Genesis Lost - Books 1 - 6, page 26
He licked his fingers. “Nope.”
A nervous beat came tapping from underneath the table. It wasn’t my foot that drummed it.
“Do I start at the school tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
This was just fabulous.
I had to spend twenty-four hours a day with this guy, who was as forthcoming as a rock with the vocabulary of a toddler. How was I supposed to find out where they kept their sperm samples like that?
I took a deep breath. “Did you volunteer to be my guard?”
“Rowan assigned me.”
“And that bothers you?”
Because why else would he be this cold?
River’s eyes narrowed, which caused the scar tissue on his temple to stretch and quiver underneath the strain. “I couldn’t care less. Rowan tells me what to do, and I do it.”
I pulled the plate with roasted vegetables toward me, grabbed one of the forks from the center, and took a bite. Hints of salt and rosemary smoothed across my tongue, making me hungry for more.
“Hey,” a friendly voice came from beside me, the man it belonged to appearing at our table. “I’m Adair.”
He gave a nod from a well-groomed head, a sincere smile on his face and his hands in his pockets.
“Ayanna.”
He pointed at the spot on the bench next to River. “May I —”
“No you may not,” River snarled with a shred of meet dangling from his gritted teeth. “Get the fuck out, Adair. I won’t have any of you guys around her.”
Adair smacked his lips. “That’s quite the statement, considering you didn’t want this assignment to begin with.” His eyes searched mine and he gave a nod. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you.”
As soon as Adair disappeared back into the crowd, River wiped his sleeve over his mouth and pointed the turkey bone right at me. “Don’t look at any guy or he might feel encouraged. Don’t talk to them unless I give permission. Got it?”
Irritation narrowed my throat.
“I will try my best,” I said. “But I hope you understand it might be difficult for me in the beginning. In the Districts, I can be as friendly as I want with men and they wouldn’t take it as me being interested in them.”
“No kidding,” River snarled, “I wonder why that is. Oh, wait, I know why! That special water of yours makes sure of that. I bet you could strap a naked woman to one of your men, and it wouldn’t make him feel a thing.”
“You are making it sound like that’s a bad thing.”
“It’s unnatural. That’s what it is. And a damn shame for all those women you’re hiding behind that wall. We would treat them the way everyone should treat a woman.”
My skin crawled. “Oh, you mean by assaulting them?”
River’s eyes turned into narrow slits. “Seriously? We didn’t have a reported assault here in a year. Rowan turned this place around, and it might surprise you to hear that women actually move here from the outskirts.”
Our argument died down as quickly as it had started, leaving the air around us stagnant and depleted.
My head rang in alarm. How was I supposed to succeed with this grumpy brute breathing down my neck for a year? Less than an hour in this place, and my plan already crumbled right in front of me.
“Look,” he said, as he threw the bone onto his plate and wiped his hands across his lap. “Let’s just get this year over with as quickly and uneventful as we can.”
I swung my hands across my chest. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
We stared at each other for a long time, our eyes probably equally cold and uncaring. He didn’t want to be my guard.
Fine.
I didn’t want to spend a second more in this rancid place than I had to. This woman came with a plan, and neither the council nor this guy would keep me from succeeding.
“Getting along here?” Rowan asked and stepped up to our table, a large mug in one hand and the other parked on his hip. “We’ll give you a bit of time to settle, Ayanna, before you start teaching at our school.”
I answered with a nod.
River with a grunt.
“Alright,” Rowan said with a smirk on his face. “I’ll leave you guys to it. Looks like this is gonna be fun.”
River’s gaze drifted off, surveying everything around him while once more avoiding my eyes.
“Are you in the Newgenics databank?”
“Nope.”
Good. Saved me the work of crossing him off the list.
Each of his nope’s was like an invisible punch to my face, leaving me red-cheeked and increasingly desperate. So much so, my entire body itched, and then I just blurted it out. “Do you know where your Clan keeps the donations?”
Let me guess… nope.
“Nope. Probably somewhere in the lab.”
The lab. I could work with that. This guy wasn’t a well of information. Not so much because he didn’t know but because he didn’t care to share it with me. Just like he didn’t want to share his time with me for one year, whatever the reason.
“How did you get that scar?” I asked and tapped his cheek right below. “Seems fresh, as if —”
His body turned stiff and his face paled further into translucency, if that was ever possible. The gentle rise and fall of his chest stalled, the only detectable movement his pupils which jumped from side to side. “Don’t fucking do that. Ever. Again.”
“Huh?”
“You touched me,” he snarled. “Don’t ever fucking touch me again or Rowan will exile my ass straight to the Ash Zones.”
Doubt washed over me, turning my voice into a squeak. “I’m sorry. I had no idea the law worked both ways.”
He leaned over the table, his dark-eyed stare locking on me. “Just to be clear. I’m doing this because Rowan ordered me to, not because I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. And I sure as hell won’t get myself killed over this shit assignment.”
Seven
River
The lady teacher gulped.
