Red Queen by Honey Brown Page B

thing I want.’
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘I want to be a part of something safe and strong. I don’t think things will get better for a long time, and even when they do it’ll be nothing like before. As a unit we’re strong – we’ve just got to get the dynamic right.’
    ‘And that involves you sleeping with the top dog, while fooling around with the pup?’
    She laughed and wrapped her arms around me. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’
    I pushed her off roughly. ‘You might have watched us, but don’t presume to know us. You don’t know how we think.’
    My push had hurt her; she touched her shoulder.
    ‘Shit …’ I muttered.
    ‘No, it’s my fault.’
    ‘Don’t say that …’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘Denny, I don’t know how to feel.’
    She moved to me. ‘I’m sorry.’ She leaned in and kissed my temple.
    I ground my teeth, rigid against her.
    She kissed me again, near my eye, my eyebrow, pressing her lips, her fingers soft on my skin, touching my face as though she loved me.
    I held her head in my hands and put my forehead hard against hers.
    ‘Don’t,’ I forced out between my teeth.
    ‘But I do,’ she said.
    Rohan’s anger was an exceptional thing: as coarse and open as it was, it was also controlled. When Rohan lost his temper, it was because he wanted to. This was good, because it gave the impression he’d never make a huge mistake – that he always had something in reserve – but it was also bad, because it was an indication of what he’d let himself be, another carnal part of him he’d reasoned out and accepted.
    And if it was a snarling raving state Rohan so desired – well, so be it.
    ‘Tell me you two have done more than sunbake on this bloody veranda all day! I can’t even go and get the food to lay out cos I can’t trust you. Bugger the fact that you eat like there’s no tomorrow, it’s worse that you do nothing with it! I mean, don’t let me interrupt your tans. You can’t be left two minutes without lolling round like we’re all on school camp.’
    He was standing in the dirt, and we were looking down on him, but still he seemed taller. His eyes moved between us. He hadn’t caught us kissing, but I knew the guilt was written on our faces.
    ‘Do you two ever think ahead and realise things will get worse? Every single thing we use is one less day we’ll have it. The generator and batteries won’t last forever. You don’t pull spare parts from thin bloody air. We could easily lose the flock, the fishing could be off for weeks, a fox could dig in and kill every chook before you two had even pulled your thick heads from the clouds. We’ll be without power soon and it might be a good thing; you can get a better appreciation of what we’re up against. I’d actually like for one of you to fall flat on your face just to feel how quick things can swing to desperate.’
    ‘We know you would,’ I sneered back, but then regretted it in the fierceness of his stare. ‘People cope differently than you,’ I followed up.
    ‘What have you done today?’
    ‘The sheep,’ I said. ‘We crutched the sheep.’
    ‘The whole lot?’
    ‘Almost.’
    ‘No – because it would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it, that you’d start a job and actually finish it. How long does it take? Both of you? I’d love to see it – the useless way you two work. Let me guess – there’d be a lot of breaks, a lot of inane chat, perhaps some brainless singing, and a whole bloody lot of nothing getting done.’
    His eyes were hard on Denny now, and it was clear he’d picked up on the intensity between us.
    ‘Get the slaughter knife,’ he ordered. ‘We’re killing a sheep.’
    ‘Now?’ I said.
    ‘Yes, now .’
    He tossed his bag onto the woodpile, and began rolling up his shirtsleeves.

    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’
    Rohan shifted his position and the sheep beneath him bleated plaintively.
    ‘Get down here now.’
    ‘I won’t do it.’
    ‘You’ll do it all