After (14 page)

“Too much?” he pants by her ear during a pause.

“It's a lot,” she breathes back. “Intense.” She smiles. “But not too much.”

“Good,” he purrs. Then, “God, you feel good to me, Eva.”

His face hovers inches above hers, and through it all he watches her, reading her as he pumps into her, jarring her, shaking her moans from her. When he reaches under to tease her nipples she gasps, then greets his next round of deep thrusts with needful grunts.

A minute later, though, she gasps out, “Wait! Wait wait!”

John stops.

“I need to pee.”

He laughs a little. “I don't think so.”

“Really. Let me up. I need to go.”

He slips out of her, straightens up, pulling her up with him, cradling her against him.

“How about now?” he asks.

“I don't know. Maybe not.”

“Did it feel kind of weirdly good, that sensation? While I was inside you?”

“Too good, if that makes sense,” she pants, laughing a little.

“Don't worry. You're not going to wet yourself.” He nips her ear playfully. “Ride it out. I want to watch you come while you're feeling that almost too good feeling.”

Blushing, smiling, she bends down, lays her cheek on the mattress, gazes up at him as he caresses her hips, holds them steady, goes into her. Now he's fucking her, fervent, almost anxious, and she's fretful, panting, whimpering, clutching the sheet.

Slipping a hand under her, he brushes a delicate touch over her clit, and she bites her lips, muffling a startled, needful grunt.

“Yes?” he breathes.

She nods her head.

“Yes?” he teases her, touching her, fucking her.

She huffs out an uneven little “Yes,” and he goes on, driving those little sounds from her parted lips until she lets out a feral groan, long and loud, then startled cry after cry, and, suddenly, furtively, John pulls out saying “damn” under his breath and coming into his cupped palm.

Panting, quivering, he huddles against her, kissing into her hair behind her ear.

“Maybe I should revert to holding back,” he whispers to her later. “I kind of lost control at the end, there.”

Eva doesn't say anything. She just looks at him for a long while, then touches his face and smiles.

Later, when they are curled up together, lights off, almost ready for sleep, she says, “I'm sorry I kind of froze up on you tonight.”

“Please don't apologize, Eva.”

“I told you to just be a lover with me, and then I got all uptight.”

“It's all right. You were scared it was going to be...something else.”

“One of these nights it will be,” she says. He is silent. “You know that, right?”

“Probably. Yeah.”

“Have you done it before?”

“Have I...”

“Had anal sex?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?” she asks him.

“Yes.”

“The women you've done it with—was it with women?”

“Yes.”

“Did they like it?”

John grunts out a little laugh. “Well, I know my first attempt wasn't very impressive. But I had one girlfriend; it was her thing. So, with her, I got a lot of practice.

After her, I even managed to convert a serious skeptic.”

She doesn't ask him if he's talking about Amy.

“Does it scare you?” he asks, his voice gentle now, “thinking of doing that?”

“Before, you know, before the dying, when I'd think about having sex, I always figured I'd kind of give everything a try. That, too. But the way things are, here, if I don't like it, if it hurts or something, it's not like you can stop.”

“If we have to do that, it won't hurt you. I promise. It might feel weird to you, you know, maybe it won't be your favorite sensation, but it won't hurt.”

“Okay.”

They lie there, close and quiet.

“John?” she whispers.

“Hmmm?”

“Even though it makes me kind of nervous, the idea of it—you doing that to me—

turns me on.”

There’s a gap of quiet before he asks her, “Does it? Really?”

“Really.”

* * * *

“Eva,” John says late one evening

She lays down her pen and looks up.

“Can I ask you something?”

She gives him a bemused grin.

“When they're watching, when we start, you're always naked.”

Rising from the table, she goes to John, sinks down beside him on the love seat.

She leans in close to him, brings her mouth near his ear. This is how they talk, sometimes, now that they know the cameras are always on.

“I don't like the gowns. And I don't like the idea of them watching me strip, or watching you undress me,” she tells him, her voice soft and low. “Being naked, I feel...vulnerable. But I think it's less...titillating. Provocative. I don't know. I have this idea; if I don't dress up like that, I look more...human. It's not you, dressed like them, in your khakis, and me looking like something off a porn site. This way, when you get undressed, it's just two naked people fucking.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe if I just stay naked all the time, they'll get bored of even looking at me,”

she teases, smiling.

