Bitter Fruits by Sarah Daltry Page A

sadness. His hands are quick on my jeans and I want to stop him, want to focus on finding Henry, but there is something necessary in his touch that I crave. He has my pants off in seconds and moves for my shirt. I help him because I need something true, something physical to drown out my thoughts. All of this heavy mythology disappears as his hands move to his own zipper and then, in my pretend circle of protection, he enters me on the freezing autumn ground. Naked and complete, I give in to him, the stories and the legends of no consequence as he kisses my breasts. I laugh as he moves inside of me, remembering our first night together, happy that we finally have our moment.
    “You’re laughing,” he says, between kisses and thrusts. I feel so comfortable with Alec, as if we have known one another forever, as if I, like him, belong to a legacy. He looks so pleased as he rides me and I let the laughter close off the pain for a moment.
    “Remember the night we met? You said you wanted me to be more than a fuck in the dirt. My, how times change,” I tease. The heartbreak in his eyes stops my laughter and I bring him closer. “Alec, I’m teasing. You are everything to me.”
    My body arches to show him how much he means to me and I watch his pain turn to pleasure as I tighten myself around him. He is hard and swollen and I am full of him, my ass lifted by his hands and my body pushed against his waist. At some point, I need to address what he’s told me, but that point is not now. Now, we are together and our pasts, as complex as they may be, are forgotten; even the future fades. Warmth spreads throughout my body, from my shoulders to my toes, and I bite down hard on my lip. Blood starts to spill from the spot where my teeth dig in, but it is lost in his kiss. I cry out his name against his lips and he clutches at my head, my hair looped around his fingers. Alec’s certitude about death is lost as I dig my nails into his back and we come together on the dirt. I have never been in love before, but I can’t believe how stupid it makes a person. I am clinging to a man who claims to be the son of Adam and Eve, and nothing about that bothers me. He rocks me through my orgasm and he then fills me with his own.
    After we are finished and dressed again, we lie in the circle while he caresses my hair and tells me his story. It’s one I know well, from history, mythology, reading, and Henry’s lectures. He was the younger son; it’s funny that even at the beginning of man, the oldest child felt slighted by a younger sibling. Caleb -or Cain, as he was known then- hated that his brother received all the attention and praise of his parents; they fought endlessly. None of it sounds much different from the stories I hear of siblings today, although as an only child, I don’t know what it must be like to share one’s parents’ affections. I empathize with Caleb, though, because my parents were settled when my mother became pregnant and I wasn’t planned; now that I am an adult, I’m mainly on my own. The little attention I do get is highly valued and I cannot imagine if I needed to divide that with another person. Nevertheless, I keep my feelings to myself because Alec does not share my empathy for his brother.
    “His jealousy was bearable,” Alec says. “It was his control that was not.”
    “How do you mean?” I ask, running my hand along his spine. For someone as old as time, he feels human. It’s hard to believe he is not just telling me another story when we are this close.
    “As we grew up, my brother had to be right. About everything. My nature, of course, was to rebel and I liked to tease him. It was...”
    “Normal?” I suggest.
    “I don’t know. Maybe? Can I claim normalcy when we were the first?”
    “You’re asking the wrong person,” I reply. “I don’t know what the rules are, but I think that most siblings are the same.”
    “Fair enough. So then, we were normal. There was no animosity, outside of