After (74 page)

“For John, these tapes document a dark aspect of his relationship with Eva. They were made when she was a prisoner. When you watch, you'll see, he was never anything but gentle and tender with her. But because she had no choice, for him, in these tapes, he is raping her. Even if he had no choice, either. To watch these would taint his happier memories, I think.”

“But you watch them.”

The major grinned. “You have the most unique way of asking questions, Gareth.

Yes, I watch them. I've watched them so often, it's possible I have every gesture of Eva's, and even of John's, memorized.”

“They don't remind you of a dark time between you and her,” Gareth said.

“A little, yes. But in them, in most of them, I see her happy. I see her pleasure. It gives me joy, pleasure, watching them.”

“Even though it's her and John. Not her and you.”

Another wry smile. “Oh, Gareth. It was very hard for me, watching her with him, then. And there's a great deal I would sacrifice if I could expand the little time we shared, even by a single day and night. But that doesn't alter the fact that I find comfort—and other things—in watching these tapes of them together.” Smith went quiet for a moment, then said, “All these reminiscences, I must seem like a bitter old man. But I'm not. I want you to know that. She loved me. We loved each other, and the two of us, along with John and Nadia and the others, we've changed things, made things better.

It's very close to everything I ever wanted.”

The major placed the wooden box in Gareth's hands.

“These are copies of the originals. I have others. Keep these as long as you'd like.”

Gareth smiled. “Do they play by magic? Or will I need some equipment and instruction?”

Smith laughed and put his hand on Gareth's shoulder. “So. You do have a sense of humor.”

* * * *

“You don't have to watch them,” Gareth said.

“I'm alright.” She wanted to see his mother. The voice in the journals attracted her, that voice so full of fear and rage that had turned, page by page, into determination and hope and love.

Gareth stared at the rectangular device—matte plastic the color of a gun's muzzle—and pressed the tiny button in the shape of a triangle. She remembered this, from being a kid. TVs and remotes. The screen flickered bright, and a few seconds into static-fuzzed lead, a room appeared, filling the screen, with two people by a window. A younger John, and a woman. Eva.

“God. She's so young,” Gareth breathed.

Except for the amber irises and head of dark, tight curls, Eva looked nothing like the woman in the drawings. Here, she was slight, almost gaunt. In that undernourished face, her eyes were huge, giving the impression of an orphaned child.

“The major said they didn't know they were being watched, this first time,” Gareth told her.

Her first time. Because John had spared her in the mess hall. Nix had seen so many rapes, apart from the ones she'd lived through, herself. She'd never seen a virgin taken, though, like she'd been taken by the man who'd bought her for a wife. Her owner.

But this was different. John was different. She watched him touch Eva's hand, watching her face. And the way he kissed her. Not like she'd been given to him. He didn't think of her as his.

The cold coiling in Nix's gut softened into a warm, bitter knot. So, it could be done. Even when the man was a stranger, even when she'd been stripped of her choice, a woman's first time could be warm. She could experience pleasure.

When the thin girl's brow creased, when she whimpered under the man moving over her Gareth said, “He's hurting her.”

“No. He's not.”

After, there was a gap of static-tinged black, and the room—empty this time—

flickered back into view. After a minute or so John emerged from one door and, a moment later, Eva appeared from another. Naked. Transformed.

Nix recognized the strategy. With no control over her fate, Eva had taken control of John, of the scene they were being forced to play out. Undressed herself so the man wouldn't strip her clothes from her, bare her body. Gave herself so she could not be taken.

Scene by scene, as the weeks went by, as her fragile frame gained flesh and strength, things changed between them, John and the girl. Gareth's mother. Touches, kisses, looks and smiles were full of want, belied tender affection. More and more, their fucking, their lovemaking was like that pair of men Nix had seen at Sewannee. Full of love and need.

“It's different,” Gareth said. “I've never seen sex like this.”

“They want each other, now.”

“Her, too,” he breathed.

“Her too,” Nix echoed.

When they watched the last tapes, the tapes of Eva with the major, Gareth went stiff and still, lost all the warmth that had crept over him as he'd watched her with John.

