Page 58 of Anorthic Anarchy

“Come on, little girl. Let’s clean up. And then have dessert.”

“And a menstrual cup?”

His smirk rides up on the corners of his lips. “Yep. Whatever you need. I’ll send Sev or Dilan out for it. Heating pad? Ice cream? What does my angel desire?”

“All of that.”

Tapping the end of my nose with a finger, he smiles. “Then I will give everything to you.”

Chapter 23

Strauss

“Walking is good for the pain.”

“You know nothing, old man.”

My feet almost stumble over a rock at her snarling insult.Old…“Yes, I guess everything to a child isold.” Grimacing, I tug her over a branch, careful that she doesn’t trip. She lets me hold her hand. I don’t think I’ve ever held hands with a girl before. The feel of her delicate palm in my rough one makes my body fill with warmth despite the frigid air of winter.

“I do feel a bit better.” Her blue eyes dazzle me in the white sunlight as she glances up from where we’re connected. “I like hiking with you. For-for the soreness, I mean. It helps the cramps.”

“I thought you said my dick made your cramps go away this morning.”

Hauling her into my body, I help her through a deep thicket as she sighs. “They came back.”

“But then you said my cum helped an hour ago, too.”

Her jaw tightens as she grits out. “It did…” She walks in front of me, dragging my arm with her.

“So what you’re saying is, you need to be fucked again already.” Blood gushes to my cock as it stirs, and I smile. I’ve never met a woman with as high of a drive as my own. “My perfect angel. Who knew you’d be such a filthy slut for me in addition to being my war machine.”

Blonde hair gets caught in a wayward branch as she whips her head to face me. “I’m not awarmachine. I’m not like that. I-I… I just killed the men who took my family away from me. And the women who took—” She stops, and I pull the hairs carefully out of the twigs, loosening it of pine needles.

“Took your man away from you?”

She grimaces, and an involuntary laugh tumbles from my belly at the sight. The harder I laugh, the more her cheeks flush with embarrassment. “Yes. Fine,yes. I hate putting it that way.”

“Oh…” I have to pause in order to gather some breath between chuckles. “You meanyour husbandor the love of your life instead?”

One of her mittened hands presses into my chest to get away from me, but I gather her up into my arms and brush my lips against her cold forehead. The mist of our breaths swirls around our heads, holding us together like our own ice cave. Her eyes gaze into mine for a long moment.

With a bashful blink, she looks down for a moment. “I used to have nightmares of the white walls and what my father’s eyes looked like. My mother’s mangled body beneath his on our striped sofa… They’ve gone away since I killed those women. It’s like, maybe the blood of that massacre washed away my guilt. I was shut up tight for so long, trying to escape the thoughts, pushing them into as small a space in the hallways of my brain. When I used those machetes?—”

“Danced,” I interrupt. “Youdancedwith those weapons, and it was glorious.”

“Whatever you want to call it. I think I embraced who I am.”

I pull her figure closer, our bodies only held apart by the thickness of our coats. My lips press against her head as I say, “I love you.”

Though she doesn’t say it back, her arms grip my waist tighter. Her voice is muffled when she murmurs something to me, head bowed into the thick wool of my coat. “What was that?” I ask.

She plants her chin on my chest. “But I deserve punishment for what I’ve done.” Her lips form a solid line, as if she’s finished talking, but I know what she’s not saying.

“You don’t. It wasn’t your fault, you were a child…” Pausing, I swallow and tilt my head. “But you’d like for me to punish you.”

Refusing to look at me, her eyes dart to the side before she gives a slight nod. The dead leaves crunch beneath her boots when she steps back from me, but she doesn’t let me go. “Vincente…I think you’re angry about, uh, what happened to you. And that’s why you like to dish it out.”

My brow furrows, but I walk with her back toward the garden where we married. The arbor looks more brown than white, covered in dead rose thorns.

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