Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 10

Thorn

W e do not find anything on our first day of searching.

The sun sets far quicker than Samara and I would like. Before we know it, the forest darkens around us, and we begin to search bent-over at the waist.

I think that she will soon resort to checking the forest with her hands on the ground, an idea which is neither safe nor effective.

After some time, I straighten up, stretching out my sore muscles.

Samara drops to her knees with a heavy sigh.

“Shit…this is exhausting. We’ll never find it in the dark.”

She looks so disappointed, so grim, that I feel a fierce tug in my chest, and rush to remind her, “We arrived very late in the day. We will continue searching tomorrow, and the next day. As long as it takes.”

“There might be nothing here,” she says, and her chin quivers slightly. I could not bear to see her cry, so I reach for her, setting my hand over her shoulder and crouching beside her. “It could’ve been wiped out from the blast, and this whole trip could’ve been for nothing…”

“Not for nothing,” I tell her. I emphasize this by raising my other hand and brushing it along the soft swell of her lower lip. If we find nothing, then this journey will have been for us, for her to welcome me at her side, for her to show me the sheer joy in the small caresses and kisses that the couples in the camp share, for her to sleep against my chest with her small hands tucked between us. “Do not give up, we will keep searching when the sun is back.”

A smile tugs at the corner of her lips, and her cheeks darken from my attention on her mouth. “Thanks for being so…patient with me. I know I can be defeatist sometimes.”

I scoff. “I am not the patient one. I know that it was not your choice to come on this journey with me. Or to even be in this time.”

Samara stands with me, and we begin to walk to a flatter area beneath some trees to set up our camp for the night.

“Here I thought you could never be understanding.” She grins at me, her brow raised, and the look seems to speak of far more intimate things than her words do. “Sometimes I’m wrong about people. But it’s very, very rare.”

At her smooth voice, my cock strains in my leathers.

How can the female make me painfully hard with just a smile thrown over her shoulder? How can she move my body so with just a look? It is as if she has touched me, or given me another searing, desperately hungry kiss.

“So I am not a ‘bossy asshole’?” I inquire.

It is easy to speak playfully with her, to smile at one another and muse as I make us a fire and she lays out the furs for our beds.

So many things I had never thought would be a part of being with a female, so many experiences that are new and fresh and valuable to me, new memories that are like the finest animal skins I have ever owned, so fine that I must keep them only to myself.

Samara’s back is to me, but her words are filled with amusement. “I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe you’re just…a bossy asshole as well as a gentleman and an excellent guide.”

My hands still over the kindling, “Is there anything else?”

“Perhaps.” She turns around, sitting on the furs and regarding me with a smile.

She looks delectable right now, happy and pink-cheeked in the firelight. She is not thinking about the forest, or the bunker, at all, and I feel a fierce surge of protectiveness over her.

I want her to be this way always, this at peace, this breathtakingly beautiful.

A coy grin stretches across her face. “Fishing for compliments?”

“It is not often that you speak of me with fondness,” I remark.

It is all the more enjoyable when she does, all the more special.

A troubled look crosses over her features. “I’m sorry I can be so prickly. And bossy. I guess that we’re similar, that way. It’s probably why we hated each other at first.”

“Hated you?” At this, I set aside my fire, even though it is a meagre flicker yet and needs to be fed.

I stare at her in surprise.

Is this truly what she thought? That I hated her? Did I not tell her the night before how I ached for her since her arrival? Is it even possible to hate someone and want them? And would she think me possible of such a turmoil of feelings?

Samara shrugs and looks a bit sheepish under my scrutiny. “I know what you said before we kissed but… we argued constantly. The only time we could agree on something was when Leah almost died, and you helped.”

I scoff. “I held her head, that is all. And I did not do it for… kind reasons.”

Her lips part in shock. “Why did you do it then? For what reasons?”

“To be near you,” I explain simply, and flatten my palms in my lap as a mirror of my words, as a gesture that I am open, that I keep nothing from her on this topic. “I did it for the chance to help you, to lighten your load. I will always be there to support you, Samara, to hold the females while you work, to carry you when you are too tired to walk, to feed you when you are hungry. Hate is the opposite of what I feel.”

