“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.
“IfMilordwould 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.”
