Page 25 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Liv

T hank fuck for that.

Gregar takes my hint about food and heads off to go hunting or whatever, and at last I’m alone. That gorgeous sculpted body is no longer near enough for me to grab.

And that was a real danger for a moment there. When he was just mucking around in the pool, it was fine. The water distorted my view of anything, so even if my eyes landed on his dick, I couldn’t actually tell that’s what I was seeing.

But then he got out and just stood there, buck naked, impressive dick on show, along with tightly sculpted buns. Even the tail flicking around couldn’t distract from the mouthwatering deliciousness of the sight.

For a little while, I thought my panties were going to melt right off, but then I remembered that though my hair was clean, and most of my skin with it, there were bits of my body that hadn’t received any soaping.

That turned me off fast enough that I didn’t have to start thinking about whether it’s all kinds of wrong or just perfectly, perfectly right that he’s so goddamned magnificent.

I’m thinking about it now, though, and the building heat between my thighs tells me my body wants him, even if my brain hasn’t quite caught up with it yet.

I wait for a while, until I’m sure he’s gone, then put the knife down, stripping off the last of my disgusting clothes.

I grab the bowl of root soap and coat my whole body in it, scrubbing under my arms and in between my thighs, then sluice the whole lot off under the waterfall.

The water isn’t exactly warm, but it feels incredible.

The sweat and the grime and the stink all washes away and I’m clean. Really, truly clean.

I scrub my underwear - my ill-fitting bra and panties - and scrub my vest, too.

I don’t think it will ever be white again, but it comes up much, much cleaner.

Not wanting to stand around in my birthday suit, I pull the panties and the vest back on, but I leave the bra hanging in the branches next to the overalls.

The thought of putting it back on wet isn’t appealing.

To be honest, the thought of putting it back on at all isn’t filling me with joy.

Perhaps I ought to embrace the wild and ditch the bra.

I finger comb my hair, wishing I had something proper to tease out the tangles and something to tie it back with.

Hell, maybe even a blade to hack it off.

Then I remember Gregar handing me his knife before he left.

It would do the trick. I run my fingers through my hair one more time, considering it.

Vanity gets the better of me in the end. I like my hair. When it’s clean, it’s shiny and dark and poker straight. If I’m to be doomed to wear this vest and these panties for the foreseeable future, I’m going to do it with good hair, dammit.

My stomach grumbles loud enough that I clap my hands over it, as if this and not all my splashing around under the waterfall is enough to bring the big cats to my location.

I listen, but hear nothing nearby. The stones Gregar hung on vines in the trees don’t clack together, so nothing is approaching.

I wasn’t lying when I asked Gregar for food - I’m hungry. Hungrier than I was yesterday, somehow, as if a decent meal has woken my stomach up to the possibility and now it just wants more, more, more. Him leaving me alone was just a desirable side effect.

But now he’s gone, and I don’t know what to do with myself.

I no longer feel like I’m about to have a breakdown, at least. The despair I felt when we were walking receded the moment Gregar showed me the stinging berry juice and took away the pain in my feet with it.

Any lurking feelings of uncertainty about his intentions were well and truly banished as he helped me get clean.

He never tried to touch me inappropriately once.

And yeah, I noticed the rather large bulge in his trousers that meant he was thinking about it.

I can’t blame the guy - he was probably imagining me tied to a bed, wearing next to nothing and begging for him to make me come. Because all that actually happened.

But even when he stood there, completely naked, he never even gave me a suggestive look.

I get the impression he’s giving me full control over whether or not anything physical happens again. I remember his words from when we spoke in the dreamspace - how he said he had behaved dishonourably.

He’s always thanking Lina for choosing me for him. He never once looked at me and thought, ‘what the fuck is this strange, skinny little thing’. He’s always called me beautiful. Devotion and desire from day one.

Why am I even questioning this? Why am I not jumping in head first?

