nearby, shredded, picked mostly clean, and likely to give me food poisoning. Though I hesitated, I didn’t eat any. I picked up a handful of chicken pieces to mix with the powdered pill.
If it was too nasty tasting? What then? I bit back a sob and swept away my bedraggled hair. This had to work.
Somehow I made it back to him, fed him the tablet and chicken directly, made him eat it, though pieces fell to the ground. He grabbed me after that and wouldn’t let go. Tears sent me back toward sleep. I was warmer, cradled in his arms, though my mouth was dry as bone and my stomach empty. It would do. Would have to.
I had nothing else...nothing.
Chapter 18
Kiara
Waking was a painful process as every movement reminded me of various hurts. Between my legs was sore. As if that were a surprise. My left shoulder, just below the angle of my neck was the worst. Grunting, I struggled upright onto my elbow, finding myself on a mattress with a sleeping bag under me. And over me. The light pouring in the window made squinting necessary.
This was the bedroom. Bright now, but the same place – collapsed cupboard, the set of drawers near my elbow, and the door to the library room was open. Then the bed shifted and I gasped and looked over my shoulder. Wolfe was here, behind me, sitting on the other side of the bed.
His neat, if crinkled, mauve shirt, tidy and tied back hair, and the gentleness in his eyes convinced me he was back. Not the beast, thank god. The one with smarts and some common sense. The one who didn’t try to kill me by fucking me to death.
“Here.” He offered a bottle and I took it and gulped down some water.
My lips were cracked and the feel of water going down my throat would’ve rivalled ambrosia from the gods.
I’d thought him my god. When was that, yesterday? I swallowed more water, then more again, and all he did was watch, wearing a kindly if guarded smile with his big hands on his lap.
Even now, after everything, the sway of his dark locks across his face and the strength in those corded neck muscles moved me. Which was so impossibly stupid.
“I cleaned you up, put some underwear on you. Gave you water too, when you’d take it.”
I’d been exhausted, but it surprised me I’d slept through, or forgotten, all that. I tested the air, my mind, found his commanding aura weak though present. Speaking seemed dangerous, like it’d break the spell.
That might’ve been nonsense if not for the hint of something deeper and crueler that surfaced in a flash when the top of the sleeping bag slipped and revealed my breasts...well, a pink bra really.
Then Mister Nice seemed to settle over him. It’d been his eyes that’d showed mean.
“Thanks,” I ventured. Did he not recall what he’d done?
Wolfe nodded, stood, and headed for the doorway. “I put a bandaid on your neck.”
I raised my hand and touched it. An amateur effort with two thin dressings. It’d be the devil to peel those off the punctures if, as I suspected, he’d stuck them to the wound.
Saying thanks for that would be ridiculous. It was a bite mark. His bite mark. I vaguely recalled him sinking his teeth into me and the blood. The swelling and tenderness made me wonder about infection. Mouths had nasty bacteria.
However, gold star award for me, the drug had worked on Wolfe. Gingerly, I sat up, clutching the sleeping bag to my chest.
“There’s breakfast. I brought a generator back, meat, vegetables. I can’t run it all day but the little fridge will keep cold a while.”
WTF. He brought what? “And no one noticed you stealing all that?”
“Taking it?” Hand on the door frame, he stopped and glanced back. His mouth twisted. “Yes, they did, but they won’t tell.”
I bit back a question about whether he’d fucked them too. A. I didn’t really want to know. B. I hoped his dick dropped off if he had. C. Yes. I was jealous. And D? It was so illogical I wasn’t going there.
Sighing, I slid to my feet. “I’ll be out soon.”
Breakfast. I could smell bacon. Holy mother of dragons. Bacon!
Without another word, he exited. Not a single, sorry I fucked you and nearly killed you with exposure, exhaustion, and dehydration. What did I expect? Sorry was for couples who truly cared about each other. To Wolfe I was just a sex object.
I found denim shorts and a sweater, dressed, and followed him out through the musty library. A few of the books looked to have been picked up and the pile of ashes had been removed from the fireplace. The man had been tidying up.
When I saw the plateful of bacon, eggs, and hash browns at the kitchen table, I was a goner. My stomach would worship him at least.
I sat on the chair provided and tucked in with knife and fork. Wolfe leaned back in his chair with a satisfied air, as if seeing me eating gave him pleasure. He hadn’t said sorry, but maybe I could get him to let me be the orchestrator of his food, and so give him the drug more precisely. The last attempt had failed.
“You know you nearly killed me?” I said softly. My last morsel of food stuck halfway down my throat while I stewed on his reply.
He grunted.
That was...encouraging.
Smoke drifted in through the door and I gathered he’d cooked outside over a fire. If the oven could be used, we could have proper hot meals. I snorted. So mundane.
