Chapter 18 Out of the Gates #2
“Let me touch you. Please. Let me give you pleasure, only you, with no strings attached. I miss making you come more than I have ever missed anything. The divine sounds you make, the way you look at me when I bring you over the edge, the tremors that run through your body when you lose awareness of anything but me for those few moments ... Just let me have that again, Ren. Will you?”
His words alone nearly achieved the effect he so desired to have on my body.
And I couldn’t tell anymore whether I resisted him because of what he had told me.
Was I truly so scared of his admitted appetite for power, his bottomless capacity to take with the greed of an addict going through withdrawals?
Or was it my own desire to give myself over to him, so very soon and so very completely, that fuelled my compulsion to keep him at a distance?
Knowing in every cell of my being that succumbing to that desire would be like jumping off a cliff. Monumental. Perilous. Irrevocable.
And yet, even if it were to be the last thing I ever felt, wouldn’t it be glorious to learn what it is like to fly?
“You’re relentless.” I rolled my eyes but returned his smile and took a step closer to him, already tilting my head backwards so that our lips could meet in a kiss. “But fine, I accept. But I want chocolate for my second course, is that clear?”
Not long after, we finally encountered bigger groups of infected, counting more than I would have managed on my own.
All of my trainees were finally getting enough practice, and the morale of our group was going up.
Spirits were soaring with each arrow meeting its mark, with each vacant settlement cleared of the infection.
Gradually, it became a routine for them rather than a source of exorbitant excitement.
Having cleared the northernmost part of the range, we gradually veered south. The slopes became gently rounded, covered in pale green grasses and specked with occasional trees.
Descending into one of the many green valleys, we came across an erstwhile farm consisting of empty stables, a small stone house with a red-painted wooden barn.
The wings of the barn gate were held together by three separate chains, and they shook and creaked under the strain of the creatures trying to escape.
Furious growls hung in the motionless air.
“What do we think?” Russ asked. “Do we just leave it?”
“I dinna like it.” Finlay shook his head resolutely. “We leave it ’ere and ’em fuckers get out and surprise us later. We said we’d clear all the infected, so I says let’s dae it.”
“We can’t open the door,” I reasoned. “Even if we found something to cut through the chains with, they would rush whoever would be doing the cutting.”
“Hmm.” Einar made a noise which usually signalled that he was considering something that was both appealing and reckless.
That got me worried, and I followed his line of sight. He was looking at the roof. There was a small window there. Einar noticed me staring and pointedly changed the direction of his gaze toward the abandoned jeep that stood nearby.
“I wonder if that’s still got petrol in it,” he mused out loud. “Why don’t you go check, please, Fin?”
“You can’t be serious.” I shook my head.
“There’s a ladder on the other side of the barn. I’d seen it coming here ...”
“You could start a fire!”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“This isn’t funny!” I protested. “What a stupid idea, honestly. The fire could spread who knows how far! No way, I’m absolutely against this.”
Albert’s ferret eyes popped out. He bit his lower lip, and his egg-shaped head turned red, as if he were choking.
And likely he was, with resentment. He seethed visibly whenever I expressed any opinion at all, never mind one critical of Einar’s strategic decision.
Progressing to a nasty purple colour, he opened his mouth to berate me, no doubt. But he didn’t get the chance.
“You don’t exactly call the shots around here, princess,” Einar addressed me in a gravelly voice, his gaze stony. “It seems to me that you need a firmer reminder of what your true role is in our little colony ...”
His gaze cut into me like knives as he reached me in two long strides, his face stretched in what could only be called a leer.
I resisted the unwise impulse to bolt and run for it, which I likely would have done, and consequences be damned, had I known just what this ‘firmer reminder’ would consist of.
He fisted my hair, he spun me around and led me closer to the barn and away from Albert, Russ, and Finlay.
“Einar, what are you doing?”
Jerking my head painfully by the locks and curls trapped between his fingers, he ran his other hand along the mounds of my breasts and the swell of my hip, humming appreciatively.
“Not here, it’s too close, I don’t want—”
“Shh, give me a second, princess, I’ll see for myself how much you actually don’t want this ...”
