The merciless grip of impotent rage was all-consuming and all too familiar. All the stronger because I had not had a cause for it in a long time.
“Seems premature,” I pointed out coldly. “You saw what happened today. If we hadn’t been here, you would have been fury feed.” It was with shameful pleasure that I watched the colour drain from her face. “And you may yet be. You do realise how likely it is that you and your baby will contribute to cannibal numbers if not to their supper?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dave’s mouth twitching madly in an effort not to laugh. Unfortunately, the rest of the people around the table, including Kevin and Josh, looked rather appalled.
“What a horrible thing to say,” the woman told me emphatically.
“Horrible it may be. Untrue it is not.”
With that, I got up, grabbed my bow, and marched out. As I passed Einar, I made a rash yet firm decision and shot him a very meaningful look that he was sure to recognise. His lustfully darkened eyes followed me on my way to the door.
20
SWEAR TO ME
He let me wait for a long time, leaving me to stew with impatience as a revenge for the preceding weeks. There was no doubt in my mind that his delay was deliberate, and I cursed his black soul as well as my own for losing my cool so easily, so helplessly. So familiarly. Of course, I knew that for as long as there were still people other than me, those people would go on reproducing. Oh, but how blissful it was to have had those few months of respite from my volcanic envy, when there wasn’t a single expectant mother in sight. How complete I felt, how adequate. How pitifully unprepared I had been for being evicted from my own brand of paradise quite so soon. To be forced to look once again into the depths of my private despair and to see the truth about myself etched in my hideous reflection. The truth that being constantly surrounded by death was incomparably more bearable for me than being surrounded by new life.
The glass door finally opened behind me with a whoosh, and I turned around.
“Einar.”
I had to fight the urge to run towards him. The bow and the quiver bounced on my back as I reached him in swift, broadstrides. I placed my hands on the bulk of his chest, leaning into him.
“Well, what’s the matter, my girl?”
His eyes gleamed with amused cruelty, and the corners of his mouth were tight with a suppressed smile. He knew exactly why I had summoned him. And he wasn’t feeling particularly generous.
“Can we go somewhere? Now?” I looked up at him imploringly, disregarding his expression. “I don’t need any more time. What I need is you. Please don’t make this hard for me.”
His mouth twitched ever so slightly, but his eyes were motionless like a shark’s. His hands hung limply at his sides, and I burned and shivered, desiring their touch.
“You need me to ... what?”
I groaned in frustration. It was so typical of him to chase and pressure me for weeks, only to reject me when I finally relented. Just to prove a point. To teach me a lesson in how powerless he could make me feel if he chose to.
“You know perfectly well what I mean!”
“Of course I do,” he assured me levelly. “What you really want, but don’t wish to say, is for me to ream that sweet, tight cunt of yours like there is no tomorrow.”
“Yes,” I forced out through my clenched teeth, heat wrapping around my neck like a shawl. “I want you to ruin me.”
“I know. What you seem to have forgotten is that I’m not here to do your bidding. That it is the other way around, and I am certainly not going to come running like a dog anytime you whistle. Did you forget who I am to you, babydoll?”
For a split second, I felt as if he had slapped me, my cheeks beginning to burn with blood rushing right underneath the surface of my skin. But then I realised that he only ever called me ‘babydoll’ in exactly the kind of situation I wanted to be in. My heart fluttered with ice-cold excitement. The best kind.
“No, Sir.”
Grabbing my shoulders, he spun me around, and with a hand on the small of my back, he propelled me forward. He was leading me towards the copse of umbrella pine trees from which we had attacked the infected earlier. Out of sight. I didn’t stop myself in time from sighing deeply in agitated relief. I hoped the sound was lost in the prodigiously timed hooting of an owl.
“I should punish you for your insolence. But it’s been a good day, and I’m feeling generous,” Einar acceded at last when we stopped underneath the sprawling branches. “But whatever filth you want me to do to your pussy needs to come out of your mouth first. You know you want me to corrupt you.Askfor it. In your own words.”
I took a deep breath. Once he learnt that vulgar words could be coaxed out of me under certain circumstances despite my general dislike for profanity, Einar used every opportunity to do so with a sadistic relish.
But for once, I had the answer right at the tip of my tongue.
“Sir, I need you to fuck me like the worthless trash that I am.”
The looming, shadowy figure next to me flinched in shock. But he knew better than to argue with me just then, and when he spoke again, his voice was steady and stern. Just as I liked it.
