TWO - ASH

I TURN TO LOOK AT her, hollering like that and ruining the peace of the wood. The first thing I think is that I could silence her pretty effectively by slamming something of mine into her mouth.

She looks fucking incredible, even with that hood up. She looks as pure as the snow surrounding her and that thought is enough to turn me away. I can’t look at her any longer. If I do, she won’t stay pure any longer. She’ll be corrupted by me. All I’ll do is damage her. It’s for her own good that I walk on, not that she knows it. I glance around when she thinks I’ve gone, watching her pout in my direction before turning and heading away. From where I am, I could reach her in seconds. She could have those trousers of hers yanked down and I could be in her an instant later. The thought makes me rock hard.

Does she know the risk she’s taking, walking into the woods where the big bad wolf lives? Obviously not or she wouldn’t be drawing attention to herself so much, crashing through the undergrowth so loudly, I could hear her half a mile away.

I want to teach her a lesson. I want to teach her that stupid little girls who go where they shouldn’t get into trouble. But I don’t. I know the trouble it will cause. It will force me back into a world I willingly left behind when I moved here. I didn’t come here looking for a woman, I came here to be alone, to try and overcome my past. It worked. Until she appeared.

I see her again a few minutes later. I don’t want to but she almost crosses straight in front of me without even realising it.

I stand perfectly still, hidden in the gloom, silent as the trees around me. At my feet a rabbit stops, sniffing my boot before bounding off. I hardly notice. I can’t stop staring at her.

She has stopped under an oak, pulling down her hood and running her fingers through her hair. She looks like a wood nymph, a fairy coming out to taunt me, to remind me how good it can be with a woman. I shake my head slowly, wanting to look away, to run from her. She’s in so much trouble if I can’t get these urges under control.

She looks upset, her eyes glistening as she takes a deep breath. She glances left and right then begins undoing the zip at the top of her trousers. She slides them down and I can see her pretty pink frilly panties, my cock stiffening as I think of what’s just behind them. She continues sliding her trousers down her legs and I realise why a second later.

I get a glance of her thighs before I turn away, not wanting to intrude on her privacy any longer, already feeling like a peeping Tom. I march away from her, muttering to myself that this is some kind of test. It has to be. I vow to live alone, swear that I don’t need anyone in my life, that I’m happiest alone. Then what happens? The cutest, sexiest woman I’ve ever seen walks right past me in the middle of the forest and then starts lowering her trousers right in front of me. It has to be a test.

Somehow I pass, marching away, vowing to get back to what I was supposed to be doing. Once I’ve found the deer, I’ll go home and stay there for the rest of the day. Better to play it safe than to risk seeing her again because if I do see her again, those clothes are getting torn off her, I won’t be able to resist a third time.

I stop when I notice signs of trouble ahead of me. I follow the tracks that lay thickly and sigh as I come across the scene I hate to find.

A deer lay dead in the middle of a clearing, a ragged wound in its neck. There’s been a group of hunters in the woods for about a year. They don’t kill for food, nor do they care about any of the rules or laws about hunting. They left the deer to die, the blood sticky on its neck. It had been dead no more than a day.

I hear a noise and look past the deer. A fawn stands trembling, mewing softly for its mother. It looks at me and twitches its nose, as if deciding whether to run.

I hum quietly, moving as slow as I dare, edging towards it. “Hush,” I say, beckoning as it takes a step towards me. It’s limping, back left leg dragging behind. I can tell at once what happened here.

It ran with its mother, panicking as the whooping scum followed them both, firing off shots without a care in the world. My fists clench as I think of it and I force them to relax. The fawn stumbled, the mother injured beside it. I had no doubt if it wasn’t for the snow, I’d find spots of blood leading back to where it was shot.

I stand perfectly still, letting the fawn approach slowly. It takes minutes but eventually it reaches me. I lean down and scoop it up. I heard the shots two nights ago and had been out looking ever since. Last time, I’d had to put one poor creature out of its misery, left with a broken neck but still alive. That was bad enough. Now I was taking in another injured creature.

I was in my work clothes, dipped in all the filth of the forest to hide my scent, allowing me to move without scaring away the wild animals that lived in the same woodland as me.

With the tiny fawn inside my jacket, I made my way back to the cabin. If I could get some milk into the shivering little thing, it might stand a chance. I had to try.

I had been walking for no more than a couple of minutes when a piercing scream reached me from over to the right. I listened hard as it abruptly stopped, cut off so suddenly, my ears continued to ring. Whoever it was that made that sound was in trouble. The fact they had fallen silent so abruptly suggested the trouble had just become worse. I start to run.