Their sex was hard. Desperate. Almost violent, sometimes. At first, Nix thought he was hurting her. But no. They were just that fierce together, like they almost needed to claw their way inside each other to sate their want.

“It's both of them,” she said to Gareth.

In the last tape, Eva was heavily pregnant, and it was all three of them. Eva, John, and Smith. Hungry. In love. Happy.

* * * *

Sleep was impossible. That woman, her frightened eyes staring from that gaunt face, her sleek, strong body, her smiles, her moans, her joyful eagerness, her swollen belly had all seeped into Nix's blood. Those hungry mouths, those hot bodies writhing, breaths, voices surging together, a secret piece of life Nix had never known. Like she'd lived all her years among people lying in perfect stillness and suddenly seen someone move. Or heard someone speak for the first time.

Beside her, Gareth stirred and turned. A moment later he sat up, slow and smooth, trying not to wake her. When she touched his arm, he sank back down beside her and she could feel his warm breath on her cheek.

For so long, for her whole life, it felt, she'd been angry. Enraged. All the times she'd been hurt. Raped. Spat on, pissed on, beaten, tied, locked behind doors that opened every time a man who'd paid someone else wanted to fuck her.

And then Gareth. His gentleness, his loneliness had stirred a warmth she'd never imagined she could feel for a man. For anyone. In return, she'd wanted to give him a little comfort, a little pleasure.

But now. Now she'd seen. Eva with those men.

Nix was missing something. All her life she'd been missing something. Something important. Something hot and deep and full, some crucial piece of her life. They'd taken it from her. Robbed her of it. From Gareth, too. Nix wanted it back. She'd fight to have it back, this thing that belonged to her, that she'd seen in Eva and John and Smith.

“I want what she had. What they had together. I want you to have it.”

Gareth was silent.

“Do you want it, too?”

His warm breath, his rough voice in the dark. “Yes.”

She asked him, “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

In the dark, she moved, pressed herself against him and touched his lips with hers. That first faint sense of his flesh, his mouth, filled her whole body with sudden heat. Then she asked, “Do you want a real kiss?”

“Yes.”

She kissed his lips, parted them with hers, tasted his mouth. Second by second, they sank into each other, pulled each other closer, breathed each other. He felt so good, his strength pressed along the length of her, his hot, wet mouth taking her in, tentatively seeking her when she teased and withdrew. The feel of his skin, his scent, the sound of his quickening breaths, the taste of his mouth, all of him was a comfort at the same time he provoked a pain, a sharp longing.

When she reached between them, he caught his breath and went stark still. Slow and gentle, she molded her hand over the hardness under his briefs and caressed the warm length of him. The way his breath stilled and raced in response to her touch moved her. Made her want flare.

“Take them off.”

When they were both naked in the faint moonlight seeping into their room, she looked at him watching her, waiting, passive. When she curved her fingers around the bare length of his cock, he stopped breathing again, until she began exploring the contours of his sex—smooth, veined, firm, warm, the thick thatch of dark curls at the base of his erection, finer over his full, heavy balls—and he groaned and panted to catch his lost breath.

Some want, some wave of tender feeling compelled her to lie down beside him, to press her lips to the delicate skin, so soft and warm, to kiss the hard cock in her hand.

He gasped and went stiff.

“Don't. Don't do that.”

“I won't. Just this,” she breathed, and kissed again, just a tender press of lips to that firm, sensitive flesh. His scent, faintly spicy, filled her as she kissed along his rigid length, from the root of his cock in its warm nest of dark hair to the full, flushed crown.

She'd wanted to, so badly. Needed to. A welcome. Absolution. A gentle proof that she wanted, loved that part of him, too.

She ran her fingertips down the center of his chest, feathered them in a circle around his navel, through the narrow trail of hair below. “This feels good?”

“Yes.” When she pressed her body against his, when she flexed and stretched so their skin touched and rubbed, when she asked again he said, “Yes,” again. When she kissed and asked he said, “Yes.”

She coaxed him, and he sat up in the bed and she straddled his thighs.

She whispered, “I promise, I won't let you hurt me. Alright?”

“Alright. But...”

“What?”

“John and Eva, he knew what to do. How to make it good for her. I don't know how to be a good lover for you. How to give you pleasure.”

