Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 8

I hadn’t intended to kiss Thorn.

I had started out this trip promising Cassandra that nothing would happen, warning Thorn against any “funny business”, and so certain in my resolution to stay away from him that I thought nothing could have swayed me.

But it seems to happen without my intention, as though my body has been propelled forward, as if there is some string between Thorn and I that is being wound up, tightening and tightening until I seem to almost stumble into him.

And I hadn’t intended to kiss him hard.

Perhaps a gentle brush of lips, a tentative peck to discover if his mouth is soft or hard, if his freshly shaven chin is smooth against my own, if our noses crash together in an awkward collision.

But, as all things are with Thorn, the kiss can’t be brief or insignificant or gentle.

This desire, this ache that binds us together, this sickness that Thorn described, it crashes over both of us like a storm.

From that first brush of my mouth against his, it’s like a shock of lightning through me, straight to my stomach, to my core, to the tips of my fingers and toes.

I lean into him.

I slant our mouths together, with force enough to knock my teeth. I spread my palms over his pecs and dig my nails in below his collarbones.

A growl rumbles from Thorn at that first touch, a deep sound of hunger, and he releases my jaw so that he can wrap his arms around me.

He lifts me against him, pushing my breasts into his chest so hard that my breath is restricted, bringing me so high that my feet come off the ground.

He opens his mouth as I do, learning the starved rhythm that we’ve created, and I sweep my tongue in and draw out his flavor.

Fresh, smoky, masculine… incredible.

I moan and seek out more, learning the shape of his tongue. I sweep my own against the underside, and feel a responding tug in his erection, pressed against my lower belly.

I don’t have any way to move, suspended in his arms as I am.

It’s a good thing, because if I could move, I’d be wantonly grinding my hips against him, chasing the release that a mere kiss has made me desperate for.

There’s nothing mere about the kiss, though.

His lips are hot over my own, his jaw guiding me in fast, hungry movements, his hands gripping into my skin, one against my shoulder and the other over my hip.

So quickly Thorn learns not only how to kiss, but how to truly dominate my mouth with his, how to overpower me until I’m gasping against his mouth, mewling with longing, my hands fisted in his wet hair, clawing at his back. So quickly Thorn takes me over, pouring his smell and his taste into me until he blocks everything else out.

Every single thing.

The forest, the trip, the reasons why we’re here and why I just picked a fight with him, it all fades away.

All of my senses are occupied by him, all I want is him, all I can think of is how to get him to press me down onto the furs and fuck me with the dick that presses against my belly, reaches towards me with hot, steely strength.

I bite at Thorn’s lower lip, as if possessed by some shameless, confident woman, and I enjoy the groan that echoes through his chest in return.

He lowers his hands to grip me by my ass, his broad fingers digging into the soft flesh, and the slight bite of pain makes me shudder.

I’ve never been like this.

I’ve never been the first to kiss, I’ve never kissed someone so desperately, like he’s the very air that I need to breathe.

I’ve never before felt this ache between my thighs like I might die if he doesn’t fill me soon, like nothing is close enough, hard enough, deep enough.

It’s suffocation, it’s too much-

I pull back with a gasp, and Thorn blinks to stare at me, his eyes black with the size of his pupils and his breath raggedly falling from his red lips.

I wasn’t lying to him earlier.

I’ve never had much experience with men beyond a few hookups and short relationships. I’m not a virgin, and I don’t consider myself very knowledgeable. But no kiss was ever like that. That hot, that intense, that desperate. I didn’t even think it was possible.

All at once I’m terrified to return to his mouth and begin to stoke that blaze within me and think that there isn’t anything I want more.

Now it dawns on me why some of the men call it mouth-mating. Kiss seems like such a ridiculous, small, childish word compared to what we just shared.

Thorn lowers me enough to brush a thumb over my lower lip, sweeping over the wet, raw flesh with a reverent gaze, “I have wondered so long what you might taste like, female.”

His filthy wording makes me think of his placing that mouth on other parts of me, and I quickly shake that thought from my head.

Who the hell have I turned into? What has this time done to me?

I used to enjoy sex for the intimacy only, for the brief moment in missionary when a partner might hold me, when I might feel cared for, before they flipped me over and my face would be pressed into the pillow. And forget kissing, kissing was often sloppy and quick and forgettable.

“Speak. You are quiet for once,” he orders.

That sobers me enough to find my voice.

I cross my arms over my chest, ignoring that my heart is still pounding against my wrists.

“What would you like me to say?”

Amusement dances around Thorn’s eyes. I could change the subject, I could pick another fight, I could tell him that I didn’t like the kiss, but he would know all of it was a lie.

