Spun (4 page)

“Because Werner would never let that be the end of it. If he came in the morning and discovered you gone, with no gold left in your place, he would simply hunt you down.” The stranger didn’t need to elaborate on what Werner would do once he found her. “No, it is better for him to find you here tomorrow,
with
the gold.”

“So you will just hand over your gold to me?”

“Ah, I did not say I would just
hand
it to you.” The stranger took a few steps toward Anja. She couldn’t stop herself from doing the same. It was as if the stranger were pulling her toward him by an invisible thread.

“But … then … what would you want in return?” Anja was forced by their nearness to look up at the man to see his eyes, and she felt hypnotized by what she found there. “I haven’t … anything … to give you.” She was barely able to focus on what she said. A strange heat suffuse her limbs.

“A kiss,” he said.

“I cannot kiss you!” Anja said, shocked at the suggestion.

“Not even to save your life?”

“I-I don’t even know your name,” Anja said, as if knowing his appellation would somehow make his request less absurd.

“Tillz,” he said.

“But if I … if you … how would…” Anja struggled to complete her thought.

“I will give you the gold and save you from Werner. All I ask in return is a kiss.”

Anja’s gaze travelled involuntarily to his mouth, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to have his lips on hers. What would he taste like? She looked at his hand, still holding the gold, and she imagined his long, strong fingers touching her. What would his hands feel like upon her skin?

His offer tempted her.

Her heart pounded from his nearness, she was breathless.

“I…”

Tillz took one last step toward her, closing the small gap between them, and reached out to touch her lightly on the arm. “Enough talking, enough questions.” His voice was low and soft. Anja’s skin was hot, electrified, where he touched her.

“Just a kiss,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Just a kiss,” Tillz repeated.

The room seemed to disappear. In that moment, all that existed for Anja was the man standing before her, one of his arms resting lightly on her arm, the other snaking around her back to draw her to him. She smelled the light musky scent of him, his breath warm against her cheek. She was hot, liquid, lightheaded. If she had been thinking clearly, she would have wondered why she felt such a surge of desire for a man she had never seen before, why she was drawn to him like a sailor following a siren’s call. As it was, her mind was cloudy with inexplicable passion, and she could think of no reason why she
wouldn’t
be here, now, standing with this mysterious stranger, about to acquiesce to his requests for a kiss in exchange for gold.

“A kiss then, if I must,” Anja said softly. “If it will save me from Werner…” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Waited.

There was a feather light pressure as his lips brushed hers. Once. Twice. She opened her eyes, expecting that to be the end of it, expecting her desire would now be sated. Instead, Tillz dropped his hand from her arm, brought it around her back to join the other one, pressed her closer to him, and her desire flared even stronger. She brought her hands up to his chest, touched the hard planes of muscle beneath the fabric of his shirt.

Tillz looked at her, a questioning expression on his face. Her heavy lidded gaze must have given the permission he sought, and he brought his lips to hers once again. This time he tasted her fully. He drank from her like a man lost in the desert, dying of thirst, stumbling upon an oasis. Anja instinctively opened her mouth, allowing him access, and his tongue swept inside, brushing against hers.

Anja whimpered.

She trembled from the riot of sensations coursing through her body. She was no longer aware of her arms or legs; her entire sense of touch was concentrated at her lips where Tillz teased and pulled and nipped. At her back, where his hands were hot against her. At her breasts, where the tips of her nipples grazed his chest and they hardened at the touch.

Tillz pulled back slightly, though he held her still. They were both panting. He pulled back yet more, and she knew he meant to break contact with her completely. She had done what he’d asked, she’d kissed him, and now he would give her the gold and leave the cottage.

Leave
her
.

Forever.

She couldn’t bear the thought, though she was at a complete loss to explain why. She knew nothing of the man, save his name and his willingness to help an utter stranger, but she did know she didn’t want him to leave just yet. She wanted just a little more time with him. She wanted to know who he was, why he was there, and she wanted to further explore why he had such an overwhelming effect on her. He intrigued her, this guarded stranger who appeared suddenly in her barred prison, and she wanted a chance to unlock his mystery.

