The Lawgivers: Gabriel (15 page)

Gabriel’s nerves clearly weren’t in
much better shape. He lost patience and actually bellowed at them
to shut their mouths, make camp, and feed the children and
themselves.

The loss of temper, not unnaturally,
shifted everyone’s focus instantly from their misery and anger over
their discomfort to a healthy sense of self-preservation. Many of
them had actually witnessed the showdown between Gabriel and the
gang members and those who hadn’t seen it had heard every gory
detail and been present when the remains were tossed into a mass
grave in the cemetery most of the recently departed had helped to
fill.

They stopped grumbling and did as they
were told, but the tension didn’t dissipate appreciably until they
settled for the night on their pallets and succumbed to
exhaustion.

As exhausted as Lexa was herself, the
waterhole called to her. Ordinarily, water was too precious and too
hard to find to use for anything as frivolous as bathing. She’d
learned that the hard way since she’d taken to the road.

Her mother had always insisted on
cleanliness as protection against illness, though. They’d had their
own water source on their farm and it was a good, steady supply.
They squandered it shamelessly, taking ‘pot’ baths nightly with the
jug of water they routinely brought in in the evening, and full
baths at least once a week.

As a child, she’d complained often
about being sent to bathe. It wasn’t so bad in the summer. In fact,
she was often warm enough to enjoy the water. The rest of the time,
though, it was cold enough to be sheer torture.

Regardless, those early years were
ingrained. She’d suffered endlessly since Ralph had taken her
because she wasn’t allowed to bathe when before she’d been forced
to. As soon as she’d gained her freedom from Ralph and had access
to water, therefore, she’d indulged as regularly as she was able
to.

For all her determination, though,
she’d discovered soon enough that the safe water was scarce and not
to be taken for granted. Even so, when the opportunity arose and
the water supply seemed plentiful enough that it seemed unlikely
bathing would contaminate it, she bathed.

She hadn’t been able to indulge in a
full bath in a long while. She’d made use of the last waterhole
before she’d arrived at the village, but that had been nearly two
weeks earlier. She hadn’t been able to do more than dab at the
worst of the grime since, not even after the men had attacked her,
and she’d desperately wanted to scrub herself completely and
thoroughly after that incident.

The waterhole Gabriel had found was
supplied by a spring, though. Even better, it was a hot spring.
Nothing was more wonderful for bathing and it was all she could do,
despite her weariness, to wait until the camp grew quiet to sneak
off to the spring.

Gabriel had given two of the village
men the task of standing watch while everyone else slept but they
nodded off and began snoring not long after Gabriel settled on his
pallet.

Lexa waited. When Gabriel remained
where he was instead of getting up and knocking the two ‘guards’
heads together for sleeping on the job, she got up quietly and
slipped away from the camp. She would’ve liked the opportunity to
wash her filthy clothes while she was at it, but a very little
thought nixed that idea. She didn’t have anything else to put on
and neither sleeping in wet clothes nor sleeping naked appealed to
her. If it had been day and she could count on the clothes drying
while she walked, she would’ve taken the chance that the old fabric
could withstand another washing. As it was, she discarded the idea
fairly quickly, removed her boots and the cloth around her feet,
then shucked her shirt, pants, and the binding she used to restrain
her breasts. Leaving them in a pile, she waded into the
water.

It was too hot for real comfort, she
discovered. Disappointed that it was so hot she couldn’t just soak
until her skin shriveled, she stepped out of the small pool again.
Crouching beside the water, she began scooping up handfuls and
splashing it on her face and neck and then worked her way downward
until she’d scrubbed her entire body with her hands and the hot
water.

The chilly night air against her wet
skin wasn’t at all pleasant. Her skin prickled all over each time
the water cooled on her flesh from the chill wind. She ignored the
discomfort. Being clean for a little while would make up for the
discomfort of getting there, she told herself.

