Page 22 of Prison Moon
He’d failed Sarra by not protecting her today but he’d not do so again. If he had to shadow her every step he would. He wanted her and as much as he knew she enjoyed his attention, he wanted more. He wanted her to want him in return and showing her he could provide and protect her was the surest way to achieve that. If it took a small eternity, he’d prove he could be a good mate for her and he’d start showing her the moment she woke but first, he had more things to gather. Kissing her brow he stood, walked back out of the cave and heaved the boulder back over the entrance. Peeking around the edge of the rock, he gave her one last look before turning and darting into the trees.
* * *
Sara opened her eyes and saw orange flickering lights dance off stone walls. She was on her belly and it took a few minutes of looking around to realize that other than a fire not far from where she lay, she was surrounded by darkness.
She rolled to one side and braced her hand to sit up, groaning as every inch of her body protested. A thick padding lay underneath her, a long length of cloth draped over her body. She saw movement to her right and blinked in that direction, wincing as whatever it was headed her way. She fell back to the ground trying to remember what happened.
Something cool touched her back. She opened her eyes to see Toren now sitting next to her.
“Don’t try to move,” he said, laying something against her back. “Not yet.” That coolness touched every surface of her skin. When it hit her bottom, she tensed. “I’m just putting thenoshaleaves on your abrasions, nothing more.” His hands moved to the back of her legs a moment later and the coolness intensified.
“What happened?”
He didn’t say anything for a long while, just continued to sit by her side and bathe her skin. She closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of his hands on her and tried to remember. It was all a bit fuzzy and she wasn’t sure if the things she remembered were real or a dream. The tree-monster-thing had been real. Her body hurt too much for it not to have been. She’d been laying on the rocky hill, being dragged by one foot, screaming for Toren while fire raced up the entirety of her backside as it dragged her over the jagged rocks on that hill. It all went a bit dark there, trees and dirt flashing in her memory and what she thought was that big blue dragon that had snatched her from the sky when she’d fallen off the cliff.
She tried to remember more but couldn’t. She had to have dreamed some of what happened. If the dragon had been there, she wouldn’t be here. At least, she didn’t think she would.
She dozed off and on, the fire burning down quite a bit before Toren ran the back of his finger down the side of her face. She blinked up at him, their earlier conversation filling her head again. “Where are we?”
Toren brushed her hair back. “I don’t know what the creature that attacked you was. It smelled of dirt and rotting leaves and nothing more.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I don’t know if it was already at the bottom of that hill or came at you after I’d come up here.”
She forgot he didn’t understand what she said and let him tell her what happened, the blank memories filling in as he did. He made no mention of the dragon, said he’d killed the monster himself, so she must have dreamed that part. She reached out and touched his hand. “I know I’ve been a bit standoffish when all you’ve wanted to do is get a little friendly. This is all just a bit on the weird side for me. I’m not used to relying on people and I’ve never been in a life or death situation before.” She paused, brushing her thumb across the back of his hand. “I guess I just want to say, thank you. I know you have no clue what I’m saying, but you look at me like you understand—“
He smiled down at her and took her hand, kissing her knuckles and let her go on talking. She told him what her hang up was in regards to letting him be her alien boyfriend, about needing to find Marcy and even scared-beyond-belief, doom and gloom girl, Emma, and what it would mean if she stayed with him. He didn’t say anything when she finally fell silent, just laid something over her backside from neck to foot. The material was a bit scratchy and she realized in the next moment that she was naked. Completely, naked. It had escaped her notice before now. Not even when he’d touched her butt had the fact clicked into place. She opened her mouth to ask why but didn’t bother. He wouldn’t know what she was asking and as thin as that pitiful dress the Big Head’s had given her was, losing it was no great hardship. She was practically naked with the thing on anyway and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t caught him staring at her enough to know he’d seen everything there was to see—or had his hands on.
“Are you hungry?” He turned toward the wall by her head and leaned over. She noticed he was wearing pants and wondered where he’d found them. He sat a bundle of something near her shoulder and said, “It’s just dried meats. It’s not much but it will fill your stomach until I can find something fresh for you.”
He pulled the wrapping away and lifted a piece of what looked like long strips of flat beef jerky up, then handed it to her. She sat up far enough to brace herself on her bent elbows and gave it a sniff. It had a slight—woodsy—scent to it and she wondered what it had been. She’d not seen any animals other than the beast the dragon had dropped by the river’s edge and that little blue critter Marcy had wanted for a pet so, which one of those was this made from?
She took a small bite, pulling a hunk off and started chewing. It was dry and didn’t have much of a taste but it would fill her belly.
Toren slid the pouch of meat closer and stood. “Eat your fill. I need to find more firewood.”
She watched him leave and chewed on the dried meat as she looked around the cave. It wasn’t huge but it was bigger than her dorm room had been.
The fire put off enough light to see the entire cave. She lay on a thick pallet of something and near her head was a pile of things. There were bowls, fat pouches that looked like the old water skins her daddy used to carry when they were camping, and a mound of cloth she assumed was clothing. Was all this stuff already here or had Toren found it somewhere?
She finished the dried meat and sat up, wincing as all her weight shifted to her bottom. She ran a hand over her backside and winced as she touched the scratches and tugged the blanket away to try and see. The shadows were too heavy to make out much but her entire ass and most of her legs had been scraped raw. That burning sensation she’d felt when the tree monster dragged her down the rocky bank had burned for a reason. It had damn near torn the hide right off of her.
She shifted and wrapped the blanket around herself, tucking in the corner underneath her arm. She was halfway through her second piece of jerky when Toren came back. His arms were full of broken pieces of dry tree limbs. He dropped them in a pile and looked over at her.
“You should be laying down.”
She shrugged her shoulders and tore off another hunk of the dried meat.
He sighed. “The nosha will do you little good if you rub it off.”
“No-sha?”
He nodded and showed her a pile of small brown leaves. “Nosha leaves. They form a thick paste when prepared. That’s what I covered your wounds with.”
She looked down at her legs. She could see the back of them without moving more than her head. They were covered in a layer of what looked like clumpy mud, not leaves. “Is this what felt so cool when you touched me? It was this stuff?” She scooped up a bit of it with one finger and brought it to her nose and flinched. It smelled strongly of moldy earth and burned her sinuses. She wiped her finger on her leg and in the next instant, could breathe as if she’d sucked on ten peppermints at once or rubbed vapor rub under her nose.
“It will help heal you. By tomorrow those cuts will be closed and only red welts should remain.”
A super-healing mud bath that also cleared your sinuses. She’d have to remember what those leaves looked like. “You’ll have to show me where to find it and how to prepare them.” He didn’t reply, of course, so she returned to her bland meal, motioning to the pile of things along the wall and raised an eyebrow at him in question.
He must have gotten her meaning. “A camp not far from here.”