Chapter 4 Scarlette #3
I stepped forward. He did, too. Our hands met at the edge of the stones, his skin shockingly hot, the lines on his arms flickering with blue-white light.
When he touched me, the air filled with the scent of burning—sweet, unfamiliar, not wood or oil but something alive.
I was afraid, but also not. I wanted to step closer, but the ground dissolved beneath my feet, pulling me down into a current of wind and flame and sound, the roar of his world drowning everything else.
I woke with a cry, heart punching my ribs, skin damp with sweat.
The fire had gone out, but a thin seam of daylight spilled through the cracks in the wall.
I sat up, fighting to breathe, knife clenched in my fist. The world came back in pieces, slowly, the lodge, then frost, the memory of a dream that was not just a dream.
I brushed the straw from my hair and stood, joints stiff from the cold and fear.
I felt changed, somehow. Older, or else more real than I had been before.
The hunger was still there, gnawing at my belly, but it was no longer the sharpest pain.
Instead, it was the ache of wanting to know, to understand what lay beyond the trees, and who the man was that haunted both my nightmares and my waking mind.
And then I did something thought to be an abomination.
I sat again, close to the fire, and spread my legs, working my hem toward my waist. The flames flickered and cracked as I pushed my undergarments aside and leaned back against the cold wall.
My fingers gingerly moved up my bare thighs, the dark bush between my legs moist and shimmering from firelight.
I closed my eyes and saw the man once again, my fingers slipping between my cunt.
My touch was nearly nothing, at first, too gentle for more than a shudder, but I grew bolder with each slow stroke, pushing past the embarrassment that wanted me to stop.
My scalp prickled, my throat tightening with every muffled sound that threatened to slip out unbidden.
I let myself imagine his hands instead of mine, those broad, marked knuckles running over the soft skin high on my thighs, the press of his thumb where I needed it most. His eyes were there, in my mind's vision, sharp, knowing, awed, and predatory all at once.
The more I pictured them, the more my hips rose from the straw, seeking more, until I almost moaned the sound of his name, a name I did not know, only the shape of it, jagged and unfamiliar as stone.
I bit down on the corner of my cloak, trying to keep quiet, even though it was just me and the mice and the ghosts of every dead animal that ever cowered in this ruined hut.
The rhythm built, faster, tighter, the air inside my chest sharpening until there was no room for anything but the need to touch and be touched, to know the shape of what had nearly undone me in the woods—a danger that was more than danger, a promise of something as unknown as it was irresistible.
Heat flooded me, all the way from scalp to toes, and my hand jerked against myself, sharp and sudden.
I choked a gasp into the wool, tasting old sweat and my own spit.
The rough pad of my thumb found the small, trembling knot in the center of me, and the world shivered, vision gone soft and silver.
The memory of his eyes, how they widened, how I’d seen my own fear and his own wonder reflected in them, pushed me past any shame.
I circled my palm, steady and cruel, until the ache unraveled in a thin, helpless noise.
I let it come, slow and stuttering, a bloom of relief after so many days of nothing but fear and ice and hunger.
I lay slumped, limp as a discarded rag, chest fluttering with little aftershocks.
The hush after was absolute, almost holy.
For several minutes, I could think of nothing but the weight of my breath and the ember-glow behind my eyelids.
My skin felt too loose for my bones, every muscle rung out like laundry on a line.
I laughed a hoarse and animal sound, and pressed my own palm hard against the weak place inside me, daring myself to remember what it felt like to be alive.
The fire was only embers now, but I warmed my hand over the coals before pulling my knees up and wrapping the cloak around me.
There was a sense, difficult to name, that I had done something dangerous.
I dressed, wrapping the food tight in its linen, stashing the knife at my belt.
I packed the few things I owned, slung the water skin across my shoulder, and kicked dirt over the cold ashes in the hearth.
Before I left, I touched the edge of the table where my mother’s hands had once pressed dough, long ago.
I let myself remember her face, just for a moment, then let it go.
Outside, the world was brighter than I expected. The snow had melted back from the trees, leaving everything raw and new. I walked to the top of the rise and looked back at the lodge, its roof sagging under the weight of a hundred small griefs.
Then I turned my face toward the woods. I didn’t know what I would find, or if the man from the dream would come again. But I knew, absolutely, that I was no longer running from my fate. I was running toward it.