After (8 page)

“I want to,” she breathes between kisses. “Can we? Like this?”

She reaches between them, cradles his cock against her naked belly, moving her body against him as she watches him, then goes for his mouth again, still sliding her belly up and down the underside of his cock. Her hand deserts his cock so she can capture his head between both palms, holding him captive, her kisses almost fierce, her whimpering sighs leaking from between their mouths as she chafes her sex against his.

Rising up on her knees she shifts her hips—a little this way, a little that way—until things align. Holding her breath, then, she sinks down, only letting out a little squeak when she hits bottom. In his arms, against his body she shudders and, their kiss broken, her expression suggests she's startled. John watches her for a second, then averts his eyes, as he always has since she told him not to watch her.

“Heh,” she laughs breathily near his ear. “It feels different like this. Like, completely different.”

Quivering, gripping John against her, Eva starts to move, making her little excited noises almost from the start. When she loosens her desperate grip on him, John presses a little kiss to her shoulder. Then, when he brushes his lips against the smooth curve of her breast she rakes her fingers into his hair, taking him prisoner again, demanding more. He kisses, licking, sucking, provoking louder, more plaintive sounds and frenzied movements—small, but desperate.

She leans back and he releases her flesh from his mouth. John's hands slide over her back. She watches his face as she fucks him. He keeps his eyes closed. Eva cups her palms over his eyes.

“Open your eyes,” she whispers.

A moment later she hinges her hands away from his face and their eyes meet.

The palms shutter closed over his gaze again, then open once more, and she laughs.

Kisses each of his eyebrows.

“It's all right,” she says, her voice soft. “You don't have to look away.”

For the first time she lets him watch her pleasure. It comes quickly, and it rolls over her, long and gentle. She hums her climax against bitten lips, then stills, shuddering, then starts moving against him again, her little flexes almost invisible as she milks a few more spasms of pleasure from their connection. Then she collapses against him and he wraps his arms tight around her, now and then kissing her shoulder, her neck. When she begins to stir again he loosens his hold on her.

“Do you want me to try to make you come?” she asks, “Or should we do something different, now?”

He laughs. “Try, nothing.”

She smiles, tips her forehead to his, watching his face as she writhes over him.

“Faster?” she asks.

“No, no. But can we...” he pants, then with his hands suggests an altered angle to her hips. “Does that work?”

“That works,” she breathes back.

Rolling, rolling, her hips work over him, John's breath catching, speeding, filling and going heavy with low, rough sound. She kisses his parted lips, cradling his head in her hands as he clutches her against him as he stiffens and shudders and growls out his climax.

“Do you know the big picture?” she asks him later, between mouthfuls of corn, beans, and rice.

“The big picture?”

“Smith's grand scheme. The long-term plan.”

With visible effort, John goes on facing her.

“No.”

“If you asked him, would he tell you?”

“Maybe. Yes, I think so.”

Later they are lying in bed, still as two spoons in a drawer. Then something makes Eva stir. Reaching back, between them, she curves her hand against the hardness she finds, stroking him gently, wordlessly. When he's breathing hard she draws her hand back, then rolls over to face him in the dim moonlight slanting through the window. She draws her thigh up, over his, pressing her groin against his, brings her mouth to his. Panting, he gives in to her kiss, and everything else.

“I like being with you. Always, but especially when it's just us,” he tells her after.

“Me too,” she answers, lax and damp and panting. They curl up into each other's warmth, nuzzling and caressing and kissing. Little by little they calm, sinking down into the dark quiet.

“Eva?” he tries in a voice too soft to disturb sleep.

“Hmmm?”

“There's something...I'd like to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I was married. When it happened.”

In a soft voice after a long silence Eva says, “You loved her.”

“Very much.”

“Were you together a long time?”

“Five years.”

“And,” Eva starts, then stops, then starts again in a voice hesitant and low, “did you have kids?”

“Amy and I had a little girl. Juliette.”

“John...”

“You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. So if I'm a little weird sometimes, distant, or reclusive, you know it isn't because of you.”

They are quiet a long time. Then Eva says, “It must be so strange, so sad for you, this farcical little domestic arrangement Smith's imposed on you.”

“What's strange is that Smith could force me, practically at gunpoint, into the bed of an eighteen-year-old girl, and that this girl—god, you were really just a kid when you were left all on your own—that you should be this scary-smart, unbelievably strong person who's somehow managed to hold on to her dignity through an arrangement degrading beyond anything I could have imagined, before. And that after everything I've been through, I'd find myself here, with you, feeling so . . . much.”

“Do I remind you of her?” Eva asks.

He laughs softly. “In most ways, you couldn't be less like her. Except that you're both smart. And kind. But in very different ways. It's strange, how we can be drawn so strongly to such different kinds of people.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“About what?”

“Being with me. More than Smith forces you to be.”

