be Fador .
What am I gonna do when they both get the chance to shave? There won’t be any way at all to tell them apart then!
They both walked around as though it were perfectly natural for them to be nude. Must give the neighbors a thrill. She started to wonder if they’d been taken off a nudist compound instead of just dragged off and stripped.
“Hey there. I was wondering where you got off to.”
“I thought you might like something to eat.” He smiled broadly.
“I’m not even going to bother asking how in the world you caught all of those.” It was amazing the things this man was capable of doing. A little too amazing, really. She was only too happy, though, to see someone had found food. Amber’s stomach complained with a long, low growl that set Fador laughing. His eyes crinkled pleasantly at the edges in a way that spoke volumes. They were the eyes of a man who smiled a lot. He walked past where she sat as though he was going to walk right out the other side of the clearing.
“Fador?” He didn’t stop walking, so she jumped to her feet and trailed behind him.
“Mmm?”
“What’s the plan?”
“Well, first I have to skin these and dress them so we can cook them. I thought I’d wash them at a cove I found earlier.”
“No, I mean, how are we going to get off this island?”
“Oh, leave that to Michael and me.”
“But I wanted to help too!” Amber cursed the slight whine that entered her voice when she said that. He stopped and turned to look at her. Their eyes met and he looked her over thoughtfully several moments.
“It isn’t that we don’t think you can help us Amber. It’s that we don’t want to risk your life. Michael and I work as a team. I depend on Michael to do his share of the work and he depends on me for the same. If you came along with us, we’d both be too worried about you to do our jobs. The best way you can help us is to stay where it’s safe. Now, come on. We’re moving to the cove.” He turned and started away again and she had no choice but to follow.
“What about Michael?”
“What about him?”
“Well, how is he going to find us if we go off somewhere else?”
“Don’t worry about him. He already knows where we’re going.”
“Then why was I supposed to wait for you back there if you two had already decided to move? Why didn’t Michael lead me over?”
“He probably just didn’t want you to get hurt helping him. You’re obviously a city girl and you don’t have any shoes. It’s one thing to walk down a trail like this, it’s something else to wander through the woods looking for wood.”
“Oh.” Why didn’t I think of that? She normally walked barefoot in her home, but she definitely wasn’t used to the woods. Which only made her wonder more about where the two of them were from that they didn’t have any problem with it.
“Where are you from?”
“I’ve lived in a lot of different places.”
“Oh.” That didn’t explain anything at all.
“Where were you born?”
Fador was silent for a time. “I was born in a small town in Europe. I doubt you’d have heard of it. Growing up, Michael and I hunted wolves to feed ourselves and our family.”
“You ate wolf?”
He laughed heartily at that. “No, we just hunted them for their fur. We sold that to feed everyone. We were the best hunters in town. Killed a lot of wolves….”
He became somber, as if an unhappy thought had suddenly intruded.
Amber walked in silence for a while, listening to the strange calls of the birds and scratching a bug bite on her side. I’m getting the feeling they’re hiding something. That was not a feeling she wanted to have about these men, but it was starting to look inescapable. She admired the play of muscles under his skin, the way he moved with such grace through the woods.
“Ever live in a nudist colony?
“What?” He looked at her over his shoulder. “A nudist…? Oh.” He stopped and faced her before continuing. “If you’re