“You will. I'll show you.”

She pressed herself to him, pressed her breasts against his chest, her belly, her sex to his. “Is this good?”

“Yes.”

She touched his face, surprised at how doing that, at how his nervous, hopeful look made her insides go tight and warm. With a fingertip, she traced the shape of his eyebrows, followed the line of his nose, touched his soft, full lips. She drew her touch down, over his jaw, down his neck, over his collarbones, and feathered her fingertips over his nipples. When he swallowed, her eyes followed the up and down of his adam's apple. She found his hand, brought it to her mouth, kissed his palm.

“You've always touched me so gently,” she said. “You remember the night you touched my brand?”

“Yes.”

“That touch. Since that night, I've thought of that moment when you brushed the strap of my tank with your finger and traced that 'S' burned into my flesh,” she whispered, her lips almost touching his warm skin. “When I'd remember you doing that, barely touching me that night, I'd get this feeling. That ache. You know?”

“Yes.”

“That touch, that night, it was my first. The first touch I wanted. The first touch that felt good to my body and my heart, both. That made me want more.”

She pressed his hand to her neck.

“I want you to touch me.”

She drew his hand down, until her breast was cupped in his palm.

His uneven breath came and went in little warm gusts. And then his touch. Soft.

Stirring her nerves. Just lightly, she touched her lips to his. She waited, then kissed, a soft press of lips. In the warmth of their bed, their kiss deepened, breath by breath. In the circle of her arms, pressed hard against her body she felt his chest and belly swell with each hungry breath, and his hard sex nestled against hers. When she flexed, rubbed herself against him, he shuddered and his breath hitched. She pulled out of their kiss to look at him. In the dim night, his startled eyes fixed on her.

“I won't if you don't want me to,” she said. “Should I not? Should I stay still?”

“No.” His voice sounded like his throat had closed. “Not if it feels good to you.”

She smiled. She did it on purpose, to reassure him, but when she did, thinking she was making herself, it felt more like she'd been working hard to keep it back.

Keeping it back from him all day, god, for days, for weeks. It felt good letting it go.

Letting him see her smile her joy. Her pleasure. Still smiling into that startled gray gaze, she moved again. Gareth gasped, then smiled, laughed at himself. That boyish smile, that boyish laugh that was such a startling contrast to his concrete stare, that was part of why she'd started to love him, back at that ghost town hotel.

God, she really did. She loved him. Wanted to love him.

“Does it scare you? Me doing this?” she said, hearing the waver in her own voice as she flexed her thighs, flexed her hips, slid her sex up his length, then down it again.

“No.”

She rose again, then settled over him, feeling the crown of his hard cock nudging at the hungry mouth of her sex. “You're not afraid?”

“No.”

She whispered, “Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

She took him in. Sank down. Drew the full, hard length of him inside.

Everything changed. The facets of his irises, the shape of his mouth, the way he was holding her. As if suddenly she'd become terrifyingly fragile.

And inside. Her body, full with him. But the fullness went all through her, beyond the places where her nerves told her he was touching her. Like he was filling her whole body with his warmth.

When she moved, he caught his breath and pulled her closer. Cradled in his gaze, she milked his pleasure in the tight grip of her body. Behind his eyes, joy and pain seemed to chase each other while he trembled against her. When she brushed his lips with a soft kiss, when she touched his tongue with hers, he sighed and sank into her, hungry, desperate. They writhed together, whimpering, groaning into each other’s mouth.

Gareth broke away, panting. Startled. The way he was looking into her eyes, it was like he was trying to read her.

She whispered, “You feel so good, Gareth. It feels so good, having you inside me. Holding me.”

His kiss-wet lips brushed hers as he asked, “And will you, can you... I don't know how to give you that pleasure, the pleasure I feel when...”

She leaned into him, drove him back, brushed her lips against a tawny nipple, feeling it start to peak under her kiss as she writhed over him, loving that sense of him filling her, his body touching all those hidden nerves. When she licked, his nipple stiffened, swelled up under tongue and as she sucked and pulled that hardening nub of flesh between her lips Gareth made a low, soft growling noise.