“You, um, need to let me prepare your meals. It’ll help you, and me.” Calculating fast, I figured I only had a month’s worth of pills left.
After that, who was I kidding? How could I plan that far? I’d almost died. This...I looked again out the fully open window, it must be past midday. All that time had gone past. How much had he remembered?
“You know you did something bad...” To me.
The gargantuan bulk of him, his thick fingers and heavy hands, the way his hair hid his eyes at times and he peered out...he might’ve been a troll dug up from the earth. An orc from some The Lord of the Rings story, except somewhat handsomer, and minus tusks.
And then I knew, I just knew, that he recalled little.
If I squinted and forgot all his anatomy, that he breathed, I could see him as a storm, not an ill-natured creature. He was a force of nature, and who could blame the wind for where it blew?
Even if a lie, that way of seeing him let me talk to him without freezing up. Because I hated the irrational uncertainty, the danger that lurked. If he suddenly leaped up, I’d scream.
Still he was silent.
My heart knocked away, loud enough to make me doubt my bravery. Shut up heart.
“If it will help, sure, you can dole out the food.”
Yesss. “Good.” If I was careful, very careful, I could control him. “Thanks.”
Another grunt.
; The conversation was scintillating today.
Shit. I chilled. Was he shutting down? His next dose was needed, now.
“You should have something to eat, right away.”
At his nod, relief surged. Getting there. Next, those glittery red shoes to click.
“There’s boiled water outside if you want coffee?”
“Great.” I needed to get the pills in a way that wasn’t suspicious. “I use a sugar substitute. Is my handbag out there?”
“Yes. In the car.”
I sauntered out, aware that he was watching me, or my ass, but I retrieved the pills and my bag, and I vowed to hide half of them in the kitchen from now on.
So weird to have long-term goals.
I should, as in ASAP type of should, bomb his brain out of existence with a double dose.
Except his get-out-of-jail statement – don’t do anything I wouldn’t like, stuck me into a loop. He wouldn’t like me doing that...therefore I couldn’t do it. I ground up the extra dose and had to tip it into the dirt because my traitorous hands wouldn’t let me put it in the coffee. His coffee and his cheese sandwich ended up with a normal dose of Keppra instead.
When in the middle of sipping my coffee, the solution popped up. I had to see double dosing him as what he would want. How?
Maybe it was impossible and maybe not. I shouldn’t give in.
Though stiff and sore, with bruises coming out everywhere, I helped him unload gear from the SUV and get the cabin in order. Via a long electrical cord he’d already connected the generator that he’d left outside, under cover, to the little fridge which was in the kitchen. I swept out dust, threw out ancient cloths, picked up fallen things, and admired the running water in the sink.
He’d cleared the plumbing while I’d been in bed, asleep. It didn’t look drinkable and probably had the corpses of a million bugs swimming in it, but it was water.
“We’d have to boil that to use it.”
I nodded.
We.
I touched the bandaid on my neck. That word made us seem like some old married couple, and that was as far as could you get from the truth without catching a train.
* * * * *
That day hadn’t been fruitful with regards to words exchanged. Though I hadn’t been sure I wanted to talk to him much.
Today, though...
With all the cleaning and repairs, I followed him around like a new puppy at its master’s heels. It led me to places I might not have ventured otherwise. Such as while he was on the roof, checking the roofing iron, I found where he’d dumped the ashes at the back of the cabin. The mess called to me, saying poke me. So, I did.
Lo and behold, I found more blackened bones. Small ones. Crushed ones. Maybe ones that’d been chewed on. It made sense if you thought of someone eating the cooked tail of some animal. Only...who did that? Unless you were very hungry.
And still, the resemblance to human bones worried me, absorbed me, made me store them in my jeans pocket in the hope of googling or textbooking again one day. I just needed someone who knew bones intimately.
One of my quirks. This would bug me forever.
Or until Wolfe climbed down and took my hand, and drew me away. Holding hands was troublesome. I wanted his touch, craved it severely, and I detested it.
Like the touch of a new lover, he enlivened me every, single time we made skin contact.
Sometimes I shut my eyes to experience that reverberating tingle more intensely.
Junkie. I was a touch junkie.
Didn’t matter what he did to me.
He could probably cut holes in me, fuck them, stitch them up, and still I’d crawl back and beg. That thought made me shudder.
I bit my lip to camouflage my dismay.
What was I going to do?
But I let him lead me onward.
We walked through scrubby bushes and rocks, then through a small concave field, to where a slope overlooked a stream. Fifty yards below a carpet of nodding blue flowers, water gurgled over rocks sending up tiny flashes of sunlight.
The height and the lack of trees meant the wind took full advantage and blew in gusts at times, but I’d suffer that just for the view, for the illusion of freedom. My blue dress flapped against my legs and I clutched the side to hold it still.
