After (26 page)

He blushes all over again, and she takes him to bed.

* * * *

“I didn't think there'd be one of these little rendezvous for me.”

Eva and Lott have been in the room for more than a minute; these are the first words between them. She has been looking at him, studying him, and he's been watching her do it.

“Why's that?”

She knows he is twenty four, but he has the face of a sixteen year-old boy. His skin and hair and eyes evoke a Midwest afternoon sky—warm and clear.

“Haven't they warned you off of me?”

He has an Alabama drawl and a deep molasses voice that mismatches his pretty face. Flaxen hair. Cornflower blue eyes.

“Yes.”

“But you come anyway,” he says, smiling, like he's paying a compliment or like he's found her out on a secret.

“Yes.” Eva, whose voice always gives her away, sounds calm. Easy, even.

“And why's that?” He launches himself from the wall he's been tipped against, watching her as he begins slowly circling the room, circling her, forcing her to do a slow pivot if she wants to keep her eye on him.

“That 'cause you're maybe a little bit curious, what it's like, being with a hard bastard like me?” His orbit decays from a wide circle to a narrowing spiral and Eva must turn faster to keep him in sight as he comes closer. Closer. “You get a little flutter in your belly, wondering what kinds of nasty things I'll do to you?” he asks now that he's close enough to touch her if he wants. “Everyone's so scared of John. But he's just a soft little pussy cat, isn't he?”

Eva doesn't answer. She just keeps watching. Listening. So calm and cool it's like he's not spoken of anything to do with her. Like she's studying a piece of glass that has melted into a strange shape.

“You want to see what it's like, to be laid down and spread open and fucked hard.

Cruel. By a man who'd sooner come watching you cry than moaning from pleasure?”

“Not particularly,” she comes back, flat except for a hint of bored disdain.

“Not particularly,” he echoes back, smiling and still closing in. “Then why are you here?” He has stopped shark-circling and he's as close as he can get without their bodies touching, his head bent over her defiant, upturned face.

“I'm going to everyone. You're not so special you merit an exception.”

“That so, little girl?” he threatens, his face bright and benign, like a child about to open a present. Then it goes serious. Considering. “No, you're not the sort of girl who gets off on feeling hurt and used. You're the sort of girl who won't be told what to do.

The sort who wouldn't be warned off me, but has to come and see for herself whether I'm the sort of nasty character John makes me out to be.”

He touches her. She keeps looking up at him and keeps still. The tip of a finger grazes her cheek.

“So, if I pretend to be a good, nice boy, if I don't scare you I'm gonna get rough, if I don't say anything too nasty, you're gonna spread for me. Let me fuck you.”

“Whatever you do or say, I'll stay here until I don't want to be here anymore.”

“Yeah, but what would it take, I wonder, for you to go before I've had my little seizure between your caramel thighs.” He's brought his face so close to hers, his lips brush her cheek as he goes on, “'Cause if you run off, leaving me all hard and unsatisfied,” he rubs his palm over the bulge swelling to the left of his fly, “it'll be like I sort of beat you. Scaring you off.”

“Being scared's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Oh no?”

“It's just nature's survival programming. There's nothing heroic in reckless

'courage.'”

“Maybe. But you try hard to hide it, just the same, little girl.”

“Are you nervous?” she asks. “You're talking a lot.”

“Oh, it's not that. It's just I'm an old-fashioned boy. I like to get acquainted before I go pumping a girl full of my seed.”

Watching her face, he pinches the olive cloth of her shirt between thumbs and forefingers and slowly pulls the tucked-in hem free of her pants. He ducks both hands under her shirt and cups her breasts, giving both nipples a firm pinch.

“You've got sensitive breasts,” he drawls when she flinches a little. “I'll be more gentle.”

Under her clothes his hands work over her breasts while his eyes study every inch of her face. Then he laughs.

“You're one of them girls can come just having your nipples sucked,” he tells her.

She's keeping quiet, but her face gives Eva away. He pulls his hands from under her shirt and closes in on the top button. Her hands fly up, not to arrest him, but to take over. Regret flickers across her features.

“Put your hands down,” he says, his eyes steady, his playful drawl suddenly flat and cold.

She drops her hands to her sides.

“I don't mean to be so bossy,” he says, the light back in his eyes, the warmth back in his voice. “It's just my way, I guess.”

