After (19 page)

Immobile. Panting hard. Still trembling.

Suddenly, brutally, he kisses her. It is like a blow, violent anger. At first, she seems to think he has really hit her. She is stunned, then she lets out a little whimper.

Even as she succumbs, she is trying to wrench his hands from her head. It's futile. Even as their kiss becomes less combative, more tender, he does not release his grip, but holds her helpless in his powerful hands. Finally, he does not let her go, but his fingers soften, cradling jaw, caressing face, stroking hair. Her hands slip from his wrists. She curves her fingers at the back of his neck, pulling him in to deepen their deep kiss.

It is an eternal kiss. It goes on and on, like waves rolling in, one after the other, now turbulent, now gently swelling, coming in, receding. He is pulling her body against him now, softening as their bodies seek and mold to one another. Like their mouths, their bodies, their breathing moans twine and writhe against one another.

Never breaking their kiss, she gets his belt undone, then his fly. Then, caressing his stiff cock, she draws back until their lips part. Panting, she looks up, into his gaze, his eyes bright and sharp like a hunter's even now.

Eva slips the gown from her shoulders. The torn garment falls indifferently to the floor, and she is naked. Taking his hands she leads him to the bed, laying him down and then lying astride him. She tries to slip down, as if she might take him in her mouth, but he stops her, pulls her back up to him.

“I want you here, with me.”

He kisses her and she takes him inside of her. She moves over him, slowly and quietly. He watches her face, her body as she makes herself come. Then he is quivering as she goes on.

“Wait,” he says. “Not yet. Not yet.”

He rolls their twined bodies, then holds himself still, trembling over her, inside her, his eyes fixed on hers, tearing into her with his gaze like he's devouring her. In this fierce stillness after her climax, Eva begins to tremble, to breathe in shuddering gasps, her pleasure-hazed eyes brightening, glistening.

When he moves inside of her, slow, slow, their joined bodies vibrating like two strings singing under the stroke of the bow, Eva begins to whine, to whimper, her voice a delicate note just above silence. Every flex of his body provokes some little tremor in her, some new note from her parted lips. With her eyes, her limbs, her sex, she seeks him, goes after him, pulling him into her.

Smith comes on, fierce, hungry, a predator consuming dying prey as she convulses and her mouth goes wide with a long, silent cry. His eyes probe her, taking her startled pleasure for himself. All through her quivering recovery he watches her—

how her lips meet, then part to pant, baring a glimpse of her teeth, how her pulse thrums at her throat under her delicate amber skin, how her heaving breaths lift and lower and lift and lower her breasts, her plum-colored nipples, hard and raised.

When he starts to move again, still holding her in his gaze, still cupping her ass in his hand, holding her to him as he flexes into her, she works her hips under him, seeking him, seeking his pleasure.

“Please,” she breathes, “let me. I want to.”

She coaxes him over, onto his back. Astride, now, she milks him, her body taking him in, wringing every bit of pleasure she can get from him, delaying his climax over and over until he goes fitful, grasping, trembling.

“Wait,” he says, “not inside of you.”

“Yes, inside of me.”

She overwhelms his meager struggle and makes him come.

She stays on top of him, laying her head on his chest. He holds her.

His voice is quiet and sad. “You’re not pregnant yet.”

“No.”

“That’s why…”

“No. Or, only in part.”

She lifts her head to look at him.

“My desire was real. I just wouldn’t have been so coercive for that alone.”

He runs his fingers lightly up and down her back, then embraces her.

“Does it feel good, having me in your arms?” she asks him.

“Yes.”

“I wanted to give you that. The goodness of being with someone.”

“Of being with you. Eva.”

Smith lies there, holding her, for just another minute or two, stroking her skin, breathing her scent. Then he seems to turn off his senses and pull into himself, and seconds later he pushes her away and sits up. He starts fastening and straightening his disheveled clothes.

“Avery,” she says in a gentle voice, touching his arm.

“I've betrayed John,” Smith says solemnly.

Eva's voice is quiet. Gentle. “You haven't.”

“You might not think so.”

“John doesn't feel I belong to him.”

“You know him so well after all of five weeks?”

