“I’d try my best to convince you otherwise.”
“And if you couldn’t?”
“I can be very persuasive.” He flashed me a wolfish grin, then his face hardened. “I was clear about what I wanted. If you’re no longer willing to keep your word, then you’ll have no shelter here. Pity is pointless. Solidarity is stupid. I don’t do charity.”
A brief burst of annoyance at the implied accusation of cowardice was quickly replaced by an inexplicable compulsion to appease him. But my uncharacteristic desire to ingratiate myself wasn’t caused by dread. For reasons that likely would have taken a licensed therapist months to untangle, I found there was something thrilling about the idea of getting on his good side, of ... proving myself to him.
“I never would have guessed,” I quipped with what I hoped was a coquettish smile. “But relax. I have no interest in being your good deed for the day. I was just making conversation, that’s all.”
Amusement twitched in the corners of his mouth, and the earlier kindness reappeared in his look.
“Good. In that case, how about we sit down and do some more of that, eh?”
He put a hand on my back, large but strangely comforting, and led me to the living room. I vaguely noticed that I didn’t like the sofa: it was one of the square modern ones that were always too wide for a person of my height. It was hard to sit on it without my legs sticking out awkwardly.
I expected our conversation to be forced, but it wasn’t. Einar asked me about our journey to Corsica and about the situation on the continent. He listened attentively, making small appreciative hums where appropriate, and picked up on small details in what I said. The wine was heavy and sharp in flavour, and soon I felt warmth spreading through my body and a pleasant fog suffused my mind.
“So, what have you been doing since the end of the world as we knew it?” I asked him when I finished recounting my story.
By then, I had kicked off my shoes and half lay on the sofa with my legs curled underneath me.
His own tale was at once less and more interesting than mine. He hadn’t left the resort area since the day the quarantine was announced. There had been no bombings in Corsica as far as he knew, and in his whole time there he hadn’t seen a single soldier. Soon after the Outbreak, it became clear that the previous owners of his current residence were infected. Most people were unsure what to do, but he knew there was no other way but to ‘deal’ with them, and doing so, he himself got bitten.
He showed me the scar on his shoulder, a fading crimson oval of irregular short lines like Morse Code, before returning to his story.
He chained himself to a wall back then with clear instructions to be shot once he started getting sick. But when he didn’t get ill at all for a whole week, he was released only to find that conflicts had flourished in the emergent colony in his absence.
“Nothing was getting done with people bickering about every small detail. It was almost comical. Somehow, I ended up being the one they turned to for solutions ...”
Einar reached for the bottle to pour a generous amount of wine into my almost empty glass before depositing no more than a splash into his own.
“So eventually they voted you the leader.” I completed the sentence for him.
“Yes. We all agreed that in a group as big there had to be one.” He shrugged. “I’d go even further and argue that’s true for any group, any relationship. There must always be a clear balance of power.”
“Even in intimate relationships?” I raised my eyebrows at him over the rim of my glass.
Even if I were to protest the notion, his wicked smirk would have disarmed me.
“Especially in intimate relationships,” he said suggestively. “Those can turn sour very fast if all that the couple does is grapple for power over each other.”
I adjusted my position on the sofa, inadvertently arching my back, and saw his gaze stray towards my breasts. The faintest hint of a blush spread in his cheeks when he realised and raised his eyes back to my face.
“Am I then to assume you’d prefer it if I didn’t speak my mind too much and just did as I was told?”
I fixed him with a mischievous glare and arched my back again without mercy, feeling the fabric strain across my chest. Einar made a noise between a chuckle and a groan. He looked away, rubbing his chin and mouth in contemplation with an air of not knowing just how to get himself out of a fix.
“Quite on the contrary,” he said after a while, “I’m already getting the sense that I’ll enjoy it very much if you speak your mind. As for doing what you’re told ...” This time, he lookedat my chest pointedly, long enough to make me squirm, before raising his intent eyes back up to meet mine. “Aye, I’ll like that as well. But only when it’ll please you too.”
Jackpot!I thought to myself, but I wasn’t quite brave enough to give voice to that thought.
Already flushed from the wine, I felt myself burn hotly with blood that painted my cheeks treacherously crimson as my heart fluttered with excitement. Damn, could he tell what his words did to me?
“Dominance and despotism are far from the same thing, darling.”
There was a force in his expression, a rare kind of intensity that chilled me to the bone and made me burn at the same time. I drank some of my wine to hide from his scrutiny behind the glass. Inadvertently, flustered as I was, I inhaled the liquid and coughed. Einar watched me with an amused smile.
“I was only wondering what to expect. As well as what is expected of me.”
