Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 23

Thorn

F our more days pass with little incident, and though Samara and I find difficulty in relaxing for the first time in perhaps years, even we cannot deny that Hawk is easy to camp with. He avoids us, for the most part, spending long stretches of the day hunting and engaging only in quiet, simple conversations in the evening as we sit around the fire.

It allows me to slowly recover my strength without worrying where our meals will come from.

And Samara can focus her efforts on herself for once, taking sleep where she needs it and eating until her belly is full.

We take a few much-needed baths in the camp, though we are not able to do more than pour water from a flask onto clean leathers and wipe ourselves off with it.

Samara struggles due to her long hair, and we dedicate a full afternoon to sitting beside the fire while I attempt to detangle it for her. I am able to salvage most of the glorious umber curls, with the one exception of a truly difficult knot that I have to cut out with a knife, to our amusement.

While I work, she tells me about her home.

The distant relationship with her parents that is not so far off from my own with my father, and the dedication to her studies and her career.

There is a sense of loss, at all she has left behind, but she admits to me that the job was the only thing she loved, and in every other way, she had nothing to keep her there.

She misses her old life, sometimes, but it could be far more complicated than life here.

There are things she describes to me, rules of living, demands on her and those around her, endless expectations, that do not make any sense no matter which way she describes them.

I do not want to waste time on things that can never be, but I find myself hoping that she will be happy in this time eventually. That maybe I can make her happy.

Hawk returns as I am stepping back from Samara’s hair, allowing her to comb her fingers through the tangle-free curls with satisfaction.

Even though we have spent a week with him, I am not fully comfortable, and inch closer to my female, seating myself behind her.

She sits in the circle of my legs, her body caged in by mine, and if Hawk notices my protective disposition, he does not comment on it. Samara does not either, or perhaps she feels as I do, desperate to be near, hungry to touch each other in any way we can.

This evening he carries one large pheasant that we will share, and there is an air of impatience about him. Despite all the time we have spent apart, I grew up with Hawk, and I know when he wants to say something.

“What is it?” I demand, the curtness in my tone causing Samara to shoot me a sideways glance.

Hawk takes a breath, “Our time together will be over soon, but there is still something we must discuss.”

Samara stiffens against me, and I note the reaction and decide to ask about it later. For now, I agree with him. “Very soon. I am nearly fully healed.”

I ignore the female’s scoff of disbelief below me. I do not enjoy showing Hawk any weakness, and do not wish to be honest about my condition.

I am well enough to sit or stand for periods of time, to walk into the woods short distances without feeling faint, but my arm, though I have regained use of the elbow joint, is practically useless.

My forearm was the worst injury.

Though the deep lacerations are healing well, the cuts are far from closed. The damage causes my hand and fingers to work poorly. I will have a hard time hunting and will have to rely on setting traps overnight for our food.

I will not be able to walk for the long stretches I did before, my body still weakened by its brush with death, even if my legs appear to be fine.

Walking back to the camp will be a slow journey, but we will be together, and Hawk will not be hovering nearby.

For that, I am thrilled.

He blinks at me now, but his attention quickly focusses in on Samara. “I still need to know how to find you, healer. I will not leave until you tell me.”

Reflexively, my hold on Samara tightens, and I glare across the fire at him. “Why would she tell you that? You have no reason to come looking for her.”

His expression is awkward as he glances between us.

She takes a deep breath before facing me, “I wanted to wait until you were a bit better to tell you, but I guess there’s no time like the present. Hawk and I struck up a deal for me to use the medicine and bring half of it back to camp.”

Anger firms in my belly, and I have a difficult time keeping the venom from my tone as I look back at him, “You are as cruel and cold a leader as your father was. You would force a female to make a deal with you to save her male simply to benefit from her desperation?”

Samara frowns up at me, “Thorn, try to be reasonable-”

“Reasonable?” I demand. “I told you not to make a deal, I told you to give him nothing . Do not think my anger is for him alone.”

“What of my desperation?” Hawk demands. “My tribe has no healer. My sister is at risk. I do not revel in this agreement, Thorn, it is Samara who refused my first offer to live amongst my people!”

At the very idea, my heart splinters, and I feel a roll of nausea through me.

I snarl my next words at him, “Live amongst you? I will die before I allow it!”

A hard shove into my chest breaks my glare with the other man, and the tenderness of my newly healed wounds under her palm has me staring down at the furious little female in shock.

