The Lawgivers: Gabriel Read online

  Actually, she’d seen quite a few who, like Ralph, seemed to get a special sort of thrill out of fucking publicly—as if he wanted to make sure everyone knew he took what he wanted when he wanted to.

  Or maybe, since he was always demanding that she tell him how good he was, he figured fucking in front of other people gave them the chance to see just how good he was?

  She could almost believe that women would want Gabriel to do that to them, though, because when she thought about it she felt all funny inside in a way she never had before and it definitely wasn’t because the idea made her sick to her stomach with revulsion and fear.

  She might never have gotten up the nerve to try to assuage her curiosity except for that fact because it occurred to her that just asking might result in her discovering just what it was like. It could give him the idea that she wanted him to show her.

  And maybe she did?

  But it still took an effort to get up the nerve even to approach him.

  They’d stopped to eat. Gabriel was never far from her since the attack, but he still distanced himself.

  Getting up decisively, she wiped her clammy hands on her pants and moved a little closer to where he sat at a distance from the rest of the group.

  Actually, she supposed to be more accurate, everyone sat as far from him as they could, eyeing him uneasily while they wolfed down the food they’d stopped to eat.

  He sent her a cold look when she settled again little more than an arm’s length from him, but she couldn’t decide if it just seemed that he was looking at her coldly because of those creepy eyes of his or if he didn’t like her coming closer.

  Or maybe he was pissed off because he’d figured out that she’d been trying to run away when she was attacked?

  He lifted his brows in that haughty way he had about him—as if she was a nasty bug that had wandered too close and he was thinking about squashing her—but it seemed a questioning look so she decided to take the plunge.

  “What did you mean that night when you caught me? What you said about only fucking women that wanted you to?”

  His skin darkened, and he looked even more cold and haughty if possible. “It isn’t rape when the woman is willing,” he finally said coolly.

  Lexa frowned. “Yeah. I got that. But why would they be?”

  His lips tightened.

  “Willing to let you, I mean?”

  He gave her a look she found difficult to interpret. “Maybe because they find me attractive?” he said sardonically. “Maybe because they want something?”

  Enlightenment! “Oh! Like they trade for something, you mean?”

  He rolled his eyes, but he merely grunted.

  Lexa thought it over, realizing she was a little disappointed—not surprised. She’d thought about it a lot and she hadn’t been able to think of anything he could do that would make coupling different enough a woman would actually want it.

  And she’d still thought there must be something he was doing that made a woman want him to, gotten the impression that they enjoyed it like the men did. She supposed that was different, though, fucking to get something you wanted. She could see why that would make it acceptable. “So that’s all that’s really different? They get the choice? And then they get something they want for letting you fuck them?”

  Gah-re-al stared at her coldly, struggling with the outrage that conclusion provoked. He’d certainly suspected that that might be the case with one or two of the women he’d bedded, but it damned well wasn’t the rule! It was the exception! Maya certainly had nothing to gain by taking him as a lover—far from it! She could lose status if it became common knowledge when he was from a lower class. “I don’t know how to put this tactfully so I’ll dispense with subtlety. This is a subject you need to save and discuss with the women at the rehab facility.”

  Lexa considered that. “But I don’t see why …. Oh! You don’t know?”

  Gah-re-al rolled his eyes skyward, grinding his teeth. “Being a male—no.”

  “Yes, but you talked like it was different where you come from? Are they different … down there, I mean?”

  He looked at her strangely.

  “The woman’s place?” she clarified, although how he could be confused about what she’d meant she was damned if she knew.

  He rose abruptly to his feet and stretched his wings, shaking them.

  It always gave her the creeps when he did that. There was something that just seemed … threatening about it.

  “You might want to step back,” he said coolly.

  Lexa shot to her feet but he stretched his wings wide and flapped them several times before she could actually retreat, filling her eyes, nose, and mouth with dirt. When she managed to stop coughing and blinked the grit from her eyes, she discovered he was already airborne. “Asshole,” she muttered, stalking back to the rock she’d been sitting on before.

  By the time her eyes stopped watering and she could see well enough to search the sky for him, she saw that he was dropping toward the ground far into the distance. Despite the fact that he scared the hell out of her, she couldn’t help but think it was just amazing to watch him soaring in the sky.

  Not that she would care to! High places scared the hell out of her, mostly because she’d fallen a few times and the abrupt stop when she got to the ground was always painful.

  Still, she liked the way he looked when he did it. It made her chest feel all tight and her heart beat a little faster.

  Vaguely disappointed when he disappeared from view, she sat watching and waiting for him to reappear, wondering why he’d seemed … angry about her questions, wondering if that was why he’d decided to fly off or if there was another reason.