This assignment had turned from bad to fucking awful the moment she touched me, sending an unwelcome tingle down my face as if I’d just suffered a stroke.
Not only did this woman push between me and my plans. No. She fucking did so with plump lips, stunning brown eyes and a handful of nice, compact tits.
And what did she do one hour into this mess?
That’s right, freaking touch me.
Bringing exile so close the ash tickled my nose and caked inside my lungs.
I pushed myself up from the bench with such force, it tipped back and ended halfway into the firepit. “We should leave now.”
Before she’d reach out for me again.
In front of the entire damn Clan.
Her shoulders tensed, but she eventually got up and followed behind me. I gave Rowan a quick wave which he returned with a thumbs up, then walked over to my truck and jumped in.
The moment I turned the key in the ignition, a knock sounded against the window of the passenger side.
Ayanna stood there, staring inside with a droopy face, her fingers nervously fumbling with the door handle.
So I got out again.
I walked around the truck, opened the door like I probably should have done in the first place if I had any manners. Which I didn’t. Probably because I was a god damn bastard.
Back in the truck I pushed into gear, backed up, and set out for home a little bit up the hill. “Buckle up.”
She eyed me with surprise, the way she pressed her legs together telling me everything about her discomfort being alone in the cabin with me.
“I’m responsible for your safety, so you better buckle up,” I said. Ugh… that manners thing again. “Please.”
She buckled up and stared out the window.
The sun had set, slowly disappearing behind the mountain range and dimming the forest around us.
We drove in silence, which might have been a bit awkward but still a lot better than me having to say nope a bunch of times.
It’s not like I wanted to be a dick, but the assignment, the incident with James, my mother’s name… it was too much. Driving around a woman in my truck just put the cherry on top. What was I supposed to do with this?
I didn’t know what to talk about with a woman. Or how. All I knew about them was they smelled a whole lot better than me, and… well, that was about the full extent of my knowledge.
And just as I took a deep breath trying to confirm the bit I knew: warmth.
Right there above my wrist, coming from a set of tiny fingers wrapped around my arm.
“Stop the car, stop!” she shouted.
I hit the brakes, barely noticing how my forehead hit the wheel because of that strange sensation along my limb. It started where her skin touched mine, climbed all the way up my arm and crept into my chest.
“This is amazing,” she whispered and stared out the window, the woman entirely oblivious to how she touched me. Again. “I’ve only ever seen them in pictures. That one has those big things on his head. That’s the male, right? Right?”
“Are you fucking serious?”
Her head flung around, revealing two wide eyes staring back at me with confusion. “Huh?”
I picked up my hand and hers right along with it. “You’re doing it again.”
“Oh.”
Her hand quickly retreated.
So did her warmth, leaving my skin behind to cool down to its regular state called virgin.
Not that there was any shame in it. Most of us died without ever having touched a woman. Some of our best men were lucky enough to score a wife. You know, the ones coming from an influential family or money. I had nothing like that going for me.
I took a deep breath. “Ayanna, do you know what three feet look like?”
Her head dropped and her voice was little more than a whisper. “Not exactly.”
“It’s about from the center to your door. There’s not always a way to keep quite that much distance, like right now.” I leaned in closer and put some extra emphasis on the words which followed. “But when we can keep distance… we… do… it. Understand?”
She gave her upper lip a quick nibble. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m used to touching people without restraint.”
“Well, that has to change, or you’re setting us up for a whole lot of trouble.”
“Because men feel encouraged by it?”
I nodded and stepped back on the gas. “That, and because Rowan exiles men who break the law to the Ash Zones out west. There’s no coming back from there as far as we know.”
Silence once more crept up on us, turning a ten minute drive into something that felt like watching a snail cross the highway.
I parked the truck beside my cabin, got out, and actually remembered to open the door for her.
Then I climbed up the porch and waved at the weathered red and blonde fir logs. “Home sweet home.”
Ayanna’s eyes gazed over the cabin like a camera, blinking over every spiderweb and the abandoned bird’s nest underneath the rafters. “That’s the tiniest community home I’ve ever seen.”
“Community home?” I wiggled the rust-stained doorknob. “We don’t have community homes here. Everyone has their own house, but families usually live together. Like couples with their kids. Or grandma, if they’re lucky enough to have one.”
“That sounds like a waste of resources.”
The knob wouldn’t budge. I optioned for a hearty kick with my boot instead, and the door flung open.
I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Nothing goes to waste here. I cut those logs myself and only used trees which grew too crowded anyway. We try to use what nature provides out here. Besides, I like the privacy.”
She walked inside, placing one foot in front of the other in a slow and precise manner. “So, that means I will live here alone with you? Just the two of us? Nobody else? No other women?”
I let out a hearty laugh. “Other women? Having you here is already giving me a heart attack.”
The familiar sputtering of flames tickled my ears, and I gazed over to the cast-iron stove. They had died down. Right next to it, in the corner, stood my bed with the pillow bunched up against the wall, and the down blanket halfway on the ground.