His exploring paw reached the band of my trousers and then dug lower yet, worming its way past my underwear.
His claws sank into me, and I whimpered.
Uncaring, he proceeded to rub and abuse me, focusing his attention on the treacherous bud of my clit, which was already swelling with pleasure underneath his touch.
“That’s my girl, already so wet for me,” he purred viciously.
Bliss was beginning to build at the base of my spine.
“Einar, please, stop,” I begged without any conviction.
“Soon, sweetheart.” His husky voice tickled the shell of my ear seductively. “But I’ll have you cry out for me first.”
Before I could plead with him some more, his fingers traced me in an expert, circular motion, and I was no longer able to stop a shameful, raptured moan from tearing its way up my throat.
True to his word, Einar let go of me immediately, and my embarrassment was only made worse by how much my body wanted him to continue.
Mortified, I glanced behind to assess the damage.
Most of our people lingered too far from us to have seen anything but Einar holding me by my hair.
Finlay had gone to the jeep as instructed, and Russ had wandered away, unknown to where.
Only Albert stood relatively close, looking in our direction without bothering to conceal it.
But he didn’t appear nearly happy enough to have known the full extent of what Einar had done.
Not too bad then. It had been a private revenge, if one that clearly reeked of escalation in case I refused to learn my lesson. But it could have been worse.
Still, I opened and closed my mouth like a fish tossed ashore, and tears welled up in my eyes too abruptly for me to stop them.
I turned towards Einar, making sure not to let Albert see me cry.
Einar’s expression softened, and to his credit, his lips parted slightly in an expression of sincere regret.
Not that I thought for a second that it would affect his decision about the damn barn.
“If Milord would be so kind as to allow me graciously, I’ll be watching his act of arson from afar,” I announced in a wilfully formal, bratty voice.
Not waiting for an answer, I marched away, passing scattered groups of our archers on the way.
Dave cocked a questioning eyebrow at me as I walked by, but I shook my head in response to his implied question, not wanting to talk.
I scrambled uphill and perched upon a nearby outcrop of pale grey rocks.
Ironically, it granted me the best possible viewpoint to watch Einar’s mad idea come to a perfect fruition.
During the afternoon, he climbed to the roof several times with a canister full of petrol and poured it down the window.
Eventually, he hiked up the ladder with a glass bottle of what I assumed was petrol siphoned from the jeep.
There was a rag stuffed into the neck of the bottle.
My insides tensed, and for a moment I forgot to be angry at him, desperately hoping that no injury would come to him.
Einar lit the rag, tossed the bottle down the window, and speedily descended from the ladder just as a faint boom sounded from inside the barn.
The growls of the infected grew louder and more agitated, clearly audible over the soft wind.
Not moving from my spot, I watched the structure burn for hours, its roof and walls gradually collapsing, the smell of smoke acrid in my nostrils.
Loud laughter heard from below told me that everyone but me enjoyed the show.
As if to spite me, brief but heavy rainfall descended with twilight, smothering the last remains of the fire dwindling amongst the charred timbers and blackened bodies.
I refused to move from my spot. Luckily, I had been wearing my thin waterproof jacket, and so I did not get completely soaked.
Not that it could have dampened my spirits any further.
Once it got dark, Einar trekked up to me, bringing me a can of tuna and some dark rye bread.
“Go away,” I hissed at him savagely. “I don’t even want to look at your stupid face right now.”
“Would you prefer instead to sit on it like yesterday?”
Yes, actually. I would have preferred that. But there was no way in hell I would admit that to him just then.
“Ren, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry you did that at all!”
“No, I’m not.” He knelt beside me, taking my face in his hands. “But I am sorry that I made you cry,” he said with quiet sincerity.
“Right,” I scoffed.
My anger was ebbing away slowly, but I was damned if I would let him see that.
“Did you want anything else? Have you come up with another sadistic reminder of my true role? Or have you simply decided that it was time I resumed my obligations towards you, whether I like it or not? Knowing you, either way I should probably take my trousers off and bend over something, right?”
