Page 126 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“Alright, babydoll,” he rasped tolerantly, “we’ll go together this time.”

His steady hand on my hip and the collar around my neck were the only things preventing me from falling apart into a pile of soft, disjointed limbs.

“Get lower,” he instructed me in a hoarse whisper, pushing his fingers into my shoulder.

Willingly, I obeyed, flattening my upper chest against the ground. His exploring hand ran over the tightly stretched skin and through the whole length between my legs. I whimpered, trembling and burning at the same time. He entered me anew, deliberately slow and with a groan of his own. Tightening the belt into a lethal noose, he pushed himself inside me in full, the mineral solidness of the bones in his hips crunching against myloosening joints, his skin rough against the most sensitive part of me.

My body was limp and shapeless, fully dependent on him to hold it in place. He crashed against me again and again with the force of a landslide. Deprived of oxygen, I saw darkness and I felt life drain out of my extremities, my fingers and feet tingling and going numb, my arms and legs losing all strength. And not just that, but I felt my very existence shrinking, sucked into the site of my tight clasp on him, enduring now only in the place he touched deep within me, bursting with flashes of light like the burning core of a planet. With a quaking shudder, I felt myself depart from this world, and I heard him cry his own exhilarated cry as I carried him with me into the ageless oblivion that existed outside of life and death.

43

A WOMAN’S WORTH OF SORROW

“Ren, is this really the best day for a drive? Look around?” Einar spread his arms to indicate the flurry of snowflakes descending on us from the murk of dismal skies.

He was a striking vision. His grey sweater made his eyes stand out, and snow collected in the waves of his hair and on his broad shoulders.

“You look so handsome in this weather,” I told him, batting my eyelashes up at him.

“You’re such a flirt,” he told me a little gruffly but with a twinkle in his eyes that gave away his pleasure at my praise. “But if you think you can distract me from my question that easily?—”

“Don’t tell me that an Icelander is scared of driving through a bit of a snowfall.”

Pulling my shawl tighter around my shoulders, I set off from our cottage, closing the gate behind us with a clank. I dug my hands deep into the coat pockets and hunched my shoulders against the wind.

“I wouldn’t be scared ifIwere to drive,” Einar pointed out reasonably as he walked next to me, his own shoulders square and annoyingly at ease in the harsh elements.

“The roads are perfectly passable?—”

“For now ...”

Not minding him, I continued slipping and skidding towards the silver Mazda. The tip of my nose was freezing, and my teeth were beginning to chatter. Turning away from Einar so that he couldn’t see my discomfort, I unlocked the car door at the driver’s side, yanking it open.

“Ren, stop.” He grabbed me by the arm, preventing me from getting in. “I don’t like this. Why is it so important to go help Dave today of all days?”

Dave, Kevin, Josh, and Amit were part of an initiative to restore the Corte hospital, as so far the only semi-functional one was in Bastia, which was both inconveniently far up north for most of Corsica’s inhabitants, but it was also much in Santini’s clutches for the comfort of others. I told Einar that I had promised to help with the cleaning.

“Because it’s been weeks since I said I would, and I never got around to it ... It’s always one thing or another,” I explained rather lamely, watching as snow collected on the driver’s seat but not wanting to shut the car door as that could falsely signal resignation on my part.

“Ren, there’s no way I’m letting you drive in this,” Einar said firmly as if sensing my mounting resolve, the look in his eyes entirely discouraging of any further discussion to anyone even remotely willing to give up.

Which I was not.

My innards curled with irritation. Customarily, I revelled darkly in Einar’s domineering tendencies, enjoyed following his orders as much as disobeying them, because the control he asserted over me allowed us to live in a perpetual state of erotic foreplay. Until a situation like this arose when I protested not because I fancied a spanking but because, for once, I cared about the outcome.

Knowing better than to fight openly, I looked up at him and pleaded in a quiet, demure voice, “Einar, please ...”

Already gathering the pluck, if needs be, to play my trump card: tears.

An agitated vein began throbbing in his temple, which was not a bad sign in the circumstances. I could already see his expression softening, the ice in his eyes dissolving, the hard lines around his mouth smoothening out.

“Fine,” he groaned at last. “Fine. But I’ll drive you.”

“What? But ...”

Looping an arm around my waist, he led me to the passenger’s side of the car and opened the door for me to get in as the cogs of my mind overheated in an effort to conjure up something that would change his mind. Flustered, I came up with nothing.

“Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you in the car,” Einar said from behind the wheel as he turned the key in the ignition, and the engine came to life with a complaining rumble. “I won’t get in the way of whatever it is you so urgently need to talk to Dave about.”