Still gentle, she says, “Yes. Ask him, if it'll make you feel better.”

“And the men? I imagine you've taken a poll.”

“I'm none of their fucking business.”

He turns on her. “Can you imagine what would happen if the men knew I'd been in here fucking you today? I'm guessing you can, since you used that potential outcome as a bargaining chip to get me into your bed.”

“No, Avery. I used your fear as a bargaining chip. Personally, I believe that a man who can convince his men that raffling a woman off is the way to ensure everyone's health and happiness could as easily convince everyone in earshot that it was fair and right that he get conjugal visits with the last living woman on earth while the rest of the boys have nothing but their rosy palms for company. Though you might want to rephrase.”

“If you have need of anything, in future, I'll do my best to see your needs and wants are met. Get a message to me, and I'll have John bring along whatever it is you desire.”

“Avery,” she says in a low, gentle voice. When she brings her fingertips tentatively to his arm Smith shudders, then goes rigid. “Avery. We want the same things.

We don't have to be adversaries in this.”

He turns to her. Any tender expression of paternalistic protectiveness or lover's desire he's ever let her see is buried, now, under a rigid facade of militant stoicism.

* * * *

“You're wondering if he came,” Eva says to John.

He's been even more quiet than usual, and his eyes have been following her, but flicker away each time she tries to meet his gaze. Now John faces her and gives her a melancholy, confessing smile.

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

John moves in close, touches her arm, whispers, “Are you all right?”

“I'm doing fine. But I imagine Avery's dipping into the emergency wine supply tonight.”

“So he...” She just grins and cocks an eyebrow. “And you're all right?” He asks her again.

“I'm fine, John.” Eva gazes into John's clouded eyes, touches his cheek. Quietly asks, “Are you okay?”

“I just,” he starts, then cuts himself off.

“It's okay, John. Tell me.”

“Did you like it? Being with him?”

She stiffens. Sets her expression. “Yes.”

John curves his hands at the small of her back and pulls her to him. “I'm glad,” he says, his voice soft and warm.

“Are you?”

“I'm not jealous, Eva. I just couldn't stop thinking, all day, hoping it wouldn't be like it was with Riggs. I didn't want you hurting like that again.”

“It was nothing like that, John,” she soothes, combing her fingers through his thick dark hair.

* * * *

“I don't know your name.”

“Riggs,” he growls.

“Your first name, I mean.”

“James,” he finally says as if he'd rather not tell her. The last time, he'd seemed thrown off, unsettled. Scared, almost. Now it's like he's angry.

“You don't want to be here,” she says.

Like he's knocked off-kilter by her simple acknowledgment of his reluctance, he goes back to evading her eyes, and he backs away from her, the soles of his boots shuffling over the cement floor.

“John's not here as an enforcer. If you don't want to, we won't.”

Still dodging eye-contact he looks her over like an appetizing steak.

“It's not that,” he mutters. “I just don't get it, and I don't like being dicked around.”

She hesitates. Regards him for long, silent seconds.

“I have this idea,” she says at last, “that if the people who've hurt each other can get along, this place won't be such a hell hole.”

“And you fucking me, that's your idea of getting along?”

“It's a start,” she says. She steps close to him. So close, their bodies almost brush against each other. “Do you want to leave?”

“No.”

“You want me to fuck you?”

There's a subtle cock of his head, twitch of his brow, like her phrase has struck him wrong, but he growls out a “Yes.”

Eva cups her hand against his groin, rubs the bulge swelling under his fly. He towers over her, almost as much as John.

“James. Sit down,” she breathes, nudging him back toward a low crate.

When he sits she goes forward between his knees, unbuttons, bares her breasts to him. He looks, touches, mouths. Her head bent, she watches him. He notices and ducks away from her eyes, working his hand between her thighs, rubbing her through her pants as he goes back to sucking one dark, erect nipple.

Eva raises a hand and seems about to comb her fingers into his hair, but she hesitates and her hand just hovers there by his head. He looks up and finds her looking at him again.

“I can't do it like this, with you staring at me like that,” he grouches.

“Okay.” She sounds small and let down. “We can do this any way you want.”