A warmth fills my stomach that isn’t desire so much as happiness, and I find myself laughing. I got on the ship to Alpha Colony with revenge in mind. I never imagined I’d find something so strange and so wonderful instead.

I don’t know if Lina’s real, or if she would listen to me, but I thank her for choosing Gregar for me all the same.

Gregar returns when I’m at the stage of tent construction where I am the central pole, the material weighing down on my head.

In my defence, there aren’t any handy instructions on how to put the damn thing up.

Gregar is chuckling when he parts the doorway.

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. “I’m the human idiot who doesn’t even know how to put up a tent. They say it’s the thought that counts, though, right?”

He sets down whatever he has caught, then steps inside, hefting up the central pole that holds the tent in place.

It’s actually several bits of wood that slot into each other so it can be easily dismantled and carried.

Very clever, but also a bit unwieldy for someone of my size.

I could just about get it up, but couldn’t get it to stay up.

By some magic, Gregar gets it done. Then he’s securing the material, so it’s tent shaped rather than drooping like old curtains, and all of a sudden it looks like it did yesterday when I was sleeping inside it, or one like it, with Khadija and Sam.

I miss them with a sharpness that’s as surprising as it is sudden. My girls. My tribe.

Gregar leaves the tent and returns a moment later with his pack.

He pulls out some animal furs from inside it, handing them to me.

I layer them on the floor, trying to arrange them in a rough square shape.

Something like a bed. It makes me a little nervous.

Not in a bad way so much as a jittery, anticipatory kind of way.

But Gregar’s attention is on the rest of the supplies.

He pulls out a small bundle, opening it out to reveal a selection of knives.

He sets this down outside - I guess to prepare his kill with - and sits beside the fire.

It has burned low, but there’s still enough heat for him to revive it in a couple of minutes.

Then he begins skinning the creature he’s caught - which looks kind of like a rabbit, except enormous and with wicked looking teeth.

It’s messy work. Back on Earth with our pre-packaged food supplies, we’re about as divorced from the reality of where our food comes from as it’s possible to be.

Only people like Sam, like Ellie, who work within the factories that make the food, see this side of it.

And I doubt they were skinning rabbits. I try not to flinch as Gregar guts the creature, pulling out the internal organs, separating them in to two piles.

It’s gross, but it’s also honest. I feel better about this in some ways than the anonymous goop we were fed back home.

So I watch and try to learn. Try not to be a creeper and give in to my urge to smell his skin.

While I believe Gregar and his people want to help us, we will have to learn to pull our weight.

If they are to be my tribe and provide for me, I want to do the same for them in whatever way I can.

Perhaps it won’t be much at first, but I’ll do my best to learn.

Soon, the creature is skinned and set on a spit to roast. The organs in one of the piles get added to the pan he used to cook the berries - cleaned first, so none of their bitter residue remained. The other organs are discarded, apparently not for eating.

The smell of the cooking meat makes my mouth water, and I’m grateful the hiss and spit of the sizzling meat covers the sound of my grumbling stomach. Gregar hums to himself as he works, a tuneless noise that, together with the smile on his face, suggests he’s feeling happy. Content.

It’s kind of cute.

Okay, it’s very cute.

Finally, the cooking is done, and Gregar serves me all the organs and more than half of the meat, despite the fact that I’m practically half his size.

I should give him some back, I know, but I’m so hungry, and it smells so good - once I start eating, it’s hard to stop.

I’m embarrassed by my greed, but Gregar just looks pleased as he takes my empty bowl and swills it in the stream.

And then the jobs of the day are done. The tent is set and we’re not going anywhere.

We’re alone together with no means of talking to each other, no distractions, and I have no idea if it’s late or early, the canopy of leaves above us making it hard to trace the path of the sun across the sky.

It feels like it should be getting late, but I don’t know how much of that is my exhaustion from walking.

I don’t know how long we were travelling for - it all feels like a blur in my mind past a certain point.