“It's okay,” she says, calm and quiet. “It's whatever you want. To a point.”

“Such tender hospitality,” he says, pushing that top button through its hole and moving on to the next. He undoes button after button until her shirt hangs open, the inside curves of her breasts hinting at the rest of the package. When he pulls her top open he blatantly assesses the flesh he's exposed. Her tits. Her belly.

“Shit,” he says, laughter creeping into his voice. “You're pregnant.” He palms her belly like a basketball. “You don't show a bit under your clothes,” he informs her. “But I did notice your tits seemed bigger. I thought maybe it was just that you wasn't so starved, any more. Your figure filling out how it was meant to.”

She's avoided it until now, but he's maneuvering her back, back, until she's pressed between him and the plain pine dresser opposite the door. He curves his hands under her breasts, slowly closing the aperture of his grip, the pressure driving her touch-and cold-swelled nipples forward.

“That's why you're so sensitive. Tender,” he says. Then he ducks down and draws the flat length of his tongue across one nipple, then closes his lips over her dark, swollen flesh and begins to suck. He lets her go with a wet slurping sound. Looks at her mouth, her parted lips, her startled eyes. “You like playing whore, don't you, little Eva?”

He flicks his tongue against the other nipple. “So, what will you let me do to you, my little whore?” he sighs by her ear, watching her face from the corner of his eye. He rubs his cheek against hers, like a cat marking territory. “Are you going to let me fuck you?”

“If you ever get around to it, and I still want to, I will,” she tells him with almost perfect derisive calm.

He smiles. Touches her bottom lip with the pads of two fingers, parting it from its mate, baring a few of her teeth.

“Will you let me put my cock here, between your lips? Will you let me empty my come into your mouth?”

“Sure.”

Something—maybe her easy indifference, makes him laugh a little.

“And,” he says, pressing his body against hers, reaching behind, gripping her ass, driving a couple fingers against the center seam, sinking between her cheeks, “will you let me bend you over, my little whore, and fuck you up the ass?”

“If you're not rough about it. Sure, if that's what you want.”

“And would you,” he lets go of her ass and brings both hands up, sinking his fingers into her hair, gripping it in his fists, “let me kiss you?”

She doesn't answer. He's already touching his lips to her, slowly pressing soft little kisses from her hairline, along her cheekbone, toward the corner of her mouth.

When his lips touch hers it's a delicate, querying kiss. Small and soft, he puts tiny kisses at each corner of her mouth, at the apex of her upper lip. Kisses her lips open. Sucks gently at her underlip. Licks into her warm mouth.

She kisses him back. As if her warmth is melting him, he softens and sinks against her, into the soft wet heat of their kiss.

Drawing away he says, soft and slow, “It's not the whore you're playing at, is it?”

He drives his body against hers, drives her against the hard lacquered pine angles behind her, closes one hand over her breast, and spreads his other palm and fingers wide over the small firm swell of her pregnant belly.

“Not the whore. The martyr. The beneficent, self-sacrificing saint.”

He embraces her, and for the first time, with him, she shudders.

“Coming to each of us to give your few lukewarm drops of love, to heal our despondent souls, cure our blackened hearts of evil,” he whispers in her ear like a tender endearment. “And what a poor martyr you'd be, if you didn't come to me like all the rest. I need you more than any of them, don't I?”

“Maybe,” she answers solemnly. By her voice it's obvious she's at least a little frightened. But she doesn't try to push him away. Doesn't ask him to let her go. But he opens his arms and moves a few feet away from her.

“Get undressed,” he says, slow and low.

He stays quiet as he watches her bend down to unlace her boots, as she stands and works them off with her feet, as she braces herself against the dresser as she raises one foot, then the other to her hand to tug her socks off, as she drops her shirt to the floor and strips perfunctorily out of her pants and underwear.

“Not shy anymore, are you, Eva? Not like that first night with John for the cameras. You tried so hard to be brazen in your nudity. But it was plain, how hard you was working to stand there naked in front of him. Now it's easy for you.”

He closes in. Touches the back of his index finger to her navel.

“Step your feet apart for me, darlin'.”

Eva widens her stance. He draws his finger down her abdomen, through her thatch of dark curls, and underneath. There's a sound of her sucking in her breath, the wet sound of his finger going into her and coming out again.