“No, Renata,” he said softly. “Although they are both extremely tempting options. Look, it’s wet around here, no forests in the vicinity, and the clouds have been promising rain since yesterday. I knew there was no danger—”
“There was for you,” I pointed out. “The roof could have collapsed. The explosion could have been bigger and taken you with it. The fire could have spread faster, trapping you ...”
“Is that what made you cry? That you were scared for me?” he asked gently.
“That too,” I admitted with reluctance, “but also the fact that you humiliated me.”
I was glad for the cover of gathering darkness, concealing the fresh tears forming in my eyes.
“I did. Badly.” His voice was barely above a whisper, and he touched my hip in a non-verbal apology. “But you crossed a line, my girl.”
“Oh, did I? And what line would that be?” I asked, my anger rising anew.
“It’s one thing to disagree with me, nothing wrong with that. But I won’t have you, you, of all people, call something I said stupid in front of others. Especially not bloody Albert,” he answered harshly. “I couldn’t have let him and his new gang of friends think that I’m taking commands from you.”
“Well, my apologies to your poor little self-esteem that I didn’t realise was so very fragile!” I snapped back at him.
He tensed and bit his lip, probably fighting an internal struggle with himself not to start yelling at me or worse.
But it passed quickly, and when he spoke again, it was in a level, tolerant voice: “You don’t understand.
I don’t mind you bruising my ego. But you can only contradict and question me publicly so many times before you’ll inspire others to do the same.
Then someone might get an idea to try and take my place.
Or several someones. It is to our advantage that I was voted in almost unanimously.
That my people don’t squabble over whom to follow.
It allows us to be efficient, the fact that there is no friction among us. Do you see what I mean?”
I considered his words and then nodded slowly, suddenly feeling as deflated as I was riled up.
“In the future, think about not squandering our luck with something that doesn’t warrant it. Something that is a quarrel that you have with your man rather than with your leader. Can you distinguish between the two next time?”
My bow lay next to me, and I traced its cool, carbon upper limb with my fingers before snapping my eyes up to Einar’s.
“I can,” I said. “If you grant me the same courtesy.”
He blinked in surprise, his eyebrows arching up.
“I am your whore.” I saw him flinch at the word.
“It’s true, I am. And what’s more, I like it.
I like being your whore more than I’ve ever liked being anyone’s girlfriend.
Nevertheless, out there”—I swept my arms to indicate not so much the expanse of nature as our modest troops—“in public, I am the captain of your archers. Do you think you would have gotten this far without me?”
His lips parted, but I gave him no chance to respond.
“Well, think again! To be able to do what I do, you need me to have their respect, too. Don’t endanger it like this.
Deny me food next time. Assign me some disgusting, labour-intensive task.
Flog me—that is your favourite after all.
But don’t sabotage the mask I wear for others.
I told you already, the whore underneath it is for your eyes alone. ”
He closed his mouth again, nodding curtly, a plethora of emotions etched in his face. Worry creased his brow and guilt lined his eyes, but the corners of his mouth slackened sinfully.
“Point taken. But you know I’d never do to you what I’d do to the others. That’d be like demoting you to their level.” He grimaced as if in disgust and shook his head firmly. “No. You only get special treatment. Even when you drive me up the wall.”
“I don’t know whether to be honoured or horrified.” I scoffed.
“Why not both?”
The crooked edges in the bridge of his nose were sharper in the descending shadows, yet somehow they only underlined the wry humour in his expression.
“Touché.” I couldn’t stop a smile from creeping into my voice. “I’ll be more careful about what I say from now on.”
I leaned closer to him, letting him pull me into an embrace. He kissed me on the lips, cupping my face.
“What now?” I asked a little breathlessly, my mounting lust reviving the interrupted pleasure of earlier with vengeance.
“That depends. Would you still be open to bending over something with your trousers off?”
He waggled his eyebrows at me with a scandalous smirk, and I laughed.
“Maybe. Depends on what you have in mind.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Make you come with my fingers until you can’t take it anymore?”
“Heh. Your fingers might fall off before that happens.”
He shrugged with a diabolical gleam in his eyes.
“A risk I’m willing to take.”