She debated whether to scrub her hair
and scalp when she’d worked her way down to her toes and finally
decided she couldn’t stand the itch when she had a chance to get
rid of it. Coming up on her knees, she leaned over the pool and
dunked the top of her head in, scrubbing vigorously. Her fingers
were stinging from the heat of the water by the time she was
satisfied, her toes frigid, and everything in between tingling and
chilled. Shivering, she slung her hands to get rid of as much water
as possible and then grabbed her clothing and dressed herself as
quickly as she could.

When she turned around she discovered
Gabriel was leaning against a large rock behind her, his arms
folded across his chest. She jerked all over and then gaped at him,
trying to get her mind in gear. All she could think, though, was
that he looked like he’d been standing there for a
while.

“I thought you were worried about being
attacked by a wild beast?”

Lexa blinked at him in confusion,
mostly because, as soon as she got past her initial surprise, she
was caught between hope and dread—both for the same reason. It had
occurred to her almost as soon as she’d questioned Gabriel that he
might consider her curiosity an invitation to show her the
difference between the way he fucked and the rutting she’d
experienced before. He hadn’t convinced her that there was any
difference, though, and while she still hoped, and thought, there
might be, mostly what played in her mind was a repeat of the awful
experiences she’d had previously. “What?”

“If I’d been a beast, you would be
dinner by now,” he said dryly.

It took Lexa several moments to
reorient herself and grasp that he was talking about something
entirely different than the direction her thoughts had taken. And
even so she couldn’t completely shake her initial direction. Did
that mean he’d been there a while or not, she wondered? More
importantly, had it run through his mind even briefly to take
advantage of the situation she’d created? “I didn’t hear anything,”
she said lamely, dragging her gaze from him with an effort and
flicking a look around for any sign that there might be a
threat.

She hadn’t been so focused on bathing,
though, that she would’ve failed to notice signs if there’d be any,
she assured herself. She’d lived too long at the edge of survival
not to ‘feel’ a threat when there was one. It was second nature to
her now, as instinctive as breathing.

There hadn’t been any sign of a large
animal near the edge of the water nor any between the camp and the
spring.

Of course, she’d been preoccupied once
she’d settled to bathing, she reminded herself, too preoccupied to
notice when Gabriel had arrived, and she should have sensed his
presence behind her.

That was a dangerous, stupid lapse and
one she had trouble reconciling in her mind.

Why, she wondered, hadn’t she heard him
or at least sensed his presence?

Because her mind had been on him to
start with, she realized abruptly. She hadn’t been focused
completely on bathing and she certainly hadn’t been focused on
either the pleasure or the miserable conditions. She’d allowed her
mind to wander to him as it did more and more often.

And maybe that was why she hadn’t heard
him come up? Because he’d already been with her?

He tilted his head slightly, studying
her. “I guess that means that wasn’t for my benefit
then.”

Lexa whipped her attention back to him
at that comment, gaping at him open mouthed.

He shook his head. “Get back to camp.
Don’t leave it again without letting me know.”

Nodding jerkily, Lexa scurried past
him.

She meant to at any rate. She’d just
come even with him when she heard a rustle of sound. Directly
behind it, she heard an inhuman scream that made the hair on the
back of her neck stand on end.

Gabriel planted both hands on her
shoulder and gave her a shove that sent her flying forward several
yards before she hit the rocky dirt and slid another three or four
feet.

She caught a glimpse of the cat,
though, as Gabriel caught it full in the chest.

Chapter Nine

Lexa was too stunned to move for
several moments. Everything had happened too fast for her mind to
process it at one time and her first thought was that Gabriel had
hit her in a fit of anger. The ferocious snarls of the large cat
and his wild dance on Gabriel’s chest penetrated the fog of
confusion, however, and she leapt to her feet without assessing her
personal damage, racing back and then freezing for several critical
moments while she tried to assess the situation.

