He tucked it back into his underwear then laid back against the cot. “Come lay with me, Little Warrior,” he said with a motion of his hand.
I left the hut and went over to the firepit to begin making breakfast. Sig was already sitting there, waiting. He yawned and gave me a nod of greeting.
“Everything is quiet out there,” he said, staring down into the flames of the fire. We didn’t leave it going all night, it was better that we didn’t let the light announce our presence. We used it to cook, then extinguished it. Each morning we rekindled the ashes and started a new one.
“Good,” I said, focusing on my work.
He watched me for a few minutes, giving me the silence I craved. Too bad it was so short lived.
“You don’t seem to be as happy as I’d expected after sleeping with her.”
“We didn’t fuck,” I told him, giving him a dark look.
“Didn’t think you would. Still, you went to a lot of effort to obtain her. I just thought-”
“Shut up,” I growled, interrupting him.
He chuckled and stood, stretching with a groan. “Fine. Be a grumpy, secretive bastard. I’m going to bed.”
“You don’t want breakfast?” I asked in surprise. Sig was like a trash compactor. He’d eat as much as you’d give him.
He just waved over his shoulder and headed inside. At least with him gone, I’d get some time alone. That was a rare commodity out here. Even when we tried to give each other space, it wasn’t always possible. Privacy was measured in minutes at best.
The other two were more social than I was. Sig would talk with anyone. Arsen would chat your ear off if he knew you. Me? I loved them like brothers, but I needed more space than either of them. They’d learned years ago to give it to me or suffer the consequences.
The door of the hut banged shut and I glared over at it, ready to rip Sig a new one for making unnecessary noise. It wasn’t him. She had decided to come out to get cleaned up. Tipping my head back and staring up at the early morning sky, I wondered what had possessed me to bring a woman into our group. I was the one who was going to suffer the most because of it. Despite that, my slowly softening dick perked up again.
That’s why.
Something about her called to me and until I figured out what it was, she was staying here with us. If I was lucky I could fuck the feeling out of my system and go back to our secluded, dangerous way of life without her as a distraction.
I kept an eye on her as she roamed the camp, looking into everything she could. She sniffed the bags that were tied up on the wall of the makeshift lean-to off to the side of the hut.
She wrinkled her nose, then sneezed, as the pungent spices assaulted her senses. I didn’t need to turn my head to keep track of her movements, so I continued working on the meat I was preparing for breakfast. Sig had caught a hare in one of his traps and I’d already skinned it.
I could feel Colby’s eyes on me and finally she gave up pretenses and sat at the log across from me. She rocked back and forth a few times, looking around, then sighed.
“What are you doing?”
“Making breakfast,” I said in exasperation. When I glanced up I saw her nose crinkled in disgust.
“What is that?”
“Hare.” I didn’t give a shit if she didn’t like it. Food wasn’t easy to come by out here and we did a lot of hunting for ourselves. We hit the various markets in the area for as much produce as we could find, but meat was our main staple.
Sometimes the markets would have an excess of things like goat or sheep, other times they were a bit more bare. Lately the locals were running short on food.
Raking my paring knife over a sharpening stone a few times, I watched her as she stared at the rabbit. “Please tell me you’re not a vegetarian?”
“Well, no,” she admitted, then swallowed thickly, as though she were going to be sick. “But you killed Thumper,” she whispered, horror lacing through her tone.
“Huh?”
She shook her head, her dark hair shifting and covering her beautiful face, refusing to speak. It was better this way, I needed to concentrate. We fell into a heavy silence.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
My head lifted and I found her watching me break down the hare, disgust etched on her face. Whether the look was for me or for my chore, I wasn’t sure.