For a moment, I regretted that I had shut all the windows before I left to pick her up. The unforgiving scent of overly ripe socks clung to the room, but I hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“You prefer to live here alone instead of with your family?”
Her question turned my throat raw, the truth dragging along like sandpaper. “I don’t have any family. My mom died giving birth to me, and there wasn’t anyone else.”
She observed me for way longer than was comfortable, as if something about her had picked up on that void inside me.
“Feel free to look around,” I said, confusing the subject and making her eyes unlatch from me.
Ayanna took a lazy spin around.
A kettle with chipped blue paint stood dry and quiet on the stove. Clay mugs drowned in an ocean of cream colored foam inside the ceramic sink. Behind a heavy gray wool curtain, glass jugs of enhanced water peaked out from underneath.
“Hm, just you and me then?” she asked once more, the tone of her voice now accompanied by a slight shake.
“I get this is scary for you and all but you don’t have to be afraid of me. Okay? We take protecting women very serious here.”
She answered with a smile too sweet to be real, but who could have blamed her? For a moment, I wondered what could possibly make her crazy enough to come here and put up with us guys. Or desperate?
Thing was, she didn’t seem crazy. There was no reason for a woman like her to be desperate to be here. In the end I figured she might just be strong and brave. Or bored out of her mind back home.
“Do you have a bathroom?” she asked.
Jerking my head in the direction of the door, Ayanna followed me to the other side of the room.
I opened the door, the both of us standing pinned between the frame. The heat emanating from her body once more settled against my skin. A sensation that hadn’t gone unnoticed when she touched me inside the truck.
“Trust me, I didn’t choose this color.” Warmth spread to my ears. “But beggars can’t be choosers, and pink toilets were a big thing a few centuries back.”
I took a step back and brought safe distance back between us, not liking the idea of dying out west among rapists and murderers.
I turned around and grabbed a handful of kindling wood from the wooden box beside my bed and fed the fire with it. Ash crumbled from the coals and revealed impatient embers, which flared up as soon as the twigs touched them.
“Is that the enhanced water the Districts delivered for me?” Ayanna pointed at the glass bottles underneath the curtain’s edge.
“Yup. It’s enough to keep you resisting my advances on you for at least three months.”
“What?”
Well that joked fucking backfired.
A mask of sudden fear settled on her face, as if she had just realized she was alone in a room with a clansman.
“Hey, it was just a stupid joke, okay?” I took a step toward her. “I told you, there’s nothing to be —”
Ayanna shrunk back and bumped into the corner of the dining table.
Clearly, she and I had a different kind of humor, because that’s when shit turned from bad to worse, in some sort of mind-boggling chain reaction.
The horse-high tower of books which rested atop the table swung in slow motion, yet still too quick for her to notice.
One tumbled to the ground.
Thud!
A second later, two more followed.
Thud, thud!
The wooden floor vibrated underneath their weight.
Ayanna threw her hands up to cover her head and ears. My adrenalin spiked. The pile now swayed like a drunkard.
Being the hero I was, I dived headlong to her side and reached out for the pile.
If I could just get them to fall the other way…
Too late!
One dust-smudged cover after another, the books tumbled down in a thunder of words and century-old wisdom.
And the way luck had it with me, the last one flopped against the backrest of a chair. Its corner spun around and planted itself firmly in the crease where her perfectly rounded ass stopped, and her long skinny thighs started.
Ayanna jumped up and turned.
Her stare froze my muscles and disabled my body.
Her eyes burned with such fury, I felt my heart skip a beat.
“Did you just touch my ass?”
I shrank back and flung my palms up. “Absolutely not. I swear it was the chair.”
“Do you really want me to believe it’s a coincidence that something grabbed my butt ten seconds after you talked about your advances on me?”
“Eh…” Sweat formed along my palms, at the back of my neck and pretty much everywhere else. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Man, this was bad with a capital B.
I continued to stand there with my hands up, figuring the best thing I could have done was probably nothing at all. Seconds dragged into minutes as she stared me down, her forehead in wrinkles and her plump lips now a fine line.
“Maybe it was the chair,” she said after a while. “Perhaps I should just go to bed now and pretend it never happened. Where is my room?”
I dropped one of my arms down by my side. With the other, I pointed toward the ladder which led to the loft upstairs.
And just like that, her body went from soft to rigid once more. “You’re kidding right? That’s not even a room. There’s no door, no… there isn’t even a wall.”
She took a step back and examined everything through the horizontal birch branches which created a gray baluster. Behind it, the firmest mattress and softest pillows I could find. Completely dressed in triple-bleached cotton.
My arms still itched.
“Look.” I rubbed a palm across my face and put the other on my hip, everything about this evening making me wanna throw in the towel — less than three fucking hours into this ordeal. “My place isn’t really big, okay? I only got this one room, and that space up there is the most privacy I can offer, unless you want to sleep in the shower.”
