Dream Lover

NINETEEN

Still, Byron made her a promise he intended to keep though he doubted she would remember this conversation. 

"We won't have s*x tonight, or any other night you don't want to. But we will have sex." Elle didn’t respond, but he knew she heard what he said. He watched as she took her panties and set them to dry by the fire again then folded her towel, turned back the sheets and began to work her fingers through her hair. When she was satisfied it was detangled, she quickly and efficiently braided it, tied it off at the end, and flipped it back over her shoulder before sliding under the covers and burring her face in a pillow.

"No good night kiss?" Byron asked joking. Her head flipped on the pillow so she was facing him she looked at him a bit strangely for just a second then pulled him to her and kissed him. Their bodies bumped, tangled. She caught his lower lip between her teeth and pulled. Byron’s eyes nearly crossed at the new sensation and he plunged back for more. She moaned a little when his hand found her breast then she broke the kiss and pushed him away.

"No sex." she grumbled grouchily.

She was trying to kill him too Byron decided as he watched her resume the position she'd started in, fluff her pillow once, and go sleep like nothing had happened. A moment later, when she was back to the soft wheeze her body thought was snoring, he was still wide awake, and half erect. A few more nights spent this way would do the trick. 

 While Byron slipped off to sleep, Elle jolted out of it. She'd never been the type to wake up screaming, no matter how hard she'd been screaming in her mind. She liked it that way. She'd found out as a child that she didn't like to talk about the things that scared her. Especially if all it was going to get her was a juice box, a hug, and some reassurances that it wasn't real.

She lay quietly in bed keeping her position in the hopes she would eventually be able to clear her mind and go back to sleep. But every time she closed her eyes longer than it took to blink, she didn’t escape into the familiar world of her parent’s restaurant or the bedroom she just moved back into, she saw the faces of the men she’d killed. Some of them were made up. She knew she hadn't been close enough to watch the life drain and their faces freeze forever in looks of shock. When she couldn't stand the thought of trying to sleep anymore, she crept out of bed, found a small metallic comb Byron used and went to sit by the fire place with her bath towel as a sort of makeshift rug. After holding the comb over the flames of the fire briefly, she began to comb her hair. She had all night so she took her time working through the tangles. She supposed the long hair could be a comfort on nights like tonight and gave it a stay of execution.

Staring in to the fire, she wondered if there was a village nearby, and if there was something in the woods she could collect that would be of value. She needed clothes all of Byron's shirts had been meticulously hand stitched in a high quality linen. That meant somewhere there was cotton, she may not be able to get a hold of her usual fruit-a-blooms, but there was hope for jersey cotton and any number of other knit fabrics which meant she could find someone to make her panties if she could make the money to pay for them.

She wouldn't mind a few bras but it seemed almost too much to ask. It was evident at the river that breast around here weren't generally confined by straps and under wires. Elle felt like she was flapping in the wind without them. She would try to have at least one of them made as well.

Elle spent a long while trying to envision how the town would look. If Byron’s home was any indication, she could expect individualized shops: shoe makers, tailors, seamstresses, and so on. In each of them there would be something surprisingly advanced, maybe a sewing machine in the seamstress’s shop, or cash register, maybe there was a book store on the dewy decimal system or a bakery with an automatic mixer or an espresso machine. Elle smiled too herself thinking of all the possibilities.

She tried to avoid wondering if anyone would miss the people she’d seen die in the days she’d been here, if there were there widows, children, parents depending on them, waiting for them worried about them. Had they made promises they intended to keep, did they leave home that day swearing this time was the last time? How many hearts had she broken? How many homes? Why couldn’t she cry for them? Why was it she couldn’t make herself feel the way she had about that tiny mother pig? She couldn’t come up with anything she could hold onto.

She wanted to think they’d started it that it was a kill or be killed situation. Something about it didn’t ring true. Then she had it. How had she managed to kill six men with a primitive weapon and no previous experience? How could that be true if these men were really fighters, if they were really there to kill all the women in the river why had they done such a poor job defending themselves? If this was some strange ongoing dream wouldn’t that be the case? Wouldn’t it make since that she had some kick-ass ninja skills if she was making everything up in some dormant part of her brain?

Abruptly, Elle shook her head trying to shake the thoughts out as well; she’d gotten up to stop thinking about it. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began working her hair into French braided pig tails. She tied the ends with pieces of the straps from her ruined dress and because she hadn’t seen anything unpleasant while her eyes were closed, she crawled back into bed and tried to sleep again.