“Damn, girl. You sure know how to flatter a fella's ego.”

The one finger working between her thighs is their only contact. Except for that initial penetration, he does not go inside her. He just works his finger back and forth along her wet folds.

“Don't do that,” he tells her as her head sinks down. “Let me watch you.”

He sinks his splayed fingers up into her hair from the base of her neck and forces her to turn her face up to him. A smile blooms and withers on his lips as he holds her exposed, watching as his finger teases and rubs, changing her expression, her breathing.

“Will you let me make you come?” his voice drips, sweet and heavy.

“Yes,” she gasps in a short, voiceless breath.

Still fingering her sex, still holding her captive with his fist in her hair, he whispers something to her.

“Yes,” she huffs again. His breath and voice play against her ear again, and again she breathes, “Yes.” And then, after a subtle movement of his jaw and his throat, her final “yes” comes out, high and wavery, and her body spasms above and below the hand in her hair and the hand between her legs.

He brings his hand to his face and draws a breath, then licks the wetness from his finger.

“Get on the bed,” he says.

A little unsteady, she walks past him and perches on the edge of the bed.

“Lie down.”

She swings her legs onto the mattress and lies back. He walks to the foot of the bed and takes hold of her feet. She sucks in her breath hard and audibly, and he smiles as he drags her toward him until her ass is at the edge of the mattress. He plants her feet at hip width. Her toes hang over the edge.

“Spread your legs.”

Eva props herself on her elbows. Breathing hard, her belly fluttering, she parts her knees.

“Wider.”

She spreads her legs wider.

“Not cured of all your modesty,” he says, and with his hands forces her legs open still further, bringing her inflamed, wet cunt into plain view.

Apprehensively, she watches as he goes down on his knees, and his face is just a few inches from her sex. He leans in another couple inches and inhales her scent.

Then he puts his thumbs on her mons and pulls her flesh taut and watches as three final spasms pulse through her sex.

And then he parts his lips and brushes the tip of his tongue against her clit. Eva gives a startled grunt and her body flexes rigid, like she's been hit with a jolt of current.

“You were really something, that first night John ate your pussy,” he says now, not looking at her, but watching his finger sink deep into her swollen cunt. ”That was my doing. Some girls, they just have a thing. About getting licked.”

His finger slides out of her, all shiny, and he goes back into her with two fingers, making her pant.

“O'Neil figured you were gonna get worked up over the blowjob. But it was just delicious, little Eva, seeing you frettin' and fidgeting and looking away while John spread you and licked your cunt. I was real pleased, seeing how you were about it, knowin'

you'd never let him do that before.”

His eyes are roving up to take in her expression, and down to take in the sight of his two fingers pistoning her cunt. Then he pulls his fingers away, grips her thighs in both hands and sinks into her, sealing his mouth against her, and she writhes and fails to stifle a loud groan as he begins licking her wet, swollen folds. He works over her slowly, like he's savoring every taste, dragging the width of his tongue along her warm, wet sex, making his tongue firm, then letting it be soft. Then, as he licks her, he gets his pants undone, and just lightly, teases his erect prick with a few light touches.

Now he takes his mouth off her, and watches her eyes go bright and wet with shock as he slips his fingers from her cunt and, without prelude, drives his slick index finger into her ass. After a few firm, deep thrusts he drives his thumb into her cunt, and she pants as he fingers her vigorously with both digits.

“I wonder,” he drawls up at her from between her splayed thighs, “when John and the major both have you in bed, do they fuck you at the same time?”

She fails to keep the shock from her face, and only manages to wipe it away after he's smiled at seeing it.

“Well, if they haven't tried it on you yet, maybe this'll inspire you to instigate it for your next rendezvous.”

He keeps up the pumping, one finger buried in her ass, the other in her cunt, and brings his tongue back to her slit, lapping at her folds, hitting her clit only now and then, pinning her back down to the mattress each time her hips buck up. She just pants, her breath loud and raspy but voiceless for the longest time as he works his fingers inside of her, works his mouth over her. Finally her breaths fill up with low, desperate, growling sounds, and when her belly flexes and she curls up with a kind of howl, he springs up, lunges, and thrusts his hard cock into her, to the hilt.