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Drain?
I scanned the floor of the pen, spotting a round metal grate dead in the center. I hadn’t noticed it until now.
“I’m not hiding,” I protested.
“Go ahead then.”
Because I had a streak of stubbornness that refused to wane, I went to the opposite end of the enclosure and held the sprayer to my arm.
I squeezed, surprised when warm water sprayed out. I’d been expecting it to be cold. I would have dealt with that just so I could be rid of this itching sensation. It took a bit of maneuvering to spray and scrub.
I had nothing to use but my two hands, one still trapped within a cuff, but the mud gradually came off. I sprayed m
y arms and legs, using my fingers to spread water around my collar bone and wash my face.
It felt amazing even without soap. I did what I could for my hair, doing my best to detangle it and remove what was left of the flowers. I almost laughed, watching their broken pieces be sucked towards the drain.
When I was as clean as I was going to get given the circumstances, I pushed the sprayer back through to the other side and then retreated anyway. Of course, he had been right. Now I was standing in a puddle.
He continued to watch me like he had been this entire time. It was impossible not to notice. His aura filled this entire room.
His weighted gaze made me even more aware of his presence. He hadn’t bothered to turn the overhead lights back on either.
There was a helpful glow coming through a square window of a door located on the opposite side of the room that helped me see his outline.
“You going to cooperate and tell me where you came from?” he asked, carrying the hose back to wherever he got it.
I debated how honest I wanted to be. I didn’t know who he was or what faction he’d aligned with. Telling him I was from A.R.C could go a few different ways. He could take me right back. Or, if he wasn’t planning to already, he could kill me.
“From the woods,” I replied once I made up my mind.
I think he laughed. The sound was too faint to be sure. There was a click, and then the lights came on, momentarily blinding me.
My eyes narrowed on their own accord, slowly adjusting to this new level of lighting. When I was able to see, all I saw was him. I was struck by a temporary loss for words.
He was…odd looking. Not in bad way. In fact, he was the exact opposite. I’d seen men with tattoos before but not to this extent. They peeked out from beneath his solid colored shirt and went all the way down to his wrist.
His biceps were large, but they conformed perfectly with his impossibly toned body. They didn’t look overly inflated like a few of the guerillas did. Some ink was etched along his neckline too. There was even a tattoo beneath one of his eyes.
A cross or something. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. I shifted on my feet, the coldness setting in secondary to my curiosity about this person in front of me.
I looked at him subjectively, from the dark hair that was longer on top and faded on the sides and the sun-kissed skin, all the way down to his black boots. He had a strange kind of beauty about him. Not soft or gentle, but rough and jagged.
The tilt of his lips had me focusing on his mouth for a moment before finally meeting his gaze.
He was smiling.
“You want me to turn around so you can get a look at the back of me as well?
He ran his eyes down my body, dragging them slowly back up to my face. “You’ll have to go first.”
The action, as well as the words, made me acutely aware of my heartbeat and had a foreign kind of warmth spreading across my cheeks.
His smile grew bigger, and this time when he laughed, I heard it.
“Oh, I could have so much fun with you.”
“You couldn’t handle me,” I retorted, adding politely, “and, no thank you.”
