Rough Exile

The change of subject made him relax. He stretched carefully, then nodded.

“I was about to make a sandwich. Want one?”

We went down to the kitchen together, and I continued buttering bread where I’d left off, but added four more slices to my stack. He ducked out to use the bathroom.

When he came back, he settled on a chair carefully enough that it made me wonder if the beating wasn’t the only thing that had happened. Why else would Bron’s pants have been undone?

“You and Bron look so much alike it surprised me when you said he wasn’t your brother.”

“We keep our hair and beards the same, but we are not the same under that.”

I found the cheese in the fridge and sliced some off the brick.

“How did you meet?”

“He was one of my father’s men, but my father sent him here to teach me.”

“To teach you what?”

“To be strong.” He flexed one of his biceps and the rock-like bulge was impressive. “To be a man.”

I swallowed. “So, he’s older than you are?”

“Yes. He’s thirty-four. I am twenty-nine.”

And I was twenty-two, going on a hundred.

“Has he been your teacher for long?”

“Since I was eighteen. He came when my father began to worry.”

I figured out how to turn on the stove. Ilya watched me with curiosity. He’d been the one cooking since we’d arrived.

“So, he teaches you to be strong by beating you?”

“When he has to. By the time we go to see my family, I’ll be like him.”

I flipped the sandwich over, surprised at how quickly it had browned. He watched with amusement, as though I were an inferior cook. He wasn’t wrong, even though I’d been cooking for my family for years.

“What does Vas think was wrong with you?”

“I’m too soft. Men don’t want sons who are soft. He says it’s because Yana and our nanny didn’t raise me to be tough.”

It was an interesting statement coming from a man who looked like the logo for a chain of hunting and fishing stores.

“You don’t look soft to me.”

“I cut a lot of firewood.”

All those muscles from cutting firewood? Men back home were wasting their time at the gym. “So why am I here?”

I plated the sandwich and cut it diagonally to be fancy, then handed it off to him.

“Thank you.” He took a bite and smiled at me, as though grilled cheese was a treat. Maybe the treat was having someone else make food for him.

I started frying the next sandwich and didn’t fill the silence between us, hoping he’d eventually answer.

“Bron brought me to the Island where we met you to teach me how to take pleasure with women and not get attached to them.”

“Yes?”

“I…could not. I watched, but I could not take part.”

Out of habit, I pressed down on the top slice of bread with the back of the spatula. “Sexual aggression isn’t the same as being a man. Men don’t have to be hard and violent.”

“Yana always said that, but our father disagrees.”

“You have to be a man the way your father says? He keeps you away from the rest of the family for that?”

“He also holds the family’s money. If I can’t prove myself by the time I’m thirty, my father will send me away.”

I nodded, then flipped the sandwich in the pan.

“So…Bron is here as a manliness tutor?” I bit my lips together, trying not to laugh. The situation wasn’t funny—especially if Ilya lost his family and his source of income, but the idea that a manliness tutor even existed was hilarious.

“Yes, and you’re here so I can learn how to be with a woman.”

Oh, shit. He’d never been with a woman? No wonder he’d acted so weird when I’d kissed him.

“Do you even like women?”

“Yes, but I need to learn how to treat them.”

“You’ve treated me fine.”

“My father and Bron would disagree. I must take command.”

I scooped the sandwich up onto the spatula and carried it to him, sliding it onto his plate, where I cut it for him. The first sandwich was already gone. He’d eaten it so quickly, I wasn’t sure I’d seen him chewing.

“Thank you.”