10. Alas
Alas
Dusk falls over the bee farm. The sun bleeds out behind the jagged spine of the western ridge, leaving the sky bruised purple and cold.
The temperature drops fast at this altitude.
The mountain wind howls down the southern trail.
The same trail I cleared last night with bare hands and a combat knife.
The same trail the Silver Serpent Syndicate tried to claim with paper and surveyor stakes.
They failed. I erased their claim. I shattered their wood and crushed their neon plastic.
This land is clean again. This land belongs to her. Which means it belongs to me.
Susan walks beside me. We leave the fortified farmhouse behind, but not the perimeter I bled to build.
The honey shed sits inside my defensive line—clear sightlines, the south trail dead, every approach crossing ground I cleared with my own hands.
I swept it while she worked the hives. Nothing reaches that door without going through me.
This isn't carelessness. It's a choice. The bond first caught fire in that shed.
I'm taking her back to finish what started there.
We leave the radio silence and the dread of the coming war.
She chose to stay. The club offered her an evacuation. Logan offered her the iron gates of the compound. She looked him in the eye and refused. She chose her grandfather's land. She chose her hives. She chose my protection.
That choice anchors a beast inside my chest. All my life, my blood ran on pure, unadulterated rage. I was a weapon without a target. Nothing worth bleeding for. Nothing worth keeping alive. My hands only knew how to break.
Then I walked onto this property. The bees swarmed me. They didn’t sting. They landed on my knuckles. They recognized the stillness in my marrow. They knew I was the lid to the hive. And she knew it too.
Now, she leads me down the dirt path away from the farmhouse.
We walk past the windbreak I built for her in the dead of night.
The Russian hybrid bees are asleep inside their white wooden boxes.
The air smells of scorched pine smoke from the cold smoker she used minutes ago.
It smells of dried clover. It smells of her.
We reach the honey shed. The single-room wooden structure sits twenty yards downhill from the main house. Her sanctuary. Her domain. The only place she truly retreats to when the weight of her two-year isolation becomes too much to carry.
She pushes the wooden door open. The rusted hinges groan in the quiet twilight. She steps inside. I follow. I pull the door shut behind me, sealing us in the dark.
She reaches up and pulls the string above her head.
A single swinging bulb flickers to life.
Yellow light spills over the small room.
Shadows dance against the timber walls. The space is hers.
Rows of empty supers stack high along the far wall.
A hand-cranked extractor gleams dull silver in the corner.
The cast-iron uncapping tank squats on the floorboards.
In the center of the room sits a wooden workbench stained with years of wax drippings and gouged by hive tools.
The air in here is dense. It breathes warm beeswax. It tastes like raw clover honey. It smells like her complete surrender.
She turns to face me in the dim, yellow light.
Her chin tilts up. Her shoulders are set.
There’s no armor left on her. The fierce, stubborn independence she wore like a shield for two years lies shattered on the floor.
She lets me carry the weight. She lets me be the wall between her and the violence coming up the ridge.
I step past her. I don’t touch her yet. I walk straight to the single square window cut into the back wall of the shed. The glass is grimed with dust and old wax. I unlatch the rusted lock. I shove the window open wide.
The cold, high-altitude mountain wind pours into the enclosed room.
The temperature inside plummets instantly.
The icy draft hits my face, carrying the scent of pine needles and snowmelt from the peaks.
The swinging bulb sways violently above our heads, casting erratic, swinging shadows over the walls.
I want the cold. I want the mountain in here with us. I want the freezing air to bite her skin so she feels the sharp, burning contrast of my heat. I want this room, this sanctuary, to witness what I’m going to do to her. I want the ridge to hear her scream my name.
I turn back to her.
She stands near the scarred bench. The cold pulls at her hair, whipping the loose strands across her cheeks. She shivers. Her nipples peak hard against the thin cotton of her shirt.
"Mine," I tell her.
My voice is a low, gravel rasp. It cuts through the howling wind. It leaves no room for debate. It leaves no room for retreat.
She nods once. A sharp, jerking motion.
I close the distance between us in three long strides.
I don’t ask permission. I don’t hesitate.
My hands rip into the hem of my shirt. I pull the cotton over my head and throw it into the dark corner of the shed.