  It was when she finally looked away that she discovered there were a number of villagers staring at her. It wasn’t hard to figure out from their expressions what was going through their minds. It scared her, but it also roused a healthy dose of anger.

  She hadn’t done anything—not to any of the bastards.

  She met their gazes one by one and glared back at them, daring them, and they finally looked away.

  She felt weak with relief when they did, but she didn’t believe that she’d managed to do more than make them back down for the moment and she couldn’t be sure it was even the challenge in her gaze that had done it.

  She doubted any of them were particularly anxious to find out if Gabriel would retaliate as he had before when the two men had jumped her.

  She wasn’t so sure of that herself. In any case, regardless of what they thought now, she wasn’t his woman and she was sure he meant to leave them once they reached the place he was taking them. He wasn’t going to be around much longer to protect her if they decided to get even again.

  That left her with only one option as far as she could see. Either she convinced them in the meantime not to fuck with her or she was going to be in deep shit when Gabriel left.

  She could always hope that they’d forget about it before they reached their destination, but she didn’t think the odds were good that that was going to happen, not when Gabriel was going to be around to remind them. Regardless, she was relieved when he returned shortly afterward.

  “There is a waterhole about half a days’ walk from here. We’ll camp there tonight.”

  He’d made the announcement to the group as a whole, not to her in particular and something about the way he’d ignored her told her that he didn’t especially want to talk to her at the moment but the announcement made her uneasy. She’d seen some pretty big animal tracks near the last watering hole. “Not right beside it, though, right? ‘Cause animals come to the waterholes to drink at night and some of them eat people. Well, try. Mostly they aren’t big enough and you can beat them off or kill them, but I saw some really big tracks at the last water hole. There’s something big around here.”

  She was absolutely sure he was annoyed that time.

  “We will have fire. The animals won’t approach the campfires.”

&n
bsp; Lexa sucked in a breath to point out that a really hungry animal wasn’t deterred by much, but he forestalled her.

  “And I have my weapons if any should wander up.”

  * * * *

  Nobody was thrilled when they discovered the fresh water supply Gabriel had found was a hot spring. But then again good water wasn’t exactly easy to find and there wasn’t too much the villagers liked about being the ‘chosen’ Gabriel was leading through the badlands to a destination none of them were ecstatic about reaching. For a few moments tempers were perilously close to boiling over.

  The first to arrive and charge in got the biggest shock—yelling, cursing, and leaping out again—but then they’d shoved everybody else out of the way to be first and the rest of the villagers were more than half inclined to find that amusing until it dawned on them that, as hot, tired, and thirsty as they were, they weren’t going to get cool water to assuage that thirst either. They weren’t any happier when Gabriel pointed out that all they had to do was to scoop up the water and give it a little time to cool.

  They were thirsty now! The ‘half day’ Gabriel had claimed had taken several hours more than that, moving as quickly as they could with no rest period. They grumbled long and loud that it would’ve been better to spend the night at the watering hole where they’d stopped to eat at mid-day.

  Except, Gabriel pointed out, that had been no more than a trickle of water, not enough for such a large group to satisfy their needs of the moment let alone to replenish their supply.

  That would’ve been inarguable if anyone had felt reasonable. They didn’t. As afraid of the lawgiver as they were, they’d moved well past reason.

  They hadn’t wanted to come at all. They’d just been too afraid of Gabriel to put up more than a token objection, but the days on the trail had either made them less fearful of Gabriel or just too miserable to be as cautious.

  The children among them had been far more vocal about their unhappiness than anyone else and a good third of the group was made up of children. At any given time one half to one third of the children—who ranged in age from infant to pubescent—were either whining and complaining or wailing loudly. That was enough in and of itself to fray everyone’s nerves. Added to that misery was the heat during the day and the bone chilling cold of night, the endless trudging, the lack of sufficient water and food—and their fear both of Gabriel and whatever it was that awaited them at the end of the journey.

  Gabriel’s nerves clearly weren’t in much better shape. He lost patience and actually bellowed at them to shut their mouths, make camp, and feed the children and themselves.

  The loss of temper, not unnaturally, shifted everyone’s focus instantly from their misery and anger over their discomfort to a healthy sense of self-preservation. Many of them had actually witnessed the showdown between Gabriel and the gang members and those who hadn’t seen it had heard every gory detail and been present when the remains were tossed into a mass grave in the cemetery most of the recently departed had helped to fill.

  They stopped grumbling and did as they were told, but the tension didn’t dissipate appreciably until they settled for the night on their pallets and succumbed to exhaustion.

  As exhausted as Lexa was herself, the waterhole called to her. Ordinarily, water was too precious and too hard to find to use for anything as frivolous as bathing. She’d learned that the hard way since she’d taken to the road.

