Copper Girl (13 page)

“Nothing about her would surprise me.”

I tried to say more, but was overcome with shivering.

“Get out of those wet clothes. I will have the fire started soon.”

I nodded and stood stiffly, the cold rain having reduced my muscles into hard, stony lumps, and proceeded to struggle out of my clothing. The sweater wasn’t too difficult, but the laces on my sneakers had swelled to twice their normal size. I yanked them off, followed by socks that now held enough water to turn a desert into an oasis. My sodden jeans were the worst, the rain and dirt having rendered the denim rather argumentative.

As my clothing landed in a shapeless heap of wet on the dirt floor, I heard a strange squeaking noise close to my ear. Apparently, the oaks hadn’t shown me all of their tricks, at least not yet, because I was shocked to find a mouse sitting on a thin branch. He (or she) gestured wildly, and I gradually realized that the branches were meant for me to hang up my clothes while they dried. When Micah had claimed that the oaks were his allies, he hadn’t mentioned this concierge service. When I had stripped down to my tank top and underwear, having dutifully hung up the rest of my clothing, I turned back to Micah. I’d meant to ask if he’d like me to hang up his gear as well, but the sight of him before the fire nearly made me forget my name.

The fire was, indeed, blazing away and my naked elfin consort lounged before it, his cloak spread atop the dirt floor. While I understood that elves, like all Otherworldly beings, weren’t big on modesty, I was more than a little shocked. I tried not to stare at the fire licking across his caramel skin as I sat beside him, and though Micah raised an eyebrow at my undergarments, he said nothing. Instead, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I huddled against him.

“I missed you last night,” I mumbled.

“Then you shouldn’t have walked away from me,” he countered.

“You were yelling at me.”

“I was not yelling,” he bit off. “I only wish I had known all of the facts before we arrived.”

“I don’t even know all the facts,” I pointed out. He kissed the top of my head.

“I should have known, when you showed me your mark,” he murmured. “How many bloodlines bear a copper raven as evidence of their power? I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“You weren’t?”

“You have that sort of effect on me.” He stroked a long line from my temple to my cheek, down my neck, his fingers at last coming to rest on my shoulder. Then he flicked aside the strap of my tank top and kissed the flesh beneath. “May I see your mark again, my Sara?”

I knew why he wanted to see it, but I leaned forward anyway and drew up my tank top. Just as before, Micah began by tracing the outline of the raven, his fingers moving from its crest over my spine to the tiny pinfeathers that hovered above my hips, and then he slowly stroked each and every feather. His touch was light and delicate, like a ghost against my flesh; nevertheless, my mark heated up. By the time he’d reached the raven’s maw I wondered if I could burn him.

A strangled, desperate noise, one that I would have been thoroughly embarrassed by in any other circumstance, issued from my throat. Micah’s arm snaked around my waist, and I leaned back to kiss him. Somehow, I twisted around without breaking the kiss, and in another moment I was pressed against him, my legs wound around his hips. Then my clothes were gone, and Micah laid me beneath him, settling himself between my thighs. His caresses were gentle, but I didn’t want gentle any longer. I wanted him. Now. In the next moment he pushed forward, and… There. No going back now.

Abruptly, he stopped. “Sara,” he murmured, his face a mask of concern. Oh, right. I’d forgotten to tell him I was still a virgin.

I know, you probably think it’s a little weird to still be a virgin in your mid-twenties, especially well after your college days; not so long ago, it would have been. Sadly, in that day and age it was more the norm, especially when one bore a magical sigil emblazoned across one’s back. The Peacekeepers maintained fairly close tabs on all of us young people, espousing the virtues of abstinence and monogamy, until you thought you’d puke if you heard another “wait for your mate” commercial. And since they’d pretty much eradicated all religion after the wars, theirs was the only voice you heard
.

In today’s world there were no counseling services for unwed mothers, and birth control in all but its most basic forms was a thing of the past. If you were foolish enough to bear a child out of wedlock, it was confiscated and sent to a more appropriate (read: married, in nothing less than a fully sanctioned government ceremony) couple for a proper upbringing. But fear of an unplanned pregnancy was only one of the tools the government used against its youth; far more effective was a college education
.

As it has always been, college is an expensive, yet necessary, evil, unless you enjoy flipping burgers for an indecently small paycheck. No one had had any money after the wars, what with the new tax increases and general expenses associated with launching a new republic, and as a result, within a few semesters the colleges were nearly vacant. Mind you, the government didn’t care a whit about our standards of living, but they did need a somewhat regular supply of educated people in order to keep the basic infrastructure up and running. So the government, in all its devious glory, came up with an ingenious plan: prove your virginity, and you could attend college for free
.

Sounds like a good deal, right? For a time, I wavered on the fence about taking the government up on their offer, since the Corbeau bank account could easily fund ten doctoral degrees, if not more. But when someone paid for his or her own education, it seemed that everyone else found out, and no matter what your circumstances were, you were labeled a whore. Slut. Easy
.

Not aspiring for any of those labels, Sadie and I had gone to our college entrance examinations together. Mind you, these were not written examinations. Oh, for the days when good grades and a halfway-decent essay were all that mattered. As you could imagine, it was a bit difficult to prove a boy’s virginity, but a girl’s was pretty straightforward. I had assumed we’d be in and out in a few minutes. Was I ever wrong
.