Anja clutched his arms, preventing any further retreat. “Stay,” she whispered.

“I … cannot,” Tillz said, his voice low and husky. “I should never have asked you to … to… It’s unconscionable to treat you in this manner, as though you were a common—” Tillz broke off, relaxed his grip on her. “Forgive me.”

“Stay,” Anja repeated.

“Anja, I cannot, it’s madness … the temptation…”

Anja knew he was right. The two of them, standing in the cottage, kissing—it was utter madness. Yet she didn’t care. She wanted more time with this stranger, to learn his every secret and perhaps taste him just once more. She didn’t know how to explain that to him, though, couldn’t come up with the correct combination of words that would make her desire sound rational and sane.

Anja decided she would show him instead. Slowly, timidly, she leaned into him, kissing him ever so softly on his collarbone. There was a subtle shift in his stance, and she knew he held himself back, trying to keep himself under control. She laid her hand upon his chest, touched the warm, hard muscle beneath his shirt, placed light kisses along his cheek.

Tillz was tense, every muscle was clenched, but when Anja heard him growl low in his throat, she knew he had given up the battle.

“You are so beautiful,” Tillz said, as if he was in awe of her. “You… I … I’ve gone mad,” he said.

Anja knew what he meant. There was a strange, powerful current between them—something that had made them both lose their heads and drown in desire, want, need. Anja never wanted to surface.

He brought one hand up into her hair, pulling her head back gently to expose her neck. He pressed his lips to her check, burned a trail down her flesh, kissed the sensitive skin in the hollow of her throat. Anja arched her back. She gripped his arms and tried to pull him closer. She wanted him to surround her, envelop her. She felt almost wanton, besotted.

Her legs gave way, and she could no longer support her own weight. Tillz allowed her to sink slowly, following her to the floor.

He drank of lips once more, then suddenly pulled away from her, panting. “Enough,” he said between heavy breaths. “We must stop this.” He held her away from him, and Anja felt the tightly thrumming energy in his arms.

Anja wanted to protest, but she knew Tillz was right. She had given in to her momentary insanity, allowed her physical impulses to control her, but they must stop before things went too far. She breathed deeply and with effort, waited until her heart stopped beating so furiously. After many long minutes, her body had almost returned to normal again, yet still she wasn’t ready for Tillz to leave.

She studied his face, bathed in firelight. She wanted to ask him if he felt it too, that inexplicable physical reaction when their bodies were near each other. She wondered if he had experienced it before, if he could explain it, because it was foreign and bewildering to her. She couldn’t bring herself to give voice to her questions, however, because she knew if she mentioned the attraction between them it would flare up again and she would want to taste him once more.

She tried to distract herself by watching the flames dance around his dark hair, how they accentuated the hard lines of his face and jaw, the jagged edges of his scar. She saw the fire reflected in his eyes, and she felt hypnotized by their seemingly limitless depths. They were dark eyes, almost as dark as his hair, and Anja saw they held untold secrets. There was a hardness to them, as if they had seen many things best forgotten, and yet there was intelligence and compassion brimming there as well. Anja wanted to know the source of all of it—how the wariness and suspicion she saw in those eyes had come to be mixed in with everything else.

“Why are you here?” Anja asked softly.

Tillz regarded her silently for several heartbeats. “I have told you,” he said. “I have come to help you.”

“Yes, but why?”

Anja saw he was having an internal argument with himself, as if trying to decide how much to say. She thought for a moment he wasn’t going to tell her anything, that perhaps he would even leave without explanation, but then he spoke. “I have seen you many times when I have come into the village,” he said.

Anja looked at him quizzically. “But I have never seen you before. Surely I would have noticed you since you are not exactly a subtle-looking figure.”

The edges of Tillz’s mouth rose in a wry smile. “Yes, you would think I would be obvious with my height, the scar, yet I remain invisible when needed.”

“Why? How—”

Tillz cut off Anja’s questions with a dismissive wave. He clearly was not going to go into details about how or why he wanted to remain unseen in the village, and Anja decided not to press him, not just yet.

