Page 21 of Protected

At least she’s not still clinging to Deck.

Speaking of, I have no idea where he got to. He’s usually following me around, and it’s strange that he’s not in sight.

I check our bunks and see that one set of the clothes he keeps in his pack is gone.

He must be washing up like Burgundy and I did.

I wander around outside until I find him farther down the creek. He was indeed cleaning himself. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of worn boxers.

I’ve seen his chest before—just in passing in the mornings or evenings—but he looks naked-er than normal right now.

He’s sitting on a towel that’s spread over a big rock, and he’s working on his hair.

When he fell backward, he got twigs and brambles tangled into it. He’s pulled them out now, but the back of his hair still looks like one clump. I see why as I come closer.

He’s gotten a bunch of prickly burs stuck in it, and the whole thing has tangled into one enormous knot.

“What a mess,” I say, approaching him from behind.

I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for me to take him by surprise—since he’s always so wary—but I must do so right now. His whole body jerks, and he whirls around as he jumps to his feet.

“It’s just me,” I tell him. “Calm down. What have you done to your hair?”

He makes a series of grimaces and points back toward the house. He wants me to leave him alone.

He ignores me all the time when I tell him things, so I can ignore him in this. “I’m not going to leave. You need help with your hair. It’s all matted around those burs.”

For some reason—I really don’t understand why—my eyes keep dipping down to his broad chest. His mostly flat belly. His hips and thick thighs. His big, muscular arms.I’ve never gotten such a good look at him, and I want to see more.

He doesn’t have the perfectly developed, polished body that bodybuilders used to have in the old world. No matter how big and strong he is, a lot of it is natural bulk rather than cultivated musculature. He’s been physically active most of his life and even more so since Impact, and it shows in the strong shape of his arms and legs. But he doesn’t have a six-pack. He’s actually got a little extra flesh around his middle.

And I like it.

I don’t know why, but I really like it. I kind of want to touch him there.

I don’t do anything so silly, of course. I control my straying gaze and keep my eyes on his face instead. “You’re never going to get the burs out like that. I can run get a pair of scissors if you want.”

He makes a growly sound—one I’ve only heard a couple of times.

“Okay, fine. I won’t cut it if I can help it, but you need to let me help if you don’t want those burs to be a permanent feature of your hairstyle.”

His grimace fades into a reluctant nod.

“You’ll have to sit down. I can’t reach you way up there.”

He does as I say, picking up the towel and sitting back down on the rock. Then I take the comb he gives me and move behind him. The whole back half of his hair is matted up with the burs.

“This is crazy,” I murmur. “How did it get like this?”

He raises his shoulders in a shrug. He feels strangely passive sitting like this.

It makes me feel… odd.

I try to focus on carefully pulling out the burs, combing out one small piece of hair after another on the edges of the mass. I am making progress, but it’s slow. It should be getting tedious, but it’s not.

There’s the strangest tension in my belly. Maybe slightly below my belly. A kind of tightness. Pressure. It’s not bad, but it’s deep. It makes me anxious.

Deck has helped me over and over again in the weeks I’ve been with Logan’s group, and he needs my help right now. So I resist the urge to get away so the weird twisting inside me will lessen. Instead, I try to breathe through it, removing the burs and combing out the tangles one by one.

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