“Enough!” She shouts. “God, the two of you can be so- so… barbaric! You’re damn right I didn’t agree to the first offer. Besides you, I still have my friends in our tribe, women who I’ve gone through all of this with. Do you really think I’d leave them? I had to do something, Thorn. He didn’t owe me a single thing, and he’s been hunting for us and watching over the camp since I found him. I’m going to help his sister when she gives birth, that’s all. He’s going to come get me when it’s time, and then when it’s over he’ll bring me back home.”

I fight my need to rage about this, to lunge myself across the camp and tackle Hawk with my bare hands.

I press the words through my teeth, “I do not like this, Samara. I do not agree with this plan.”

“You don’t have a choice,” her eyes challenge me, the fierce dark depths like a raging fire. “I made the deal to save your life. And I’d do it again. You can either come with me when it’s time or silently stew in the camp and make everyone miserable with your mood. But you won’t talk me out of it.”

I grind my teeth together, and finally, have to release a hard breath. Again, she has put me in a position that I cannot move from, and I know by the rock-hard look in her eye that her resolve is firm.

In the end, I ignore Hawk to calm myself and capture a strand of her thick hair between my fingers.

“Of course I will come with you. As if I could bear to let you out of my sight, stubborn female.”

Samara ignores the quietly fuming man nearby too, her hands cupping my face. She rewards me with a brilliant, heart-stopping smile that causes lust to slam through me. “You better come with me. Think of it like a little getaway, just for us. But with a couple days in Hawk’s tribe. It’ll be fun. Blood, screaming, a baby at the end!”

I smile back at her, relaxing under her gentle touch and cheerful look. I say, for Hawk’s benefit as well as hers, “I insist only that he does not take us back. I know the way, and I will take my time enjoying my female before we return to our tribe.”

Samara grips my hand in hers, “Deal!”

I can hear Hawk shift uncomfortably, and I turn to regard him with a scalding look. “She will come only for the birth of your sister and no longer.”

He rolls his eyes and stands. “Fine. I will look forward to ridding myself of you, I am certain.”

With that, he stalks off into the woods once more, and I push any thoughts of him from my mind, turning back to Samara.

“You need to forgive him,” she tells me, her tone chastising. “He was a kid when everything happened. He’s a good guy. He’s different from his father.”

The idea makes me frown, and hackles rise on my back like a cornered animal. This idea is very unappealing to me.

“I will forgive him when he does not threaten to take my female from me.”

“He’s desperate, Thorn. He has no healers for the whole tribe. You have two,” she reasons. “Imagine how he might feel.”

I know that she is right, but it will take years to release the anger and betrayal I feel for Hawk. Already, it has been softened by the fact that he took care of Samara and did not take the opportunity to harm us, but his manipulation of my sweet female is still too fresh for me to release my resentment towards him.

It is uncomfortable to put myself in his position, to try to imagine how Hawk feels as the female tells me to do. But I try to for her sake, try to be a better man for her.

After a moment, I sigh, “I will discuss with Ash if he is comfortable travelling between the two tribes, when we are home. It might be good for West to be around other children. But you,” I trace a hand down her cheek, “I will not risk.”

Samara rolls her eyes. “It might be for the best, anyways. I’m hesitant to let you run off into the woods again, with all the bears.”

I laugh. “I shall tear them apart as I did the last. I think I even found some of its pelt in your hair today.”

My female lets out a miserable moan. “Shit, I think I can smell it on me. We need to bathe properly. Isn’t there a hot spring nearby?”

I can smell the sweat and lingering sickness on me and can see the grime from the attack on my skin, caked blood beneath my nails and streaks of it in places I cannot reach with a cloth. Samara’s hair was knotted and tangled, but otherwise I notice nothing different about her.

Her brown skin is as soft and smooth as before, her feminine smell delicate when it touches me throughout the day and night with her ever-present nearness.

There is nothing dirty about her, in my eyes.

“There must be. Hawk appears clean and shaven some evenings. I will ask him where it is.”

Samara grimaces as she surveys her hands and arms. “The sooner, the better.”

The nearest hot spring is only a short walk from the camp, according to Hawk’s directions, tucked within a system of caves fed from an underground well. When we begin our walk, the sun is already setting, so we bring some furs, clean clothes, and the supplies to set up a small camp if we need to.

Yet there is more than one purpose to our bathing excursion.

The walk serves as a test to see if I can make it a small distance without becoming ill again, and the supplies are in case I am too weak to return and need to rest. If I am being honest with myself, I long to set up camp in the cave whether I am tired or not, merely to have a night to sleep beside my female without hearing another male turn in his furs or cough when I think she may kiss me again.

I want privacy with Samara.

