A Night by My Fire

She hesitated. “What?”

“Here.” Stephen reached over and pointed to where her fingers were tangled incorrectly, hooking the loose bit with his finger to tuck through her mess.

After the knot was fixed he kept going, weaving something complicated around her slack fingers until she laughed. “Is that a human snare?” Seeing as all her fingers were steepled and bound, it could have been.

Stephen grunted, “Pull your hands apart.”

When she did, the strangeness of the creation tightened itself but let her go, until there was something that looked almost like lace in her hands. River lifted it, turning it this way and that to see the little pattern. “How did you do that?”

That little game had always amused him when he was bored in the orphanage. “The first knot I learned how to make was a noose. The prey I caught was strung up to choke slowly... so it would keep other predators away. In those situations, I would not have ended their lives quickly with a knife to the chest.”

He was talking about people, River going ashen. “Predators eat trapped animals, they don’t avoid them.”

“Where I was born, in times of famine, eating one another was more common than you might imagine.”

What the fuck was she supposed to say when someone looked at you like that? “What do people taste like?”

“Better than your cooking.”

Coughing a nervous laugh, River edged away from the shifting male.

“I’m not sure if I say these things to frighten you, woman who has no lock on her house, or if I say them because they have not been spoken aloud before.” And they hadn’t been, not even with Mikhailov.

He had her awkwardly bent back against the armrest, River muttering, “Whenever you seem to relax, you mess up the vibe ... and crazy shit comes out of your mouth. You can’t handle the real world. You’re scared of what’s outside your very creepy bubble.”

Stephen took the knives and cast them aside, reaching to unfold the scratchy blanket over his next meal’s breasts. He had already taken her three times, until she cried for mercy and a nap. When the female had fallen asleep curled around him, wanting physical contact for reasons outside of sexual pleasure, it had been... different.

Her skin felt nothing like his, she hardly had a scar, and he got to touch her as she slept, Stephen most content when he kneaded her rear or weighed a breast. He even took her hair from the braids, a thing she woke to find and blushed at when he wanted to play with all that kinked length.

Now he had that hair in his fist, all gathered up so he might turn her, brace her over the arm of the sofa, where she trembled.

She shook, and he knew it was not from fear, but anticipation.

He made her wait while he scratched a nail over the phoenix’s outline, while he gripped just a little too hard the flesh of her ass, while he reached around and kneaded hanging breasts until she rubbed her scented, slippery woman parts against him.

> Stephen wanted to let go—to grab and use her, setting aside caution for his strength.

He’d earned this.

Ramming in with no warning, hearing her grunt, he yanked harder on that hair. Violent, he took her from behind, pretending he didn’t like it when she stared over her shoulder, her jaw agape and moaning for him. Finding the tattoo over her back come alive with his jerking thrusts, scoring it with his fingers, he knew the image was no different than her submission to him.

There were no two tattoos in the world like the one River wore, just as there would never be another sexual moment that might compare to the one they shared, better or worse. It was singular. When his hips surged to rock her forward, when she fought the pull on her hair, he speared her all over again until Stephen felt her squeeze tight about his cock... and he fucked even harder. River was forced past release, almost fighting him so her orgasm might end. He held her lust-drugged eyes, he held her hair and hip so she had to take him all... and nothing else existed in that moment. Stephen called her name as he came, as he gushed into a place already saturated with his mark. Falling atop her, unconcerned she was crushed or that she might not like the arm he circled tightly around her middle. Panting against her neck he found rest.

* * *

When she woke and he was gone, there was no surprise... or disappointment. For a moment he’d been afraid, and so had she. He had a part to play—the stranger. She had a part—the recluse. There wasn’t going to be a fairytale bullshit story. She didn’t want it; he didn’t want it. They both just wanted to survive.

Survival was lonely work.

His smell lingered after him. River straightening a room that lacked the precious woven blankets she’d extended in temper, a spare compass, two rabbits, all the thrown money… and the brown book she’d last been reading to him—a book she had written.

Going outside, she found he’d also dug out and stolen her snowmobile. She was trapped.

Considering the weather, it was one month before she could make the hike down the mountain. Two months before she found she was carrying his child. And five months before Rangers began to sweep her mountain, looking for traces of a wanted enemy agent who’d been identified in the nearest town.

River lied with a smile, rubbing her growing belly, and told them she had seen nothing in her woods. Nothing at all.