I see her suck in a breath, and wonder if she even remembers that night the same way I do.

Samara might remember blood, and panic, and desperation.

I remember that too, but I also remember the concentration in her lovely face while she worked, the moment we had walked to the lake in distracted silence to wash off the blood and she had seemed like a tense, frayed nerve beside me.

I remember that I had wanted to reach for her and uncoil her muscles, press my mouth her sweat-slicked neck and coax softness back into her body, thinking that she deserved to be taken care of for once. I remember being in awe of her.

“What is it that you are afraid of?” I ask again, hoping that she does not deny me her thoughts this night as she did the last.

Samara pauses, and it seems that my honesty has inspired her.

“Getting hurt,” she says, simply.

I shake my head, “I will not allow anything to hurt you.”

“There are other kinds of hurt.” Samara drops her gaze to her hands.

“Do you…want me, female? If there is another you need only to-”

“God, no!” She shakes her head vehemently, and my fear is quieted. “I want you… way too much. But dating seems a hundred times more complicated in a place where you’d have to see your ex every single morning if it didn’t work out, where sex might lead to pregnancy. What if I had a baby and we still couldn’t get along? What if you would be happier with someone else, someone less stubborn? What if one of us had to leave for some reason?”

These worries make my guts twist in discomfort.

That she fears getting pregnant from my seed, that she worries I would ever want another, that she thinks I would ever be unhappy at her side.

But her eyes shine with sincerity, her mouth tight with worry, and I know that I must show her these fears are unfounded instead of merely telling her.

Instead, I try to understand where she is coming from, and admit, “I cannot say what will happen. I could get hurt, you could grow unhappy with me, we could argue. But life is fleeting, and I do not want to waste time worrying about the future when I know that right now you consume my thoughts.”

“Thorn…” Samara reaches for me, her hands flickering with hesitation, but her gaze pouring into mine.

There is fierce need in her expression, the kind that I think I may be able to take care of, the need to be held, touched, to be comforted.

I toss aside my fire and reach her in a second, gathering her into my arms and pulling her soft form against my aching cock, my heaving chest.

She smells like the wind, the pines, and sweet female, and I want to taste her mouth with so much hunger that it dizzies me. I am pleased when she gasps, a shaky breath falling from her lips at our sudden closeness.

She is as moved by the feel of me as I am by her.

“Ah, female,” I groan, wanting nothing more than to kiss her but holding back, enjoying the little reach of her chin towards me, the slight pucker of her lips as they seek mine. “You deny yourself because you think that you do not deserve to be taken care of, that your only role is to help others. But you are wrong.”

“Am I that easy to read?” She asks.

I nod. “Only because I am trying to understand. I want to give you everything, a tent, warm furs, the tenderest meat, and so much pleasure that we will have to build a hut far away where the others cannot hear your cries.”

Her cheeks burn, and a breathless laugh shakes out of her.

“You’ll have to help me,” Samara whispers, and her warm breath fans over my bottom lip, causing my cock to jerk in response.

I have an idea of what she means.

I will have to help her trust, help her listen to her own desires, help her find happiness. It does not come easy to some, the ability to let go, as it does to others. I know because I am the same.

“Anything,” I vow to her, meaning so much more than this moment.

“Touch me?” She says this with a flicker of doubt in her eyes, as though I may deny her.

With her tucked to my chest, her warmth and her smell surrounding me, her body pressed against the length of mine, there is little I could deny her even if I wanted to.

My brave, single-minded female.

“Where would you like my touch?” I ask.

I do not want to push her too far. I do not want to do something she will not like.

Her brown cheeks burn, and I have the sense that she is not used to discussing these things. It is not like I am either, yet she makes me bold, she makes me want things that I can hardly even put into words.

She is warring with herself still, yet her hands have, at some point, fisted into the front of my shirt, and she clings to me as if she will not ever let go.

I try a different approach, “Is there a way to give you pleasure without risking pregnancy?”

Samara’s eyes widen. “What like… hand stuff?”

“Hand stuff ?” I echo. “Tell me how and I will do it for you.”

Her gaze darts away from mine, and before I know what she is doing, her hand loops around the back of my neck and pulls me down.

Her lips press against mine, urgent, breathless, achingly tender.