I want her to bathe and I want to gaze upon her nude body in the moonlight without rushing to clothe ourselves again. I want to kiss her long and hard until she is breathless, perhaps more if she deems me well enough.

The caves are only slightly familiar as we come upon them. I have travelled this land, not so often as that closer to the camp, but I have a distant memory of this cave system filled with warm bathing pools and know that it is safe.

Due to the complicated network of caves and corridors, it is avoided by animals, so we do not run the risk of stumbling upon a wolf or bear den.

The water here is far hotter than the springs near the camp, and I am certain that Samara will appreciate this as she suffers through the northern cold. I may be used to it after my upbringing, but I know that she struggles when the temperature dips at night.

If we were to make camp here, she could sleep in the nude if she wanted, atop the furs, and still enjoy the warm steam that rolls off the pools.

When we come to the cliff with the caves, I lead her into a smaller one, where the steam will rise more, and the close walls will protect us.

My female gazes at the pool longingly and releases a sigh at that first brush of warm air that is utterly seductive. It hardly seems a sound worthy of water, but it serves to remind me how badly she had wished to be clean.

“I am sorry, little healer,” I tell her, placing my hand on her back. “If I had known you wanted a bath so much, I would have brought you here sooner.”

“No, it’s good you didn’t push yourself,” she tells me. It took a little over an hour to reach the pools, and I barely feel out of breath. Still, she is being cautious, and she knows better than me when it comes to recovery. “I’m just glad we’re here now.”

I make a small fire beside the steaming pool so that we can bathe in some light, and Samara places the furs down so we will have a place to dry off after.

With everything prepared, I watch with rapt attention as my female undresses.

Slowly, as if she knows that I am watching, Samara removes her leathers, until she stands completely in the nude.

The cave is dark with the quickly falling night, and the glow of the fire paints the swells of her deep skin in golden hues, while the parts in shadow are dark as midnight. In this light, the contours between shadow and light are harsh, and it only enhances her beauty, her stunning features so delicately crafted and the long, athletic lines of her body.

It makes her appear as though she is more than human, as though she is some perfect, timeless being.

I follow the curves of her, from the small swell of her breasts with their pointed nipples to the dip in her lower back, her generous bottom, and the muscles of her thighs.

I find myself trapped in the most unexpected places, gazing at the long column of her neck, the soft skin behind her knees, and the tantalizing patch of dark hair between her legs.

I could stare at her for the rest of the night, the rest of our lives, and never have my fill.

Desire makes my head light and my stomach drop.

I am hard enough that in my leathers my shaft aches and tugs towards her, as if dragging me forwards. I lift my gaze to her face, and her eyes are sparkling black in the low light, flickering with the warmth of the fire beside us.

I reach out and touch her, tracing the back of my hand up from her hip, over her stomach, and capturing her perfect breast in my palm.

Samara gasps and arches her back, and I think that my hunger for her is an endless well like these springs that reach all the way down to the core of the earth, to the fire deep below us, that it will never run dry. I could never get enough of the sight of her, the feel of her soft skin under my fingers.

“You are so perfect…” It is hard to even voice the thoughts in my head that pound like thunder amidst a storm of lust, of intense devotion and awe, of possessiveness. “I feel I can hardly touch you… I am nothing, I grew up with blood, violence, and deceit. I should not be worthy.”

The breath stutters out of Samara, and she stares up at me with wide, molten eyes, speechless from my confession.

I tell her, my voice raw with emotion, “I have done everything wrong. I have been cruel and unfair. I have lied to you. I do not deserve your forgiveness or your affection. I have nothing to give in return.”

“You’re wrong,” she cuts me off, and I realize that her eyes swim with tears. My heart slams in my chest, I feel that I cannot stop hurting her, that I cannot help myself from saying the wrong things and upsetting her. But she continues, “You are giving me…so much, Thorn. I thought my life was over when I woke up in this time. But you brought us into the tribe and now I have friends, I have a family with those women and with you, and I have a future that I care about, that I don’t want to risk losing.”

She steps closer, trailing her hands up my front, her fingertips grazing over my leathers light enough that a shiver runs down my back.

She adds, though her voice dips lower, “And I have you. Thorn… my Thorn. Let me have you.”

A groan falls from my lips. “I have waited long, sweet little female. I can wait another moment. You wanted to bathe.”

Despite our arousal, I do not want to rush her. There is nothing more important to me than her, even my own raging desire, even my own needs.

We sink into the water, steaming and so hot that it takes some moments to adjust. Once we have submerged ourselves, I take the time to wash myself, scrubbing carefully around my wounds before I reach out for the female again.