Riggs rises to his feet and Eva surges back, like water displaced by an enormous log. When he moves forward, she is pinned between him and a worktable. His eyes fixed on his hands; he works her fly open, then turns her away from him. There's a moment where nothing happens—maybe Riggs is waiting to see if Eva or John will protest with words or cudgels—and then he shucks her pants and underwear down until her ass and the tops of her thighs are bare to him.

At first he doesn't touch her. He's busy getting his own pants undone, then fisting his erection for a few seconds as he stares at her bared ass. Then he presses himself against her, really pinning her now against the table, leaning over, driving her forward until she catches her weight on her forearms. She faces straight forward, away from him, and even if he wanted to meet her eyes now, he couldn't. She is biting her lips and her eyes are wide and red and wet.

From the end of the room, from his post by the door, John watches, his hands clenched in fists, his knuckles white. He has promised her he won't come near unless she calls for him.

Riggs uses his feet and knees to spread her legs, and uses his hand to bring his stiff cock to her wet cunt—brought to its flushed and open state by Eva herself before their appointment. With a heavy grunt he drives her against the table and sinks into her.

He's less frenzied than the last time. He humps her for a bit, then eases off so he doesn't finish so fast. When he's ready, he fucks her hard, one heavy hand pressed down on the small of her back, the other curved over her inner thigh, holding her open to his pounding thrusts as he grunts and ejaculates.

This time, when they get back to their room, Eva doesn't have to ask it of him.

John simply draws her gently to him, holds her, kisses her, touches her, and little by little, tender, careful, he erases the other man.

* * * *

Smith has not come back to her room, nor has he invited her to his. And so, one night, John takes Eva to Smith’s quarters. He knocks on Smith’s door. Smith shows no surprise at seeing him, and only a fleeting glimmer of something when he sees that Eva is there, too. He puts on a smile and invites them in. They exchange brief pleasantries and small talk. Then Eva throws down the gauntlet.

“It’s been very dull, Avery, on my long days in my room, since you’ve stopped paying me visits.”

“I’m sorry you’ve been bored. It’s difficult for me to find time during the day to pay social calls.”

“I understand. That’s why I asked John to escort me here. And of course, with John here, the men are less likely to be suspicious.”

“Of what?” Deadpan.

“Of you taking liberties with the prisoner.”

He makes no reply.

“With John here, I could stay for hours and no one would think anything of it.”

Looking at Smith, she smiles sweetly and tentatively touches his hand with one seeking finger. His hand twitches out of reach. Still gazing at Smith, Eva reaches her hands behind her. John steps close and takes her hands in his, looking at Smith over her shoulder.

“John,” she says, regarding Smith coyly, “you’ve been the object of everyone’s voyeurism for weeks now. What would you think about watching for a change?”

Smith’s face is hard.

Smiling mischievously at Smith, John says, “I might enjoy that. For a change.”

“What is this, John? Are you afraid you can’t get her pregnant? Afraid of losing her at the end of your six months?”

John only gives Smith an enigmatic shrug. Smith looks at John with exasperated contempt.

“There’s no point in depriving yourself, Avery. Not after indulging once already.”

Her words make his eyes flash. He looks at John. There is no surprise to find in his face.

“Avery…” She pulls her hands from John’s hands, touches Smith’s cheeks, then lightly kisses his lips. “Don't you want me?” She kisses him again, softly. Inviting him to kiss her back. He pulls away.

“And what are you going to do, John, stand here and stare at us? Sit in the armchair and read a book?”

“I’ll do whatever you and Eva want me to do.”

Smith turns to Eva and allows a patient smile to erode his cold expression.

“It’s ridiculous. I can’t make love to you with him hovering over us.”

“You’d be surprised, Smith, what you’re capable of,” John says. “You might even find it…stimulating.”

John reaches around and, watching Smith watching, begins unbuttoning Eva’s drab olive military-issue shirt. He pulls it down her arms and drops it on the floor behind him. Then his hands circle her waist from behind, unbuckle her belt, unbutton, unzip.

Smith’s face, dominated by a look of carefully contained arousal, seems gradually to register reluctant acquiescence. He steps forward. Gives her a small kiss on the mouth. She smiles.