I haul her closer, gripping a fistful of her hair and pulling hard enough that her mouth parts and I am able to seek out the taste of her.

I lick along her tongue, curling and twisting, and my hungry female meets me with passion, a soft mewl escaping her when I nip and suck on her bottom lip.

Suddenly, I feel her hand snake down between us, and she presses her palm against the hard length of my cock, through my leathers.

The breath shudders out of me, and I groan as I rock into her hand.

Oh. Ohh .

This is what she means by ‘hand stuff’.

Samara begins to work her palm in small, coaxing motions, running the flat of it up and down my shaft until moisture leaks from the tip and I am grunting with the effort of bucking against her.

I have never felt anything like her delicate, warm hand, even if it is separated from my skin by leathers, it is still the most incredible feeling.

So many years of fisting my own cock, of pulling myself to a quick and unsatisfying release, when even at the peak it shies in comparison to her touch.

This is why River and Raven gaze at their females with adoration, this is why they pull them away from the fire at the end of a meal and carry them back to the tents.

It is because my life before was muted and barren, and Samara gives it more color, more sensation, more intense pleasure than I could ever have imagined.

She continues her kiss while her hand moves, and the rhythm of our tongues caressing matches in a way that steals the breath from my lungs, that has the blood roaring in my ears and has me fighting the tingling in my spine that signifies I will spill my seed very quickly.

She is meant to be teaching me, so I bring my hand from the delectable curve of her hip down between her legs and press into the warm cleft there with two fingers.

Against my own mouth, Samara gasps.

But her leathers are thicker than mine, especially when she does not have the same outward appendage as I do, and I cannot explore her as much.

“I want to touch you without clothing,” I groan against her chin, looking down at our bodies, at the spread of my large hand between her slender legs.

It is like a tease, to feel the warmth, the dampness of her, yet be restricted by her clothing.

Samara lifts her shirt slightly, indicated that I should reach beneath.

Her skin is the softest thing I have ever touched, warm and shivering with sensation beneath my fingers.

I sweep a hand up her chest and cup her breasts and savor the little sigh I get in return for brushing a thumb over the bud of her nipple.

Samara does not have teats as big as some of the other females, her figure more athletic and long, but what she has fits so perfectly in my palm that the idea of her chest being bigger or smaller is unthinkable.

I use my fingertips to trace around her nipple, and she sucks in another breath.

She is sensitive here, then?

I make note of it before moving my hand lower down.

I spread my palm over her flat stomach. I think of it full someday with my seed, ripening with our children, and have to grit my teeth not to spill in my leathers from the thought alone. In time, I tell myself.

She will give me the precious joy of young when she is ready.

For now, I push my hand down the front of her animal skin pants and find the enticing thatch of hair above her cunt.

Samara is holding her breath in my arms, and as I reach lower, finding wet heat and tender flesh, we gasp together.

“Beautiful female,” I say against her, my voice more like a growl than a whisper. “Your cunt is dripping…”

This is not mere pearls of moisture like the ones that escape my cock head, nor is it the seed when I am finished, it is slick, it makes my cock ache.

I imagine that it is to coat my length as I thrust into her, and the thought has a groan climbing up my throat.

“For you,” Samara says, her mouth at my neck, and her words only make me more starved for her, for more of this nectar that coats her cunt.

I have the sudden desire to taste it, to bury my face between her thighs and feast on her the way I do on her mouth, to discover her taste everywhere.

For a moment, I simply take my time exploring her by touch.

I feel my way around the soft skin, noting when her breath catches or when she makes a particularly pretty sound, and find that my female likes to be touched on a little bump at the top.

When I touch gently to this part, she arches her back slightly, into my hand, and when I move up and down to mimic her palm over my cock, she begins to moan, her hands fisting into my hair.

I trail lower, and find the fevered core of her, and Samara closes her eyes in bliss when I push my finger deeper, when I allow it to be sucked into the tight grip of her cunt.

I go as deep as one finger allows, and we moan together.

She is endless searing flesh tugging on my finger.

I can hardly imagine how good she would feel around my cock, and, against my own will, my hips buck into her curved thigh, my shaft pounding with the need to release.

“ Thorn -” My name on her lips is the best sound I have ever heard.