“I seriously doubt it.”

* * * *

It doesn't happen right away, but soon, like they thought, John gets the usual slip—typed up by Quenlin, maybe so John never knows who's requested it, maybe so John can't pretend later that he'd misread someone's messy hand-writing—telling him to

“fuck Eva up the ass.”

With the slip of paper John gets a bottle of wine—transferred from its potentially suicide- or murder-facilitating glass bottle into an emptied water bottle—and two plastic cups.

“Apparently Smith is afraid my seductive arts aren't up to the task, tonight,” he kids Eva, but he's pale and fraught-looking.

“So, tonight's the night, eh?” she comes back, almost playful. “Is that Smith's famous roofie cocktail blend?”

John laughs, but mirthlessly. “I asked that, too. It was sworn to me that it's an innocent bottle of Cabernet.”

Eva takes the bottle and the plastic cups from him, and sets them on top of the dresser, then comes back to him.

“I don't need that,” she whispers, up on tiptoe, nuzzling his cheek, caressing his belly.

“Sure?”

“Mmmhmmm. We'll have some after, if you want,” she purrs, “just for fun.”

“You're not...nervous?” he asks.

“A little, maybe. But that's okay,” she whispers back, looking up at him from under her dark lashes, teasing him with a little grin, undoing his belt, his fly.

He pulls her into an embrace, holds her a little while, then kisses the crown of her head. Then he buries his face in her hair, nuzzling into her neck, kissing her again. With gentle fingers he brushes her hair back so he can kiss the warm skin of her neck, then her ear, then her jaw, then her mouth.

She is tremulous as she kisses him, a hot, eager kiss, and over his boxers she begins a gentle caress.

”I love this. The feeling of you getting hard in my hand.”

He is panting in her ear as she touches him.

“I love the feeling, you reacting to my touch, feeling your body warm to me.”

She looks down, seeing what her hand is doing, what it has done.

“Do you want to fuck me?” she asks, her voice soft and shy.

“Yes.”

“I want you to. I want to feel this,” she gives a gentle squeeze for emphasis,

“inside me.”

He is trembling, moaning softly now and then as she strokes him to real need. He folds her in his arms, lays her down, presses their bodies together. In a deep kiss he goes into her, melting her before he caresses and kisses her breasts, barely teasing her sex, waiting until she is moaning and seeking his hand before sliding one finger inside.

He spends long minutes there, making her writhe, evoking her whispering whimperings before he withdraws, then moves his slippery finger back, over the ultra-sensitive middle ground, over the virgin spot that makes her gasp with fear-not-yet-pleasure, beyond and back, then back again, a slippery sliding, a teasing, a gentle promise of gentleness.

Then a little pressure. There. Pulsing pressure, a teasing circle.

“John,” she gasps.

“Eva?”

“Talk to me. Tell me what you’re going to do. I’m just nervous.”

John gives her a sympathetic smile, kisses the corner of her mouth.

“You have a lot of nerves there. Does it feel good when I touch you like that?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t hurt?”

“No.”

“When I put pressure there, then take it off, does that feel nice?”

“Yes.”

“Now, just a tiny bit, I’ll go inside you. Just half an inch. Relax your body. Relax your muscles there.”

She is breathing fast as he slowly works just the tip of his finger into her.

“Is that all right?”

“Yes.”

“Breath normally. Relax your body. Be soft. Soft.”

A little of her rigidity melts.

“Now, you feel me moving? It’s just that little bit, the very tip of my finger, pulsing in tiny movements, in and out. You feel that?”

“Yes.” Her breathing is calmer now.

“Now, little by little, with each tiny thrust, I’ll go deeper.”

Slow and gentle he is giving her more and more of his finger, withdrawing, going deeper with each return. Slowly he pulls all the way out; slowly he goes all the way in.

Her exhales are sighs.

“It feels good,” she confesses, all breathy.

He goes on for a while, taking her soft moans with his caresses. Then, with a second finger, he enters her wet cunt, gets her natural lube, then comes back to her tight clench. He gives her that finger, in and out, slowly and gently.

