Born to Be Wylde by Jan Irving Page A

reached for his radio, catching the crunch of rock behind him, turning his head—
“Stop.”
Ken’s eyelids lifted, heavy, like they were weighted down by fast-moving flood water. He licked cracked lips, feeling as if his body had been burned to ash in the heart of his kiln. His skin actually ached. “Ummmm.”
“Sleep,” the voice commanded him again.
Ken frowned, remembering hearing that voice before. A man’s voice, soft and almost guttural, as if he had difficulty speaking English. It reminded him vaguely of his parents, who were first-generation Japanese Americans. Some words they cut off like a knife slicing through fresh salmon.
“No, I must…” Duty. He had to….
Blue eyes blazed at him as he was shoved back onto something soft and warm. Ken blinked at the alien feel against his bare skin. It felt like….
He tried to sit up again and was shoved back.
Okay, then. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Panting, weak, he stared into the shadows at his keeper. He could make out the swing of long dark hair, and his gaze fell to a lean brown hand lying possessively on his chest, holding him in place.
“Fur…. I’m sleeping on furs?” he croaked. He could hear a dripping sound and feel the hush of cooler air over the parts of his nude body free of covers. It felt good, refreshing; it felt too cold, so he had goose bumps.
“Sheepskin,” the voice corrected, as if it were obvious. “Not fur.”
“Oh.” Ken blinked. He was getting hazy again, could feel himself drifting like an abandoned canoe on a river. “Why aren’t I in a hospital?”
“Because I found you.”
That didn’t make sense, did it? His head hurt. He closed his eyes.
T HE hand of his protector lifted some kind of stew to his lips, prodding him with the crude wooden spoon. Ken stared at it, oddly mesmerized. It looked like something he might see at one of the craft fairs where he purchased tables to sell his pottery. Like something carved by hand. Primitive, beautiful.
“Eat,” the voice ordered, implacable. “You eat now.”
Ken obediently opened his mouth, chewing gently since his jaw felt sore, lumpy. His cheeks were bruised, so he felt it when they stretched.
As he ate something creamy and warm that tasted like roots and fish and honey, he hazily remembered doing this before, off and on. Only sometimes it was water instead of stew he was ordered to drink.
Sober blue eyes regarded him, and Ken held their gaze, seeing as they dropped to his bare chest. When stew dripped from the spoon to splash him there, dark hair touched him, and then lips and then a tongue, licking away the waste.
Ken gasped.
When he opened his eyes, the blue gaze was fixed on his face, the strange man’s lips shiny from… from kissing Ken’s chest? No, it hadn’t been a kiss. The stranger had merely licked away some spilled stew.
After he ate to the satisfaction of his caregiver, the man turned away, breaking roots and honeycomb over a crude cup resting on a tiny fire. The flames lit the space but provided little warmth from the damp, and for the first time since he’d been awake, Ken recognized he was in a cave.
His eyes widened in wonder. How…?
The long hair of his caregiver brushed his skin again, his nipples, and Ken shivered at the primal sensation. He’d never been with a man with long hair. He stared at the offering stupidly until the stranger nudged him again.
“Tea,” he was informed.
Tea. Ken closed his eyes on sudden tears.
“You… okay?” An odd monotone, as if the speaker didn’t know or care how he sounded. Information without inflection.
“I nearly died,” Ken whispered. He was shaking, so the tea dripped in sympathy like tears onto his chest, hot, stinging. A sob lodged under his ribs. He couldn’t remember….
No, he could. Flashes. Some of them slowed down now so he could touch them, grapple with them. Finding a body he was sure was Andrea’s in a ditch beside the road not far from where her car had been discovered. Someone had buried her