Chapter 30: Nobody Touches You

The council met until midnight by lantern light, and decided one thing.

Nobody would cross the dark camp to the gate tower, with the turned still drifting in the burned ground.

At first light, forty armed volunteers would go.

Until then, the sergeant said, Mrs. Hartwell and Mr. Mercer should get some sleep.

"Hartwell," I said. "Not Mrs."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

The east cottage still had its door.

The guards had gone from the porch, and the lock had been shot off by someone I never learned.

Jonas followed me in with his arm in a sling, and I shut the door and put my back against it.

The lamp was still lit.

His eyes came up to mine, steady and gray, and I felt the whole day go out of my legs.

"Sit," I said.

"Nina."

"You've been shot. Sit on the bed."

He sat.

I crossed the room and stood between his knees, and he looked up at me with the scar through his eyebrow gone white in the lamplight.

"You told me once nobody touches me unless I say," I said.

"I remember."

"I'm saying."

His good hand came up and settled on my hip.

"Touch me," I said.

He pulled me down into his lap, and his mouth was on mine.

It was hungry and rough, and tasted of smoke and iron.

I unbuttoned his shirt with shaking hands and eased it off the bad shoulder, and I kissed the white edge of the bandage.

"Careful," he said into my hair.

"You be careful."

I pulled my sweater over my head.

He put his mouth on my breast through the thin cotton of my bra, and I arched, and swore, and tore it open at the front.

"Jonas."

"Say it."

"Suck me."

He did, with his tongue hot and slow across my nipple, and his hand slid under my waistband and found me wet through my underwear.

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