I do not rush her, instead I watch with my chest aching with fullness as she indulges. She has missed the water, the warm springs around the camp, and she dives down again and again, floating on her back, kicking away from the sides.

Her laughter fills the cave, echoing from the solid stone walls.

“Come here, little fish,” I grin, coaxing her back towards me. “Let me bathe you.”

Samara dives down and resurfaces in front of me with a splash, the white of her teeth glinting in the darkness. The steam, my desire for her, is making me dizzy, and I pull her against me in a tantalizing wet slide.

I can feel every inch of her beneath the water, and the movement she creates as she holds her chin above the surface, her body writhing against mine, is enough to nearly forget why I called her over to me. I hold her against me, the gentle movement of my body supporting hers so she does not have to kick, so she can relax her weight into mine.

I turn her so that her back is to me and take the time to wash through the newly detangled mass of her hair.

The females have concocted some oily soap from the lavender for themselves, and I rub this into her curly locks now, the smell swirling around us until I think it will be pressed upon my skin for months.

I cannot imagine anything better.

Samara sighs as I massage her head, rinsing out weeks of sap and dirt, dried blood from me or from the bear, and I work my fingers into her soft skin until her eyelashes close.

I continue to massage down her body, her slick neck and back, her long arms and her capable fingers, and as I do so her head lolls against my shoulder.

There is a moment when she becomes completely relaxed, when her muscles go soft and languid beneath me, and I do not know if she sleeps or simply rests.

I press kisses along the line of her neck, not to rouse her, but simply because I cannot help myself.

The smell of clean skin and lavender is intoxicating, and my shaft twitches hungrily against her bottom.

She blinks her eyes up at me. “Want to get out?”

“I am in no hurry,” I reply, kissing her in the curve of her shoulder. My beard scrapes against the soft skin, and I make a mental reminder that I must shave while we are here. I would not want to cause her discomfort.

“I don’t want to get too prune-y,” Samara grins, lifting her hand so that in the light of the fire I can see the wrinkled tips of her fingers. I huff a breath of laughter against her shoulder.

We climb up from the pool, lifting ourselves over the side. It is not easy with one working arm, but I let Samara go first so that she does not have to watch me struggle.

On the floor of the cave, we leave wet footprints as we walk back to the furs and sit down.

I offer Samara some tea so that the hot water will not make her too dizzy, and she takes it with a funny smile.

“What is it?” I raise an eyebrow.

She shrugs delicately, and I cannot help but notice that the movement lifts her breasts.

My mouth goes dry at the sight.

“I just thought you would be all over me, but you’re holding back.”

I take a sip from the flask she hands me before putting it aside. We sit naked beside each other still, and my cock is very obviously hard against my hip, but there is a churn of nerves in my stomach, a worry that nags at my mind.

“I have made a mess of things before, but you are…too important to push or rush, Samara,” I admit. “I do not want to do this the wrong way.”

She grins at me, sitting back and resting her weight against her palms so that her body is pulled taut, completely on display for me. I swallow thickly and ignore the impatient tug in my shaft. I can wait. I have to do this right.

I cannot push her into anything again, cannot be the bossy, aggravating man who makes her defensive and angry.

Her tone is almost cruel when she remarks, “Wow, Thorn is nervous. The leader of the camp is afraid of a little tumble in the furs with a woman.”

I narrow my eyes at her. What game is she playing at? What argument is she beginning now? I say, “Afraid? I am not afraid.”

“I’ll have to tell the others, won’t I?” She teases. “That big bad Thorn wanted to fuck, but was too scared to just go for it-”

In a second, I have her under me, caged against my chest, her head bracketed by my hands, and her body long and wet and warm beneath my own.

I have her pinned to the furs, and I glare down at her. “Why do you provoke me, female? Why do you push me?”

She meets my anger, gritting her teeth and writhing beneath me. The movement causes her hips to collide with mine, and I release a shock of breath.

Samara hisses, “You think I want your restraint? You think I want more lies and falsities? I want everything. I can take anything you can give me. Anything you have.”

“Do you think I want to lie?” I demand, and the heat of our argument only spurs on the desire that floods my veins, the ache in my cock as each movement drags it over her skin. I snarl at her, “Do you think it has been easy waiting for you? I cannot afford to do wrong. I have done it too much already. I want to be the best male I can be for you.”

“I don’t want the best male,” she snaps, fire blazing in her eyes. “I want Thorn. I want the bossy, rude, patronizing, demanding, possessive asshole that I fell in love with! I want him to fuck me like he’s been waiting months to!”