“Yes, Sir, thank you. Except, of course, you’re making my cunt cry big, juicy tears with how much I need your cock inside of me.”
He bit his lip hard, likely to stop himself from bursting out laughing. A grateful smile twinkled in his eyes despite his features hardening, the facade mending itself.
“Is that right?”
His hands tensed on my body. Then one of them closed around my breast, its skin warm but rough, whilst the other slithered slowly between my legs to assure itself of the fact. I moaned desolately as his fingers slid skilfully over the most sensitive part of me. Finding me ready for him beyond measure, he withdrew his hand, reacting to its glistening findings with a carnivorous grumble in his throat. He licked my arousal off his fingers greedily.
“Turn around and get on all fours, babydoll.”
26
THE BEST LAID PLANS
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
The metal saucepan handle burned my skin even through the kitchen mitten. Unsurprisingly so, since it was old and frayed, its padding thinned out to nothingness in several places.
“Coffee smells great, lass,” Finlay called out to me from the sofa where he was sprawled next to Albert and Jean-Luc whilst Einar and Russell sat in an armchair each.
I, on the other hand, was kneeling by the fireplace, sweat forming unpleasantly underneath my breasts and running down the crevice between them, my hair wildly frizzy from the combination of heat and moisture.
Not that I wanted to complain. The large fireplace not only meant that it was never cold in our little cottage, but owing to the portable metal grid, I could make hot drinks or simple meals without venturing into the communal kitchen. For its convenience, our living room served as the new meeting place for Einar and his advisers. Which meant that I could now attend without my presence being frowned upon.
Still cursing under my breath, I poured the scalding, dark liquid into six cups and took the tray of them over to the walnut coffee table.
“Thanks, darling,” Einar said. Noticing there was no room left on the sofa, he pulled me down to sit on his lap, one hand wrapped around my hip.
It was already dark outside, and strong wind rattled the frail, old windows in their wooden frames.
“It’s really simple, actually,” Einar said, ticking off on his fingers while stating facts. “We must get more supplies. We cannot get them by clearing further in the mountains because the paths are all snowed in. Therefore, we must clear somewhere lower where there is no snow.”
“Well, we wouldn’t need to get any more supplies if?—”
“Albert, fer bollocks’ sake, mate, give it a rest already,” Russ groaned, burying his face in his hands.
“I’m just saying, we shouldn’t have pulled a Mother Theresa act when it meant we ourselves wouldn’t have enough for the winter.”
Just before the first snowfall, a group of twenty people from one of our partnered settlements from further up north arrived at our doorstep.
“Five men on bikes,” a woman called Helga told us, and a chill ran down my spine with a terrible sense of déjà vu. “They had shotguns and revolvers. They fired into the air to show us they meant business, and then they ordered us to give them all our food.”
I had always liked Helga. She was a woman of about fifty whose original nationality could not possibly be guessed since she had spent her whole adult life travelling, and her accent and vocabulary seemed to be an amalgamation of basically everywhere. She had wild brown hair with almost no traces of grey and vivacious brown eyes with merry sparks in them. WhenI first saw her, I am ashamed to admit that I questioned her presence at the daunting GR20 trek. Not only did she dress in frilly clothes that didn’t even begin to resemble appropriate hiking attire, but she was also about my height and easily twice as heavy. Short and rotund though she was, she could scramble uphill faster than most of us, scurrying up the steepest of slopes as if propelled up by an invisible jet strapped to her back.
“Then they says they be back,” she recounted the horrifying incident, “to take our women. Says they didn’t want any more mouths to feed over winter, but that come spring they be looking for company. And they don’t mean just the young and pretty ones neither. Imagine, one tells me he couldn’t wait to bury his face in my ...” She vaguely indicated her abundant bosom. “I says to him careful because he could die of suffocation that way, and good riddance too.”
Though the recollection was far from cheerful, I smiled at the memory of her face flushed with combatant indignation. But Einar’s resolute voice pulled me back to the present. I noted the steely edge in it, no doubt intended as a warning to Albert.
“Trust me, it was no Mother Theresa act. They are a partnered settlement. Their men joined our archers’ ranks in exchange for our assistance in a crisis, among other things. To turn them away now would cost us the trust of all other partnered settlements. And all their men,” he said slowly, utilising his talent for keeping his voice low but strikingly audible at the same time. “Much as it is inconvenient, helping them is not up for discussion.”
Everyone sipped their coffee in silence. Finlay stirred three spoons of sugar into his, curly dark hair falling into his startling green eyes. Einar breathed hard through his nose, nostrils flaring, and an angry vein pulsating on his temple. He had been livid about the bikers’ raid, all the more because there seemed tobe absolutely nothing we could do to prevent it from reoccurring in the future.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I was thinking ...” I interjected carefully.
Einar’s hand squeezed my thigh lightly, but he let me speak. Albert groaned but didn’t protest my contribution otherwise.
“We don’t just need food supplies,” I continued, “but medicine too. Like thyroid medication.” I looked at Jean-Luc, whose wife, Madeleine, was a thyroid cancer survivor. “Also, Monika’s due in March. She is worried about the birth since there’s a history of C-sections in her family. We should be prepared for her needing one too. Not to mention clothes and supplies for the baby.”
“That’s actually a good point,” Albert conceded with about the same amount of astonishment in his voice that a dog playing a piano would have warranted.