There was no faking either of our reactions, and he knows it.

How infuriating.

“Ask me to do it again,” Thorn instructs. “Or perhaps show me something else. Teach me something that Raven or River do that makes their females cry out in pleasure.”

My cheeks burn, and I gape up at him. “I-… Y-you can’t just… It doesn’t work like that.”

“Tell me what is holding you back.”

I toss my arms up.

How the hell do I even begin to explain to him the nuances of a relationship? Or better yet, my hesitancy in entering one with the most obstinate man in the camp, in a future that I could never possibly have prepared for.

I kissed him, isn’t that enough progress for one night?

I sigh. “Can we drop it for now? Everything feels so… complicated. And kissing complicates it even more.”

Disappointment is clear in Thorn’s eyes, deepening the furrow in his brow and the solemn line of his mouth.

That mouth… it’s difficult to focus on what we’re discussing when I know now how it feels hard and urgent against my own, how it tastes.

But he steps away from me, “Yes. We will eat and go to sleep. We have much time left on this journey to talk.”

Thorn

It is late into the night, and sleep is within reach but not yet in my grasp, when the female speaks.

After a quiet meal that quickly led to the furs, I had given up on any more discussion of our earlier topic and had resorted to putting my mind to rest.

That is, attempting to rest.

For a long time, it had seemed impossible, lying against Samara’s warm little body, thinking about how it felt in my arms, how her lips had given beneath the press of mine, how she had tasted sweet and tart from our tea like ripe berries.

The sensations consumed me, engulfed me as if her mouth was a spark and my whole body a dry forest.

I had been ravaged by lust.

I had been worried about being rough, for if I had unleashed my full strength on her, all that hunger on her, I could have crushed her in my hands. Still, I had walked a fine line of control and desire and had fallen into her tempting lips without ever wanted to surface.

To think that I had seen my hunters River and Raven kiss their females frequently, their cheeks pink and their smiles bright, and had thought it a small touch, gentle and tender.

It was nothing like that at all, it was so much more powerful than I ever could have dreamed.

I will not be doing this anywhere near the members of our tribe. It would not be right to groan my hunger before them, to want to tear apart the female’s leathers so that all of her is bared to my mouth and teeth.

Now I cannot imagine a time when I thought a kiss merely a single step on the path to seducing Samara, when instead she pulled the deepest need from within my soul as if taking a breath from me.

I lay awake, assuming Samara asleep, and my cock aches in my leathers.

Yet now, the silence is broken with her gentle voice so suddenly that I almost startle.

“I wasn’t meant to be here.”

I shuffle beneath the furs, turning on my side so that I face the perfect silhouette of Samara’s face in the dark, her round, delicate features lit from behind by the fading fire.

This night we are hidden amongst the trees, and the wind is not so cold. I would be fine sleeping on my own under the furs, without even a fire, but had worried for the slight female’s temperature.

I wonder, briefly, if she too was kept up by thoughts of our embrace.

But her voice is raw, pained, and I worry that she confesses something much different.

I fear that if I speak, she will change her mind on what she has said, so instead I do something against my very nature, and wait in silence.

I know that she can feel my watchful gaze on her, that she felt me turn towards her.

I know that she can tell I am here, and I am listening.

“I never would have had the money for a pod in a bunker,” Samara begins. “I was making a nursing salary, and all my money was still going to student loans. There was no way I could afford to be put in stasis. On the surface, I knew my options would be to die in the blast or manage to survive it, but it was out of my hands. And I was okay with that. I mourned the life I had, I said goodbye to the friends who found pods, I met my parents for dinner and told them not to worry. I even thought, stupidly, that if I made it, I could help people. That I would be a nurse to any other survivors. I’m sure this makes no sense to you, but… I was content with my decisions. I was going to take the risk.

But a week before everyone was put in the pods, I was called to the office of the Hospital Director. She told me that they’d picked among the nurses and were assigning them to bunkers. We were supposed to be like…insurance. If a bunker survived the blow, then they’d be guaranteed medical assistance because there would be a trained professional placed in each one. Completely at random, they assigned me to this bunker. At first, I didn’t know how to feel, but I had better odds of survival than on the surface. I thought that maybe it was a blessing. But then the pods malfunctioned, and a fire started in the bunker, and Naomi was killed, and the rest of us were just left to figure the rest out.”

Her voice begins to quiver at the end, and through the dark, I hear her take a steadying breath.

She is so still beside me that if I wasn’t listening to her speak, I might still think she was asleep.

I wait for her to begin again, biting my tongue.

I do not like this story. I do not like that I think of the female - of my female - alone and faced with such a difficult choice. I do not like that the possibility of dying was one she faced, and that she felt forced to make peace with.

