I wasn't even sure if I had any right to be upset about it.
I hadn't told him no.
I hadn't fought.
I hadn't explicitly consented either, though.
Then again, when in my entire life, had any man ever asked before he touched me?
Never, that was when.
And when did I ever say Yes, touch me there.
Again, never.
Until, you know, we were already in the throws of things.
It was a gray area, I guess.
One could argue that there was no way for me to consent seeing as my presence in this situation with these people was against my will in the first place.
But there was no denying that I had wanted it. That I had even encouraged it.
God, that tongue of his.
I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about the whole situation, if I should have been angry or disgusted. All I knew was how I actually felt.
Embarrassed, because I felt like he'd somehow used me, even though he hadn't gotten any sort of satisfaction.
But also confused, because he was right. I had been having a sex dream. Which didn't make sense in and of itself. Then waking up and realizing that it wasn't just a subconscious thing, that I was somehow having a physical response to the man who had plucked me off the street, cuffed me, then held me against my will.
I just needed to stay the hell away from him, that was all.
It would be easier now that he'd been a complete prick, so there would be no lingering interest in feeling that tongue and those fingers again.
Then again, pricks had always been a problem for me in the past. I was chronically attracted to assholes. I thought I was in recovery for my obvious problem. Apparently not.
"How is she?" a female voice asked softly what felt like ages later, making me turn to find the woman from the night before—Lenore—standing in the doorway holding a pile of something in her hands.
"It's a little soon to tell," I admitted. "But if she doesn't get infected in the next day or two, I think we can breathe a sigh of relief," I told her, shaking another antibiotic into my hand, then quickly pushing it down the woman's throat.
"She's not screaming."
No, she wasn't. But I had the strangest feeling that while she wasn't doing it outwardly, that she was somehow screaming on the inside. I had no way of backing that belief up, but I couldn't shake it either. There was just something about the way she writhed, the way her eyelids fluttered, the way her lip trembled.
"The pain medicine works wonders," I told her.
"How is your head?" she asked. "From where you hit it," she clarified when I stared at her blankly.
After washing the gunk off in the shower, I honestly hadn't given it another thought. My hand rose automatically, touching what felt like sealed skin.
"Ah, it feels alright. How does it look?" I asked.
"It's healing," she told me. "That poultice has never failed my people. It works wonders. You have a bruise here though," she said, rubbing under her eye.
"I think I have a concussion," I admitted, though I was doing so to try to convince myself that maybe it was a factor in my unusual behavior even if I knew it really had nothing to do with it.
"I don't know what that means," Lenore admitted, shrugging. "But I hope it doesn't hurt."
"No. I mean it did. But sleep helped," I told her. "Well, I only got a little bit of sleep. I was woken up."
"By Red?" she asked, gaze slipping toward the bed.
"No."
"Oh," she said, pressing her lips together. "Um, Ace can be a bit..."
"Of an asshole," I supplied.
"Yeah, that," Lenore said, sharing a knowing smile with me. "But he did ask me to bring you clothes. And a blanket. I also set out a toothbrush for you in the bathroom. I will be making some breakfast soon. The men don't usually eat with me."
"Why not?"
"Something about how I eat twigs and leaves," she said, rolling her eyes. "I don't eat flesh," she added.
"Oh, okay. Well, that's fine. I don't need meat," I agreed, feeling the gnawing of my stomach. I would eat whatever I could get.
"I don't think I'm allowed to bring you out of the room, but I will bring you some when I finish making it. And then maybe Lycus can come in here and bring you to the bathroom and such," she said, giving me a small smile before handing me the pile of clothes and blankets, and heading out.
She'd brought me a floor-length canary yellow dress and a sweater that I quickly slipped on, feeling I needed the layers even if I was not exactly a dress-wearing sort of woman, finding the long skirts more problematic than pants since I was so short and they always dragged across the ground, getting filthy or trapped under my feet.
The rest of that day was relatively uneventful.
Lenore brought me a breakfast of oatmeal with fresh fruit and honey. I was maybe a bit of a Pops or Cinnamon Toast Crunch sort of girl, to be honest, but it was edible, and it proved to be the only meal I got until dinner, so I was glad I choked it down.
Lycus, who turned out to be Lenore's man, showed up sometime after to escort me to the bathroom, but let me close the door all the way for some privacy.
He, Aram, and some grumpy, angry-looking giant named Bael helped me temporarily move Red so we could get fresh sheets on the bed to help keep her wounds clean.
I gave Red her pain medicine and another dose of antibiotics. I checked her temperature and her wounds. I hummed to her to try to ease whatever hell she was going through on the inside.
Then, eventually, exhaustion pulling at my eyelids, I dragged myself back to the couch, curling up under the blanket Lenore had provided even though the house was too hot already. I just wanted the protection when I wasn't conscious.
Eventually, sleep claimed me.
It was a voice that woke me up some indeterminate time later.
Low, soothing.
The creaking hinge is oiled,
I have unbarred the backway,
But you tread not the trackway;
And shall the thing be spoiled?
I slow blinked in the mostly dark room, the only light coming from the low bulb in the nightstand lamp.
Ace was lounging there in a fold-up chair he must have brought in with him, a small book open in his lap, his gaze fixed on it as he recited the poem.
Far cockcrows echo shrill,
The shadows are abating,
And I am waiting, waiting;
But, O, you tarry still.
I'll admit, I had never really been a poetry fan. I mean, sure, I went through my Edgar Allen Poe phase like any teenaged girl who thought his doomed love poetry was the ultimate in romance, but aside from Annabel Lee and The Raven, I'd never really taken to verse. Not even when I'd dated a very sensitive guy in high school who dragged me to some run-down coffee house that hosted slam poetry readings in a back room.
I always found them hard to follow, especially the older poems with more archaic wording.
But, somehow, with the calm, confident, and gentle way Ace was reciting this one, it was oddly hypnotic.
"What is that?" I heard myself ask before I even realized I was going to ask.
Ace's head lifted, his cool blue gaze on me for a long moment before answering. "Thomas Hardy."