  Her mother had always insisted on cleanliness as protection against illness, though. They’d had their own water source on their farm and it was a good, steady supply. They squandered it shamelessly, taking ‘pot’ baths nightly with the jug of water they routinely brought in in the evening, and full baths at least once a week.

  As a child, she’d complained often about being sent to bathe. It wasn’t so bad in the summer. In fact, she was often warm enough to enjoy the water. The rest of the time, though, it was cold enough to be sheer torture.

  Regardless, those early years were ingrained. She’d suffered endlessly since Ralph had taken her because she wasn’t allowed to bathe when before she’d been forced to. As soon as she’d gained her freedom from Ralph and had access to water, therefore, she’d indulged as regularly as she was able to.

  For all her determination, though, she’d discovered soon enough that the safe water was scarce and not to be taken for granted. Even so, when the opportunity arose and the water supply seemed plentiful enough that it seemed unlikely bathing would contaminate it, she bathed.

  She hadn’t been able to indulge in a full bath in a long while. She’d made use of the last waterhole before she’d arrived at the village, but that had been nearly two weeks earlier. She hadn’t been able to do more than dab at the worst of the grime since, not even after the men had attacked her, and she’d desperately wanted to scrub herself completely and thoroughly after that incident.

  The waterhole Gabriel had found was supplied by a spring, though. Even better, it was a hot spring. Nothing was more wonderful for bathing and it was all she could do, despite her weariness, to wait until the camp grew quiet to sneak off to the spring.

  Gabriel had given two of the village men the task of standing watch while everyone else slept but they nodded off and began snoring not long after Gabriel settled on his pallet.

  Lexa waited. When Gabriel remained where he was instead of getting up and knocking the two ‘guards’ heads together for sleeping on the job, she got up quietly and slipped away from the camp. She would’ve liked the opportunity to wash her filthy clothes while she was at it, but a very little thought nixed that idea. She didn’t have anything else to put on and neither sleeping in wet clothes nor sleeping naked appealed to her. If it had been day and she could count on the clothes drying while she walked, she would’ve taken the chance that the old fabric could withstand another washing. As it was, she discarded the idea fairly quickly, removed her boots and the cloth around her feet, then shucked her shirt, pants, and the binding she used to restrain her breasts. Leaving them in a pile, she waded into the water.

  It was too hot for real comfort, she discovered. Disappointed that it was so hot she couldn’t just soak until her skin shriveled, she stepped out of the small pool again. Crouching beside the water, she began scooping up handfuls and splashing it on her face and neck and then worked her way downward until she’d scrubbed her entire body with her hands and the hot water.

  The chilly night air against her wet skin wasn’t at all pleasant. Her skin prickled all over each time the water cooled on her flesh from the chill wind. She ignored the discomfort. Being clean for a little while would make up for the discomfort of getting there, she told herself.

  She debated whether to scrub her hair and scalp when she’d worked her way down to her toes and finally decided she couldn’t stand the itch when she had a chance to get rid of it. Coming up on her knees, she leaned over the pool and dunked the top of her head in, scrubbing vigorously. Her fingers were stinging from the heat of the water by the time she was satisfied, her toes frigid, and everything in between tingling and chilled. Shivering, she slung her hands to get rid of as much water as possible and then grabbed her clothing and dressed herself as quickly as she could.

  When she turned around she discovered Gabriel was leaning against a large rock behind her, his arms folded across his chest. She jerked all over and then gaped at him, trying to get her mind in gear. All she could think, though, was that he looked like he’d been standing there for a while.

  “I thought you were worried about being attacked by a wild beast?”

  Lexa blinked at him in confusion, mostly because, as soon as she got past her initial surprise, she was caught between hope and dread—both for the same reason. It had occurred to her almost as soon as she’d questioned Gabriel that he might consider her curiosity an invitation to show her the difference between the way he fucked and the rutting she’d experienced before. He hadn’t convinced her that there was any difference, though, and while she still hoped, and thou
ght, there might be, mostly what played in her mind was a repeat of the awful experiences she’d had previously. “What?”

  “If I’d been a beast, you would be dinner by now,” he said dryly.

  It took Lexa several moments to reorient herself and grasp that he was talking about something entirely different than the direction her thoughts had taken. And even so she couldn’t completely shake her initial direction. Did that mean he’d been there a while or not, she wondered? More importantly, had it run through his mind even briefly to take advantage of the situation she’d created? “I didn’t hear anything,” she said lamely, dragging her gaze from him with an effort and flicking a look around for any sign that there might be a threat.

  She hadn’t been so focused on bathing, though, that she would’ve failed to notice signs if there’d be any, she assured herself. She’d lived too long at the edge of survival not to ‘feel’ a threat when there was one. It was second nature to her now, as instinctive as breathing.