“I have seen you at the mill, working into the night, milling the grain. I have watched you hunched over the ledgers, candle burning low, figuring the numbers until your fingers cramped.” Tillz took one of Anja’s hands in his, idly stroked her fingers, and Anja hoped her blush was not visible in the dim firelight. “And it pained me to see you laboring so hard while your father did nothing,” he said, and though Anja wanted to come to her father’s defense, she stayed silent.

“I have walked past you as you talked and laughed with the village girls,” Tillz continued, “and I have admired how your mirth showed so readily on your face.” He ran his thumb along her cheek, and Anja shivered at his touch. “How your smile transforms your entire countenance, how your eyes crinkle at the corners when you laugh.”

He studied her now, one hand under her chin, the other tracing a lazy line along her brow. Anja found she had to look away from the intensity of his gaze. His soft laugh brought her gaze back to him, and she saw he was lost in a memory.

“There was the evening
Frau
Köhler and
Herr
Becker stood in the street, arguing over missing pastries,” he said. “
Herr
Becker, covered in flour and obviously seething, was loudly accusing
Frau
Köhler’s son of making off with several
apfelkuchen,
and he demanded recompense. Köhler screeched that her boy would never do such thing. I thought it might come to blows when you walked up and set them all to rights.” Tillz smiled at the memory. “I remember you so clearly, you wore a crimson gown that brought out the red in your hair.” Tillz fingered a lock of Anja’s hair, and she wondered that he should remember such details. “Becker and Köhler were menacing each other, so loud and red-faced, and
Frau
Köhler’s boy cowered in her skirts. And up you walked so calm and reasonable. You pointed out the stray cur slinking out of Becker’s bakery at that very moment, bread loaf clutched in its greedy jaws. In minutes, you had the two apologizing to each other, and even convinced old Becker to give a pastry to the Köhler boy for scaring him so.”

“You seem to know so much of what goes on in the village, yet no one knows you,” Anja said. She was embarrassed that he had seen her, that he had studied her so closely and committed so much about her to memory.

Tillz shrugged. “I do not wish to be seen by the people in the village. I prefer to keep to myself. But that does not mean I do not see all of you.”

“But how? How does a man such as yourself move so freely about the village without anyone discovering who you are? It seems so…” Anja trailed off, not sure how to describe it.

Tillz seemed to sense her unease. “I assure you, there is nothing sinister about me. I merely keep to myself. I come to the village at dusk usually and keep to the shadows, taking care not to draw attention to myself. And I know about others only because I do what so few people manage to do: I notice every detail around me because I
look
. I see nothing that anyone who took care to notice couldn’t see. So many people fail to ever look beyond themselves. They see only what they wish to, what is safe and comfortable and familiar. I try to look beyond that, and I have come to know things about many of the villagers just from being observant. I know who is loud and boisterous, who is quiet and reserved, who gets mean with drink and who cheats at cards, and I know who is intelligent and kind and caring.” Tillz rested a hand on Anja’s shoulder at the last statement, and she knew Tillz was talking about her.

“Tonight, I heard men talking in the tavern, saying that Werner had taken you,” he said, and the slightest ripple of violence went through him, “and I knew I must help you. I could not leave you here, alone, unable to make the gold that bastard is demanding.”

“So you came to offer me yours. You came to help me, even though we have never spoken, even though you would rather not have anything to do with any of the villagers,” Anja said.

“Yes, I came to help you,” he said simply. “I couldn’t not.” He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Though I would not say I want nothing to do with
any
of the villagers.”

Some of the mystery surrounding this man lessened, if only just a bit. He was enigmatic and stoic, yes, but he was also compassionate and generous. He was willing to help her, even though it cost him gold and the solitude he so obviously cherished.

She wondered what more there was to discover about him.

They talked for several more hours, sitting side by side on the rug in front of the fire. Tillz moved a few times to add another log to the flames, and when he saw Anja shiver from the cold in the drafty cottage, he took a quilt from the bed to cover her. His arms encircled her as he wrapped it around her, and she wanted to stay there forever, surrounded by his strength and safety.