I curve my hand, angle my shoulder, and at Samara’s high keening moan, discover that I can pleasure both her cunt and the sensitive flesh above it in a way that has her fisting my hair so hard she might tear some from my scalp.

I welcome the burn. I welcome the tight clasp of her around my fingers.

I pull her moans into my mouth like they are the only air left in the world and taste the fevered desire in each one.

“Samara,” I praise her as I touch her, as I curve my finger inward and watch agonized bliss spread like fire across her features. She rides my hand like it is a cock, like she is mating with my fingers, and I do not kiss her for fear that I will miss a second of expressions on her perfect face, or a desperate noise across her lips. “Stubborn, Samara. You have been needy for a long time.”

“Yes. Oh fuck-” she says this word in anger, often, yet I sense a new meaning now as clings to me, chasing her release. “Th-thorn…That’s so-… good.”

“Did you ache for me in the night too?” I demand, needing to keep hearing her voice, the words spilling out of me.

“Yes!” She gasps.

“Did you touch yourself, like this?”

Samara’s gaze meets mine, and my heart slams in my chest in response, my cock jerking demandingly against her hip.

Every part of my body responds to hers, every part is attuned to her, to her pleasure, her dark eyes, her voice.

“It… wasn’t the same…” this is said with a needy moan.

“You denied yourself for so long. Any of those nights you could have come to me and I would have buried myself between your legs and mated you until you could not bear any more pleasure.”

I feel her clench down on my finger in response to my honesty, my filthy promise.

“Tell me… what you would have done…” Samara begs, her voice raw.

I do not have to be asked again, and I do not have to worry that I will get something wrong, my body knows what it would do, and now I know how hers would respond.

I tell her, “I would have torn your leathers from you and tasted every inch of soft skin. I would have kissed you until you were breathless and tumbled you into the furs. I would put my tongue to you here-” I emphasize this with a circling motion over that little bump above her cunt - “until you were shaking- as you do now. And then I would have parted your thighs and pushed myself into this hot, little cunt. I would have mated with you until the sun rose, again and again until your cries woke up everyone-”

“Oh, Thorn,” Samara is all but sobbing with need, “I’m… gonna come-”

I assume she means her release, and I continue my frantic stroking of her insides, my circling of that little nub of sensation, my other hand buried in her hair, smoothing the heavy curls from her forehead, and my hips thrusting desperately against her thigh.

“Yes, like that, little female. Let go,” I tell her, like the bossy ‘asshole’ I am, demanding her pleasure, my voice an unrecognizable mix between a growl and a groan.

And Samara finds her release, her inner muscles tensing, sucking on my finger, fluttering around it like a heartbeat.

Her back arches off the furs, and she rakes a hand down my back as my ears fill with her scream. The sound that she makes, the enraptured shout that leaves her lips, is what finally pushes me over the edge.

With a groan, my cock spurts hot seed into the inside of my leathers, coating both me and her hip with moisture, and together we ride the aftershocks, catching our breaths, shaking, gazing into each other’s faces.

I am in awe of what I just experienced with her, of what we shared.

I feel that my life had not started until the moment she entered it, that she has given me the greatest gift tonight by allowing me to touch her, by allowing me to witness her at that most vulnerable and private moment of release, her beautiful features glowing beneath me like I am holding sunlight.

I kiss her again, because I cannot bear not to for another moment and because she looks completely sated and soft against me now.

This kiss is not as starved as the others, not as desperate.

Instead, it is achingly tender, her lips sweet and my skin still singing with my release everywhere, as if I am fevered still from our passion.

I take my time, drawing out her tongue, slowly laving attention on her upper and lower lip, and I wish to carry Samara’s responding contented sigh with me forever.

Against me she is soft skin and relaxed muscle, her little hands spreading over my neck, running through my hair.

I sweep my hands over all of her, as if checking for any remaining tension, and find nothing but smooth brown skin under my palms. I stroke tenderly her bottom, enjoying the give of the ample flesh there.

Perfect female. My female.

My Samara.

I hold onto her the rest of the night, rising only to fix a meal and feed my pathetic fire before returning to her arms, and I sleep better than I have in years.

Thorn

We do not find anything the next day, though we do not look very hard.