Gabriel had managed to pull his club
from his belt, she saw, but he’d caught the large cat with both
hands as it pounced and she could see it was all he could do to
hold the cat at bay as it snarled and snapped, surging toward his
face in an effort to maul his face and vulnerable throat with its
wicked teeth.

Lexa whipped a look around for a
weapon. Seeing nothing promising, she grabbed at Gabriel’s club,
only to discover it was still trapped in his hand that was gripping
the cat’s throat. There was nothing else, though, and she wrenched
at it until she finally managed to dislodge it. She very nearly
broke Gabriel’s grip in the process, but although she noticed, she
was focused on a counter attack. As soon as she had the club firmly
in her grip, she commenced to pounding on the cat’s head with it.
That didn’t seem to have any other effect than to make it harder
for Gabriel to evade the cat’s teeth and to make the cat writhe and
twist more furiously.

“Lexa!” Gabriel bellowed. “Don’t
help!”

Ignoring the order, Lexa merely changed
targets and began to beat the cat across the shoulders and back
with the club. When she saw that wasn’t having the desired affect
either, beyond wearing her out and making the cat more furious, she
stepped back to assess the situation.

That was when she focused on the cat’s
ass. The cat was crouched on top of Gabriel, it’s ass in the air.
The animal’s swinging balls caught her attention first, and then
the exposed rectum as it whipped its tail furiously. She looked
down at her weapon, saw the tip narrowed down almost to a point,
and rammed the point at the cat’s rectum. Her aim was dead on. The
tip penetrated the cat’s asshole. The cat leapt upward with an
earsplitting scream, tore free of Gabriel’s grip, and charged off
into the darkness, wrenching the club, which was wedged in his
asshole, from Lexa’s grip.

Fortunately, it lost the
club.

Panting for breath, Lexa leapt over
Gabriel to retrieve it. When she decided the cat had had enough and
wasn’t coming back, she rushed back to Gabriel. “How bad are you
hurt?” she gasped.

Gabriel had already pushed himself
upright and was examining his injuries. He was cut and bleeding all
over from the cat’s claws. “Could be better,” he muttered and then
looked up at Lexa. “Could be worse.” He frowned and extended his
hand. “The trida.”

Lexa blinked at him. “What?”

“The weapon you were clubbing the cat
with,” he said dryly.

“Oh!” She laid it across his
palm.

He shook his head. “It’s against the
law to touch the weapon of a Lawgiver.”

Lexa gaped at him, feeling a surge of
fear. “But …. I didn’t have nothin’ else ….”

Gritting his teeth, he got to his feet,
clearly in pain. “You’re lucky you didn’t accidently activate it.”
He frowned, examining the weapon. “It should have jolted you when
you touched it. The weapon is calibrated to my DNA.”

At that, Lexa looked down at her
stinging palm and saw that it was burned. Gabriel was studying her
when she looked up again. “I guess I was too excited to
notice.”

He frowned. “I guess that’s what
convinced the cougar to leave,” he said slowly, clearly
confused.

“I don’t know. I shoved it up his ass
and he screamed and took off.”

Gabriel gaped at her in disbelief. “You
did what?”

“I shoved the point up his
ass.”

He stared at her blankly a moment
longer and then abruptly burst out laughing.

Stunned, Lexa merely stared at him at
first, but the sound of pure amusement was infectious. She felt her
lips curl upward in response and then she thought about what she’d
done and she started laughing, too. “Guess he didn’t like nobody
messing with his asshole.”

Gabriel let out a fresh roar of
laughter at that, holding his stomach. “Stop! I’m in too much pain
to laugh.”

That comment sobered Lexa. She frowned
at him worriedly. “We need to do something about those scratches
and bites. They get infected real easy.”

Gabriel shrugged dismissively. Turning,
he headed toward the pool. Lexa followed him, too worried about his
injuries to pay much attention to what he was doing … at first.
When she saw he’d peeled away his formfitting suit from his upper
torso, however, she halted abruptly.