When we’d arrived, we were given standard-issue hospital gowns that split down the front, left in a rather ordinary room, and told to wait our turn. I thought we’d be guided into a private doctor’s office for the examination, but when the time came, I was led into an auditorium before at least a hundred spectators. Before I could really register what was happening, my arms had been strapped down to an exam table, and my legs buckled into stirrups and pushed so far apart my hips had nearly dislocated. The doctor had proceeded to completely open my gown, baring me from neck to knee, and I lay there, naked and humiliated, for the next twenty minutes while he prodded the most intimate parts of my body. He had been so thorough that, once the exam was over, I questioned whether I was still a virgin, but after the ordeal I had been presented with my papers, and thus enjoyed a free education
.

If I ever see the bastard again, I’ll shove my degree down his throat
.

After the exam, I had tried to give it away whenever I could, but that had been an impossible feat. No respectable boy would have me, and even drunks at college keggers had turned me down. Per regulations, you needed to file with your local Peacekeeper when you were deflowered, being sure to include the identity of said deflowerer, and no man was willing to take on such a daunting task. If he slipped up and got you pregnant, he could be forced into marriage; if the girl in question was an Elemental from a family the government had deemed not fit to breed, he could possibly face prison. No man had ever found me worth the risk. No man, that was, until Micah
.

My Micah, my wonderful Micah, the man who now gazed at me with tender eyes. “Sara,” he repeated as he withdrew.

No, not after all this!
I stroked the silver tendrils of his mark, arousing him much the same way he’d done to me a few moments earlier. His mark grew warm and he arched his back, then Micah tensed above me, resisting the desire that I knew pooled in his belly. Deviously, I leaned up and nipped his throat. Finally, he could take it no more, and thrust forward.

I yelped, more in surprise than anything else. While I’d been on display at my examination, the doctor in charge had taken it upon himself to regale us with a short lecture on how unpleasant sex was for a woman, and the pain that I, in particular, could expect. The doctor had been kind enough to indicate the various parts of my anatomy that would be sore, and maybe even bruised, afterward. He’d been fondling my breast while he spoke, and his other hand was doing… other things. Later, when he had handed me my papers, he leaned close and whispered that he’d been trying to bring me to orgasm, and the fact that he hadn’t meant that I was one of the girls who would find sex especially nasty. The good doctor had painted a picture of a horrible, excruciatingly painful act, one I didn’t exactly want to try.

It wasn’t like that, at all, with Micah. It was perfect.

Afterward, Micah held me close, gently stroking my hair, his cheek pressed against my neck. I mumbled that I wanted to lie inside that tree with him forever, and he laughed deep in his chest. It felt so…so comfortable, snuggled in his arms with his warm breath and the gentle rumbles of his voice. “Eventually, we’ll need to eat.”

“Have your oaky friends toss us some acorns.” I felt his face stretch into a smile, then he propped himself up on an elbow and I saw it in the flesh. I liked his smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“I didn’t want you to say no.” Micah laughed again, and drew my face close to his.

“There was very little chance of that happening,” he informed me. “What fools human males are, to have let you slip through their fingers.” I sighed and told him about the examinations, of the careful rosters kept of who had bedded, and impregnated, whom, of all the men who hadn’t thought me worth the bother. The thunderheads returned to Micah’s eyes as I spoke.

“To treat a woman so poorly is the vilest of acts,” he murmured, smoothing my hair back from my brow. “My Sara, you have given me a gift without equal. I only regret the circumstances.”

“Maybe I’ve always wanted to make love in a tree, next to a fire,” I quipped.

“Then I will dispense with all my furniture, and have dirt floors installed where the beds once stood,” Micah declared. “I do not know if I can coax a tree to grow around my home, but I will try, for you.”

He would, wouldn’t he? I nestled closer, kissing him in order to fully express my gratitude. He moved against me, intending to do a bit more than kiss me in return, but recent memories distracted me.

“Max,” I said, in response to his quizzical face. “I saw Max.”

“He is alive, then?” Micah asked, and I nodded. “That explains why there is no metal around that facility. His captors do not want your brother to draw upon his power and free himself.”

“How can there be none?” I murmured. “What about the computers, the monitors? Don’t they have wires?”

“A small amount,” he replied, once I explained what a computer was, “too small to make a difference for your brother.” I nodded, but another memory came forth, this one easily as awful as Max’s plastic prison.

“Micah, there’s more.” I squeezed my eyes shut, replaying the scene one more time, hoping I was wrong. Instead of being wrong, I saw my best friend’s dark hair, the distinctive way she carried herself; hell, I thought she’d been wearing the sweater she had picked up when we had gone shopping last week. “Juliana—the one you said wasn’t my friend—she’s there, too.”

“She is also a prisoner?”

“No.”

He could have said so many things—I told you so; listen to me next time; you’re a stupid, naïve girl—and he would have been right about all of them. Instead, Micah tucked my head against his neck and held me, sharing in my pain.

“Did she see you?” he asked at length.

“I don’t think so. I was my dreamself.” I straightened, remembering what Max had said. “But that doesn’t seem to matter there. Max said that they know when you dreamwalk. I thought he was just scared for me, but he was right. They knew I was there. Then one of the guards shot something at me, and I was awake.”

“
Shot
you?” Micah got to his knees and pulled me to a sitting position. “Where? Are you injured?”

“My chest,” I replied. I looked down, but there wasn’t a bruise. “I don’t remember it hurting. I was just awake.”

Micah scrubbed his face with his hands, and blew out an exasperated breath. “Please, do not ever attempt such a thing on your own again,” he said. “I know we fought, but you still could have called upon me.”

“I could have?” I asked, startled.

“Of course,” he murmured, tracing the silver chain about my neck. “Even if you had removed my token, I still would have come.”

“I couldn’t. Remove it, I mean.” I looked down, busying myself with rubbing a nonexistent mark off his cloak. “I cried the whole night.” Micah’s arms were around me then, and if another hot tear or two escaped my lashes, he was kind enough not to mention them.