“Now, Eva, I’m going to give you two fingers, very slowly.” He pushes in, bit by little bit. She is panting again. “Am I hurting you?”

“No.”

“Remember, stay relaxed. It will feel nicer.”

He gets both fingers deep inside of her, and gently fucks her this way. After every few strokes he varies his angle, letting her feel the stretch, the pressure, in a different direction. Then as he fucks her virgin ass with his fingers he pushes his thumb into her cunt and she gives a sudden moan. She is writhing now against his hand, going after his touch, panting.

”First, something familiar,” he says with a sweet smile.

He moves between her legs, lifts her knees, holds her to him, enters her, moves with her, inside of her for a few moments.

“I’m all slippery now, so it will be nice and smooth.”

He kisses her tenderly on the mouth. He is still inside her as he reaches back and lifts her feet up, draping both her knees over his broad right shoulder.

“I’ll go slow. I’ll be gentle. I won't hurt you.”

“I know.” She gives him a nervous, encouraging smile.

He withdraws from her, takes himself in hand. Tiny bit by tiny bit, very slowly, very gently, he enters her. Then, with cautious calm, he withdraws a little way, and again, slowly and gently, seeks her depth.

* * * *

“What the fuck is he doing? That’s not what I wrote.” In the dim glow of the monitors in the makeshift theater, Baldwyn is glaring at the screens. “That’s not what I fucking wanted. When I said, ‘Fuck her up the ass,’ I meant bend the bitch over and fuck her up the ass.”

Baldwyn cannot see that Diego is smiling.

Eyes fixed on one monitor, through clenched teeth Baldwyn mutters, “Fuck that fucking bitch. Fuck her ass. Fuck her.”

* * * *

Eva gives John a shy smile. He smiles back and turns to press a kiss to her knee With a slow, sensual rhythm his hips begin to dip and rise, hinging out and in from his waist. As they watch each other, he puts his hand on her belly and slides it down in a tickling caress to her sex, and soon she's moaning and writhing as his hips pulse against her.

* * * *

In the mess hall, the men watch as John undulates against Eva, as she writhes beneath him, his hand caressing her, his eyes watching her as she moans soft little moans. They listen as she tells him she is going to come, that his hand and his cock are making her come. They watch and listen as her cries come closer and closer together until they are one, long, unrelenting cry of joyful release. They hear her ask him to fuck her, tell him she wants him to come inside of her. They see him move differently now, now that he is seeking his climax instead of hers. They hear him groan his pleasure, see him lay down beside her, take her in his arms. They watch as they hold each other in what might be an eternal embrace. Long minutes later, John and Eva are still wrapped up in each other’s arms, and the men are still there, in the mess hall, watching still silence, kissing silence, caressing silence, whispering silence.

* * * *

“You’re all right?”

“I’m all right.” She smiles abashedly. “I was kind of silly. I’m sorry I was so nervous.”

“You were scared. Don’t apologize.”

“That particular thing, the idea of that one thing always scared me. I don’t know why. But it was fine. It didn’t hurt as much as the first time, losing my other virginity, actually.”

“No?”

“No.”

He gives her a sad smile. She kisses his sadly smiling lips.

“You like it?” she asks.

“Like it?”

“Anal sex—you said you’ve done it before.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we can try it again sometime.”

He caresses her hair. “I never know if you’re sincere.”

“I’m always sincere.”

“You’re sincere in wanting to protect me. Saving me from my guilt.”

“I came. I always come. I love fucking you. Sincerely.” She kisses him. “I love kissing you, sincerely. I love holding you and feeling you hold me, sincerely. I love sleeping next to you, waking up next to you. Sincerely.”

She lays there, looking at him for a while.

“I love you. Don’t say it back to me. I just wanted to tell you. I don’t even know if I mean I’m in love with you. I just mean, you’ve earned my love. You’re so good.

Unbelievably good, and here, where it’s impossible to be good. Your strength and courage saved me; your kindness saved me. If it had been anyone else, John, I think I’d have killed myself by now. Just because, except for you, everything here is so ugly. But instead of drowning in that ugliness, I feel like we have a kind of happiness. It’s incredible. Literally incredible.”