The freezing wind crashes into my bare chest. My scars pull tight in the cold.
My muscles lock. The rage inside my veins boils down into agonizing lust.
I step into her space. My chest presses her against the edge of the bench. Her hip bumps the metal of the cast-iron uncapping tank beside it. She gasps at the sudden cold against her side.
I reach for the hem of her shirt. I fist the fabric in my hands.
I drag it up her torso. She lifts her arms, submitting to my rough handling.
I strip the shirt over her head and cast it aside.
She wears no bra. Her bare breasts are exposed to the mountain air.
They’re full, perfect. The cold wind tightens her dark areolas into tight, begging peaks.
My hands drop to the button of her jeans.
I pop the metal stud with my thumb. I drag the zipper down.
The harsh screech of metal teeth echoes under the wooden roof.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her jeans and her cotton panties.
I shove them down her hips in one violent, continuous motion.
She steps out of her boots. She kicks the tangled clothes away.
She stands naked in the center of the honey shed. The single bulb swings wildly above her, washing her bare skin in erratic flashes of yellow light. The cold wind whips over her body. The smell of warm beeswax and raw honey thickens around us, mixing with the rising, musky scent of her arousal.
I grab her by the hips. My hands dig into her soft flesh. The grip is bruising. Territorial. Final. I lift her off the floorboards. She gasps, grabbing my shoulders to steady herself.
I set her down onto the bench.
The wood creaks beneath her. Her bare thighs slap against the cold, gouged timber. Her right hip presses against the side of the cast-iron uncapping tank. The contrast of the rough wood, the icy metal, and the cold rushing through the open window makes her gasp sharply. Her spine arches.
I step between her spread legs. I crowd into her space. My bare chest brushes against her cold nipples. The heat radiating off my skin acts like a furnace against her shivering body.
"Open for me," I command.
She spreads her thighs wider. She offers herself. The vulnerability in her posture shatters the last remaining shards of my control. She fought the world alone. She carried the debt, the farm, the grief, the Syndicate threat. She built walls so high no one could climb them.
Now, her legs are spread wide on the wooden bench, giving me access to the most vital, hidden parts of her.
My gaze drops to her pussy.
She is drenched. The dripping slick coats her swollen pink folds.
The musky, intoxicating scent of her arousal hits my senses, overriding the smell of raw honey in the room.
She is slick with need. She is leaking for me.
The sight of her wetness destroys my mind.
It reduces my brain down to a single, primal directive.
Consume. Claim. Breed.
I drop to my knees on the wooden floorboards. The rough timber scrapes my bare skin, but I don’t care. I’m a feral animal finding my ultimate kill. I position my face between her spread thighs. The heat radiating from between her thighs hits my cheeks.
I grab the backs of her thighs with my large hands. I pull her closer to the edge of the bench. The wood groans.
I bury my face in her wetness.
My tongue lashes out. I drag the flat, rough muscle up the center of her slick slit. The taste of her explodes across my palate. She tastes like salt, musk, and heat.
Her scream cuts through the freezing air. Her fingers dig violently into the muscles of my bare shoulders.
I devour her. I plunge my tongue deep inside her dripping opening. The tight, scorching walls of her pussy clench desperately around my tongue. She tastes incredible. I drag my mouth upward, lapping at the folds, licking up the pooling slick that drips down her skin.
I find her swollen clit. The sensitive bundle of nerves is engorged, poking out from beneath its hood, begging for friction.
I close my lips around it. I suck hard.
"Alas!" she shrieks.
Her hips buck violently off the bench. Her spine bows. Her right hip strikes the cold cast-iron tank, but she doesn’t care. She writhes against my mouth.
I don’t let her escape. My hands lock around her thighs in an iron hold.
I hold her where I want her. I suck her clit into my mouth, dragging my teeth lightly over the sensitive hood.
The suction sends tremors through her body.
The slick pours out of her. It coats my chin.
It drips down my jaw. I drink her down like a starving man finding water in the desert.
She thrashes on the wood. The cold mountain wind pours through the open window, whipping over her bare, sweating skin, while my mouth utterly ruins her.
I shove two fingers into her pussy.