Page 13 of On the Mountain

He wasn’t afraid to die? I wasn’t either, but then, I’d always known I wasn’t like most people. And maybe, the first time I’d laid eyes on him, I’d known he wasn’t either.

His body relaxed in my arms. Cyrus didn’t speak anymore, and I saw him look at my cabin getting closer and closer. He sucked in a sharp breath, his hand fisting in my shirt.

I didn’t know what I was doing, why I’d brought him to my home. No one else had ever been inside it, not since I’d torn it down and rebuilt it. The walls had only known me, and now I’d brought this man here. I was angry at myself for it, confused at why I’d done it.

He brought you food.

I eased him down onto the porch, the little lamb standing on one foot as I unlocked the door. When it was open, he tried to take a step forward, but I held his arm and shook my head.

Everything inside me rebelled against this, my discomfort growing, making my gut ache. This was more difficult than I thought it would be. He was an outsider. They hadn’t been allowed on our grounds when we were Enlightened, and that was one thing I’d held on to since.

“Do you want me to wait here?” he asked, speaking to me in a normal tone of voice—not yelling as if he thought that because I chose not to speak, I couldn’t hear—and he also didn’t talk in that condescending way that said he thought I was stupid.

Instead of using words, I lifted him again and brought him inside. Cyrus huffed as I dropped him onto the couch. I watched him as he looked around—at the empty fireplace, the log walls, couches and chairs, the open-concept kitchen behind us with a bar that only had one stool and a small table with only one chair. One was all I would ever need, and having more or less didn’t take away from or add anything to the space. I kept more furniture in the living room and bedrooms simply because the empty space made the house echo uncomfortably.

“This cabin isn’t very scary-mountain-man of you,” he said, speaking to me in a way no one ever had before. I waited for him to ramble something about it being lonely, but what he landed on was, “It’s perfect,” with a soft wistfulness I’d never heard aimed at something about me or that was mine.

He stood up, but I grabbed his arms and forced him to sit down again, narrowing my eyes at him. I couldn’t handle the thought of him having free rein around my space.

“Don’t leave the couch. Got it.” Cyrus crossed his arms.

I went to the kitchen, watching him the whole time. I set my rifle on the counter and started unloading the bags. He’d had ice packs in there, but they had long since melted. Still, I put the food away quickly, then got a frozen pack from my freezer and a first-aid kit. I kept supplies for injuries because I’d gotten plenty over the years. I never knew when I would need them.

I sat on the handmade coffee table in front of him, grabbed his foot, and lifted it to my lap.

“Oh,” Cyrus said softly. The sound went straight to my neglected cock.

I took his shoe off, then his sock. His foot was already bruised and purple, his ankle swollen.

“I hope it’s not broken,” he said, and I shook my head. I didn’t think it was. Likely just a bad sprain. My fingers brushed over his foot. It was easy to break the bone there, but the swelling and purple skin led me to believe it was more in his ankle.

“Tell me where it hurts,” I forced myself to say, head down, my hair a veil between us. The little lamb gasped. Because I’d spoken, or at the rough, unused sound of my voice? I did speak to myself sometimes, or to the animals or vegetables I grew, so I didn’t forget how. I also read out loud to myself, wanting to keep my voice usable, though mostly I chose not to.

With my beat-up hands, I pressed lightly on the bone along the side of his foot, looking at him through my hair.

Cyrus shook his head. Our gazes stayed locked, my fingers slowly working up his foot. He didn’t use words at first, but I could tell that the higher I got, the more pain he was in, until I reached his ankle and he said, “Yes. There.”

I took the ice pack and placed it on his skin. He trembled, and I looked down. Looked at the foot of another man resting on my knee. At how pale it was compared to my sun-kissed tan. His nails were perfectly trimmed. He had a slight dusting of hair on his big toe. Veins ran the length of his foot, attached to fuzzy legs.

It was strange seeing someone touch me this way. I’d fucked Hillary when I was sixteen. She had been nineteen and was the newest on the path to Enlightenment. She’d only been there six months when it started. I was drawn to her because she was the closest person to my age I’d ever spent any amount of time with. What I’d really wanted was a friend, but Chosen had said that even though she wasn’t worthy of me, he thought I should enjoy her physically. Men were sexual beings. We needed to fuck, and he wanted me to start early. That was something else my mother hadn’t known about.

I’d gone without until I was twenty-one, and then it had been Debra. I paid her for sex, but it had only taken once for me to realize that much like Hillary, it felt wrong. Ever since then, it had only been Bruce. But that was just an action, a means to an end, a way to have an orgasm. It didn’t feel intimate the way his foot on my lap did.

I hated the fact that I loved fucking so much, that I always yearned to bury my cock in someone, because it made me feel like Chosen. He’d slept with most of the women in The Enlightened, acted like it made him powerful.

Cyrus’s foot fell off my lap when I shoved to my feet.

“Ouch. Shit,” he cursed, but I ignored him, walking away, needing space. It was one thing to do that with Debra or Bruce, give them money and put my dick in them, but it was something else entirely to have someone here I wanted, someone I coveted.

I didn’t want to touch him again.

I wanted to touch him everywhere.

“Wrap it,” I growled with my back to him.

“Why the fuck did you do that?”

I turned to see him with his foot on the couch. He grabbed the bandage from the kit and fumbled, trying to wrap it himself.