Page 58 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“Say you’ll never deny me again.” Voice oppressive like a descending night froze the air around me.

“What?”

Slowly and agonisingly, he slid out of me, and my legs nearly buckled.

“Promise you’ll never deny me again. Until you do, I’m going to keep denying you. Every night, I’m going to bring you right to the edge only to pull you back. Over and over.”

It was then that he teased my clit the way I had craved earlier, tormenting me with a high that was near but out of reach, like a mirage.

“You’re a sadist!”

“Yes. Until you give me your word, I’ll enjoy tormenting you just as much as I’d enjoy pleasing you. Your choice.”

He ran his tip over my intimate area, coating it in my arousal.

“Oh, for crying out loud! I promise! Now fuck me already.”

His hand crashed against my hip with a sharp crack, its impact searing my nerve endings with a violent need more than with pain.

“Is this how you speak to me? Promisewhat?”

“Sir, I promise I’ll never deny you again.”

With a hum of approval, Einar pushed himself inside me fully and then ground his hips against mine in a smooth, circular motion.

My innards turned to foam. And then the foam fizzled and spilled out of me as a cry of complete surrender. There was no stopping it.

He ceased moving with a frustrated groan. He stepped back, almost escaping from my intimate clasp once again, hands firm on my rear to deter me from any act of rebellion.

“NO! I promised! Don’t stop, please, you know I can’t take it ...”

“No, but we really can’t have you screaming like that,” he said and, without much ceremony, gagged me with a piece of fabric.

Given its texture and a vaguely intimate smell, I realised it was my underwear and savoured its taste of humiliation.

“That’s my good girl. Now you can be free.”

His hands were back on my hips and then he finally denied me no more, only himself surely, because he took enough time to make me reach my satisfaction repeatedly until I quaked uncontrollably in a state between consciousness and oblivion,each fibre of me existing only for the powerful currents that ran through me from the site of our joining, our connection the only lifeline I had to the outer world.

“So ... what brought this on?” Einar asked me some time later as we lay next to each other on the rough, patchy ground.

My nostrils tingled with the smell of damp earth. I had been listening out for the owl’s hooting but didn’t hear it again. Perhaps the bird had flown away. The night was dark, and even though the air was of the distinctly fresh mountain variety, the lack of light gave it an intimate, thick, cocoon-like quality.

“Well ...” I sighed heavily, considering how to answer him. “Tell me and be honest, please. Does it ever feel empty for you between us? Knowing that it’s futile, you know ... from nature’s standpoint?”

My head rested on his shoulder, and I felt rather than saw him move as he looked down on me sharply.

“Uhm, Ren, as far as I recall, I’ve been in fact trying to make sure that Idon’tget you pregnant.” He stumbled on his words a little uncertainly. “You know, by ... arriving at my own finale externally ...”

“I am aware,” I assured him dryly, “but does it bother you that you don’t really have to? That we can likely never create a new life together?”

“I think we’re more of a destructive force, my girl. The both of us.”

“Be serious. Doesn’t it seem pointless sometimes without the purpose it’s meant to have?”

He hoisted me up so that we could speak face to face, even though the shine of his eyes was all that I could see of his.

“Ren,” he said emphatically, “I don’t know how else to say this, in my lifetime of not giving fucks, this is the most I’ve ever not given a fuck about something.”