On this day, our outlook is completely changed.

The day is warm, the blue sky scattered with some clouds, and Samara rivals the sun’s golden rays with her frequent smiles, easy laughter, and endless touches.

When we awoke, I prepared her some tea and some roots, and the female thanked me by ignoring the meal and pulling me back beneath the furs with her.

She squirmed under me, kissing me until we were breathless, and then showed me how to rub against her to pleasure us both.

I bucked against her with dizzying need, mimicking the act of mating through our clothing, and brought us both to a quick release that still flows through my body like warm liquid, making my feet lighter and my laughter flow as easily as hers.

Even though we are not lucky, we are joyful in our search, playing with each other, easy with our touches.

Samara needs this, because I know this area is difficult for her to be in after last time and I know that she worries about the medicine, so I do my best to distract her.

Yet the hardest part to admit to myself is that I need it more than her, that I crave her nearness and her joking like it is air and I have spent the last thirty years underwater.

In some ways, I have, spending my life drowned by difficulty and struggle, spending my adulthood looking after the tribe and constantly worrying about everyone’s else’s happiness before considering my own.

I cannot remember the last time I have played… yet I play today.

I race up behind Samara while she is bent over looking at a particular patch of earth, and in her surprise, I am able to spin her up into my arms.

Her sweet laughter fills my ears as her arms loop around my neck.

“You’re distracting me from my search,” she says, even though her eyes dance with mirth.

I grin at her, feeling like she has lifted decades of unhappiness off of me like heavy cloaks, feeling weightless. “It is time to stop looking.”

“Says who?” Samara raises an eyebrow. “It’s only late afternoon.”

“Says the tribe leader,” I reprimand her, but both of us know I do not mean it. “It is time to eat. I will hunt some fresh rabbit.”

She purses her lips thoughtfully, “Hmm, I could be tempted to give up the search early tonight… But you can’t tell anyone I’ve been slacking.”

“Of course,” I reply. “I would never think to undermine you to the tribe.”

Samara teases me, her dark, smiling face inches from my own yet just out of reach of my lips.

She pulls back, “We can’t have them questioning your authority either. I won’t tell them that you slacked on cooking this morning because you’d rather roll around in the furs with me.”

“They would commend me for dutifully taking care of my female,” I tell her, nipping at her arm where it brushes against my jaw, “in any way she needs.”

“Yours, huh?” She is breathless.

I hope that she can feel my already hard shaft against her belly. I hope that she knows that my hunger for her is never-ending, that there is no amount of time long enough for me to quench it.

“Only if you want,” my smile falters.

I do not want to push her in anything, and despite our joking, I want her to know that this part is serious.

“Thorn, I-” Samara stops suddenly, the joy leaving her face and confusion taking its place.

I realize that she is looking at something behind us.

Her eyes widen, and she goes rigid against me. “What the hell is that?”

I turn, my blood running cold, my arms tightening around her. If it is a threat, I must protect her, placing her behind my body and reaching for my knives. Yet she points to a small trap at the foot of a nearby tree, one that we did not see in our distraction in each other.

She is still tucked against me, a fact which my body reminds me of with impatience, yet I too am struck by the unfamiliar trap.

“Is it one of yours?” Samara asks.

I consider the peculiar trap. “No, I did not prepare one yet.”

“But it couldn’t be River’s or Raven’s,” she protests. “Nobody’s left the camp in weeks.”

My heart begins pounding in my chest, one that has nothing to do with her closeness, the kiss that we almost shared, or our conversation.

It is heavy and thick. It lodges in my throat like I am being choked. I struggle to keep a hold on my expression, to not show my steadily growing sense of dread.

She pulls away from me, dropping to her feet.

Her mood is completely changed, gone is the playfulness, the hunger for each other, the intensity and hope in my unanswered question.

In its place, the forest seems cold, even though the sun has not set yet, the warmth drains out of my body.

“It must be theirs. Who else would it belong to?” My voice does not falter, even if I feel as though the ground beneath me is shifting in the violent throes of an earthquake.

Samara steps closer to the trap, inspecting it, and her words steal the very air from around us, “Thorn, that would mean that someone was here recently. That someone might be here now.”