My face felt odd, then I smiled, and it was as if it’d cracked. Surely, it was the first time I’d smiled for days. “This is beautiful.”
Wolfe had laid out the picnic rug he’d brought – a grotesque, tartan-red thing. “Sit.”
I eyed the rug then lowered myself, folding my legs into a lotus position and tucking the dress into my lap. A second later, he sat behind me, enclosing me in the V of his legs.
Though I wasn’t sure why we were here, I guessed he wanted to talk. If just the view, he could’ve come by himself...unless he wanted to share it with me? I didn’t want to start the talking. I barely wanted to hear what he might say.
The anxiety of having him sit behind me made me jump when he stroked a finger across the bandage. I’d redone the dressing as well as I could without a mirror. Strange, but it seemed cleaner and better today than yesterday. Infection had seemed a given.
“I did this?”
Fuck, man. You don’t even remember this? I compressed my lips. “Yes.”
And still no sorry came.
I had a question: What do you remember? The sentence stuck and wouldn’t come out, no matter how many times I went to say it.
The silence stretched and broke down into the sigh of trees, and the rustle of a thousand grass heads and flower blooms rubbing against each other, lasciviously, under the sun.
“Lie back,” he said.
I didn’t protest. What would be the point? I lay back until my head rested on his chest, under his chin and his arms wrapped about me, as if he meant to protect me.
Laughable, but I was drunk-drowsy on the fumes of his nearby existence. He affected me without question, without permission, without thinking.
For once, I don’t think he meant to.
By then I was waiting to be molested.
“Your family...”
“Huh?” I roused.
“You said they would suffer if you didn’t do as your superiors told you to.”
The real world intruded.
“Yes. True.”
Beneath my ear, I counted several hypnotic heartbeats – his.
“Why?”
“Because, my stepfather did something that is legally treason. Because they wanted to get me to agree to spying, or...” I waved my hand. “Whatever they decided needed doing.”
“Kidnapping.”
“Yes.” I frowned. And that hadn’t turned out so well. I wondered where they’d ended up, and what they thought. “God!” I almost sat up straight but he tightened his hold.
“What?”
“If they think I’ve deliberately disobeyed... They might’ve already locked away my stepfather, or executed him.”
“Not if they know I abducted you.”
“Why would they see it that way?”
“You said they were watching us. That means they would’ve seen what I did to you in the alley.”
“Oh.” True. My mind ticked over. They must know of his powers. The longer I was with him, the more obvious that seemed. They’d know I’d had no choice.
I hadn’t thought this through for days. I’d simply lost track of the world out there. Sobering.
And here he was helping me out, reassuring me even? Was this what the drug did at the dose I’d given today? Made him into a reasonable person?
If so...
“Maybe you should let me go?”
“No.”
Hmmm. I was all alone in this, but at least the only person who could get hurt was me.
“How much do you remember?” I blurted that out, finally.
“Of what happened two days ago?”
“Yes.”
“Enough. You?”
“That wasn’t a trick q
uestion,” I said, annoyed.
“I remember fucking you.” He squeezed his arms in. “I remember it felt good. I remember you crying out and shaking when you came.”
I’d wanted remorse, instead I got...a happy recitation. I lowered my head, wondering. If he had a conscience, now was the best chance I’d had to dig it out of his soul.
“Do you remember how ill I was?”
“Yes.”
And aren’t you sorry? I would never ask him that. He’d say it by his own volition, or he wouldn’t.
“Have you ever felt that deeply before, Kiara? Ever lived that close to the edge? Ever soared so close to the sun that your feathers might melt?”
His hands crept beneath my dress. Warm hands on my cold thighs, and I expected to be ravished at any moment. Instead, he leaned around and looked me in the eyes.
“Have you?”
Did I climax until my toes might’ve melted? Yes. I wasn’t sure about feathers. And I wasn’t agreeing with him even with his fingers inches from my pussy.
“I’ve never been that close to dying, no.” I switched topics. “Why are you here, Wolfe?”
I didn’t get an immediate answer, though I could tell from the movement of his chest that he was thinking.
Birds flew past, scolding each other, and the air lost another degree. We should be heading back. The generator only had so much fuel and running it for lights was foolish.
“I’m here to find out who I am. I think Magnus has the answer. Something here calls me, whispers in my ear.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing plain yet. I have a ton of questions, though. Why do the Russians want me? How did I get this power? Who am I, is at the bottom of the pile. What about you? What do you want?”
Some of those questions were mine too.
His fingers were moving, treadling into my flesh, like a man tapping and considering his next move.
I held my breath. Once again I betrayed myself. I was imagining his fingers piercing me.
And blood coming out, and more blood, a red tide. Fuck. Begone nightmare vision.
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