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She rolls off me afterwards. We lie in the sun, watching the sky.

“You’re a good mate,” she says.

“I didn’t even feed you.”

“You don’t always have to feed me.”

“I should feed you. I should fish before dark.”

“That would be good. Can I come along?”

“I’m faster without distraction.”

“I want to go with you,” she says. “And I still kind of can’t believe you catch fish with your bare hands.”

“You’d question me at a time like this?”

“Who catches fish with their bare hands?”

“What do you think I use?”

“I don’t know. Sticks? A net made from a sock? I’d believe almost anything before your hands.”

I frown and rub my face. “Come on, then.”

She trails along behind me to the stream, a speck of light at the edge of my dark world.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ann

The river flowsthrough a bed of rocks and boulders in the shade of a huge limestone ridge, which stands like a dark sentry above us. Kiro leads the way, picking along stones and spots of dry ground until we hit a downed tree whose fat limbs stretch out over the river like a giant’s hand.

“This was always the best place. This tree. This shade.”

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

He regards the mighty downed tree for some time.

Kiro has a powerful imagination for putting himself in the past—he told me that he’d lie in that institution bed imagining himself free and wild. I know he’s thinking about his pack.

I don’t want him to stop thinking about his pack, to stop honoring them with memory, but I hate seeing him in pain. “What now?”

“I catch the fish. This is going to be boring for you to watch.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say. “Considering it’s pretty much an impossible feat.”

He climbs out onto the tree over the water and stretches out on his belly. Then he sticks a hand in the water. And waits.

And waits.

“That’s what you do?”

“Shhh,” he scolds.

“Are you shitting me?”

“They think my hand is part of the tree. I grab them.”


Tags: Annika Martin Erotic