And I do not like that an awful, terrible part of me is relieved that she ended up in a broken bunker, that she woke up a month ago instead of a hundred years ago.

She is here, her body warming mine beneath the furs, with still-drying hair and the smell of the forest on her.

Selfishly, I am glad that she is here with me.

Samara continues, “I didn’t even want to be here, and I was miserable the first few weeks on the surface, but the alternative would have been worse. My city, my hospital, the street I lived on, all of its gone. The land looks completely different, there are mountains and lakes where there weren’t any before. If I hadn’t been assigned here, I would be dead. But because I was assigned to a random bunker, I’m two hundred years into the future instead of fifty, and I’m completely out of my depth.”

I realize that she is waiting for an answer, so I tell her a half truth, “I am sorry, Samara.”

“There’s a point to all this,” she shakes her head. I catch a glimpse of her expression in the moonlight, her tight brow, the miserable turn of her lips. It makes me want to rage that she is so unhappy, that she has not accepted her life here yet. “I haven’t felt in control of anything since arriving, and least… least of all my feelings for you. I’m attracted to you, Thorn, it came out of nowhere, and it surprised me, but it’s the truth. No kiss has ever been that good. But I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean being tossed around in the currents. I feel like nothing is up to me.”

I had not realized how much I needed her to confirm her feelings until now, until she tells me, and I feel a rush of dizzying relief go through me. But that relief is soured with the other part of her confession.

It is not enough for her to want me as I want her, if she is not ready.

I let out a hard breath and assure her, “We do not have to do anything you do not want. I do not wish to be the cause of your unhappiness.”

“There are stakes here, way higher than where I came from. Mating - sex - leads to babies, and there’s not a certain way for us to just do the first part without causing the second. No matter how careful we might be, I could get pregnant, and then we’d be tied together forever.”

“You do not want this.” Her words, her tone… how can the female inspire such completely misery and joy in me? Such longing yet such excitement?

She cares for me, yet the idea of having children is one she cannot hide her fear of. All at once her words make my stomach flutter and my chest ache.

She turns on her side and faces me, casting her almost completely in shadow. But the brush of her warm breath is on my collarbone, each pass of it making my shiver.

Her voice is soft, “I want you, Thorn. But I don’t know if I want children yet, especially not when I feel like any of us could die at any second. It’s… terrifying… being in this time, in this place.”

Worry surges in me. “I will protect you. Always.”

“But what if something happens to you?” She demands. “What if I get some illness that you can’t fight off with tea and herbs? If we were to… be together, it would mean risking even more than we already are.”

“I know this,” I tell her, and it is the truth. I have known the feeling she describes since the beginning, yet it was never enough to keep me away. “I have felt this fear, of losing you, of you getting hurt, or disliking me, or perhaps choosing another. Our time may only be brief, but that does not stop me from wanting it. You must trust me, my Samara. Trust me.”

Her words fall on a breath, “I’m trying.”

Desire has been an ever-present smoke swirling in my mind since I saw her. Other emotions, ones I had never experienced, became the norm. Possessiveness, longing, worry, doubt.

I was warned by River that the females bring feelings with them that can feel like torture and euphoria, that will go so far beyond the borders of my usual feelings that I will feel physical pain along with them.

Yet the most shocking, the strangest one, is the vast and aching tenderness.

I do not just want Samara’s body. I do not just want her like a fixture in my tent to raise children with and bury my sorrows in.

I care about her, painfully, inexplicably, and without restraint. I want her to be happy, I want her to be safe, I want her to peel the layers of her personality like shedding leathers, and I want to see the scars that she hides, the parts of herself that no one else will ever know.

Most worryingly, I want her to do the same to me.

I want her to bare the thorns deep in my chest, carved against my ribs, and I want her to pull them out one by one.

And when she is done, when she has revealed the ugly, rotting, violent parts of me, I want to suck the blood from her pricked fingertips.

“Come,” I beg, and realize that my voice is gruff with emotion. “Come here.”

I pull Samara against me, pressing her shivering little form on my chest and tucking her into the safety of my arms. Her hands press over my heart, and I let my breath come slow and deep so that she may match it as we did in the camp during her panic illness.

It is to comfort both of us.

Just as Samara needs to soften her breathing to match my own, so do I need to feel the heat of her healthy body in my arms, the gently rush of her breath against my neck, the demanding press of her fingers over my heart, as if she seeks out those thorns even now.

She is here, we are together, we have more days of solitude ahead of us to speak and to kiss and to hold each other into the night.

I say, my lips pressed to the crown of her head, “You are safe tonight. I will watch over you.”