“No. Amy...well, if she could see all this, Amy would love you for the solace, the happiness you've given me. Really, she'd be glad. I just...”

“Hmmm?”

“After Amy, the idea of being so close to someone again. It terrifies me.” In the dark they are invisible. He pulls her a little closer and gives her face a gentle nuzzle, then a tender, lingering kiss. “Why are you crying?” he asks.

Her voice breaks on a sob: “I'm so sorry, John. Sorry you lost them.”

John wraps Eva tight in his arms, lets her shuddering sobs shake his body for long, dark minutes before he breaks down, clinging to her as his sobs and tears flow into hers.

* * * *

Right away as John emerges from Smith's office it's obvious something is wrong.

The pallor of his face. The rigid jaw. But by the time he's reached Eva's door he is composed.

She greets him, naked, warm. Ardent, even. There's just one moment, as her gaze catches on a split in John's upper lip and a swelling bruise under his eye, that worry clouds her eyes. But then it's gone, and in a few hot, silent seconds she has John naked, on the love seat, caught in her kiss. After a little while he ends the kisses, the caresses.

“Eva.” She looks at him and waits. “There's something. Something specific we have to do.”

Her flush of arousal pales and her languid eyes sharpen.

“What's that?” she asks, her voice tight.

In the frank manner he uses to confess to her whatever he's ashamed of, “I'm supposed to make you go down on me.”

For a moment she is like a statue—as if she had been frozen the moment before he spoke—and no reaction registers in her expression. Then she watches him as she asks earnestly, “Before, with your lovers, they'd do that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

After an unsettled pause, he answers “Yes.”

She scoots back a few inches on his thighs and watches her own hand. John studies her face as she resumes her caress.

“I've never done it before. Do you mind teaching me?”

“No,” he breathes.

His hard cock is twitching under her hand.

“Then tell me,” she says, her voice just soft and earnest. Not playing the coquette. “Tell me you want me to.”

He pulls her to him. Holds her tight, almost desperately against him and breathes at her ear, “I want...”

Her hand goes on working over him, despite the constraint of his embrace.

“Tell me what you want me to do. Use your words.”

“I want to feel your mouth on me.”

She slips out of his arms, off his lap, and onto her knees on the floor where she's framed in the V of his thighs. From this new angle, much closer than the times before, she looks at it a moment, then tentatively, carefully, takes it in her hand. While he watches, his belly fluttering, she brings her mouth to the flushed, full dome. She caresses him first with her lips, sensing his velvety skin, his warmth. Smelling his smell.

Then she tries using her tongue, just tentatively at first, touching it faintly to him, leaving the petal-soft skin wet where she's been. And then she parts her lips and takes him between, first just bringing him a little way into the heat of her mouth, holding the rigid girth of him in the loose curve of her hand while gingerly nursing at the head. Then she sinks down on him ambitiously, eagerly. He gasps, tenses. He seeks her free hand with his and holds it. With his other hand he reaches down to caress her hair. Little by little she goes from tentative exploration to eager, ardent caressing. And then she withdraws.

“Talk to me,” she says. “Tell me what feels nice. What you want me to do.”

She takes him in her mouth again. He is quivering, quietly panting.

“Your tongue there,” he says a few seconds later. “There,” he repeats when her tongue finds the spot again.

His hand closes more tightly over hers.

“What else?” she demands in a husky whisper, leaving his spit-slick cock swaying an inch from her reddened, glossy, slightly swollen lips.

“Here,” is all he says, but he takes her hand and molds it over his balls, then uses his own hand over hers to teach her how he wants to be fondled while she goes back to work on his cock with her mouth. Sucking gently at the head for a while, then sliding the tight ring of her lips up and down his shaft, working her tongue over him.

“Does it feel good? What I'm doing?”

“Yes,” he whispers in a strained voice.

”Then let me hear you.”

He unclenches his jaw, parts his lips, lets her hear his sighs. Then his moans.

They are clues that lead her back to certain places, reward her for particular kisses. He tells her to stop, stop, stop. She stops. Looks at him.

“Come back to me. Let me finish myself,” he pants.

“No.”

“I'm going to come. Any second. You don't have to...”

“What? Swallow?”

“Yes.”

She grins and takes him into her mouth once more, more excitedly, her whole body writhing as she brings him over the finish line. She sits up. Breathing hard, trembling, he watches her swallow. Watches her face like the face of an infant trying a new pureed vegetable. Then like a child who has just eaten something on a dare.

Mischievous. Proud. Then a demure little grin. Still panting, quivering, he coaxes her up to him.

“You should have let me…”

“No. I like it.”

“The taste?”

She gives a sarcastic little laugh. “Having you so in my control like that. The taste of power, I guess.”

“You’re a strange girl.”

He says it with a tone of affection. Then he kisses her, tenderly. Deeply. Then he stops.

By her ear, so the others won't hear, he whispers, “If it would feel safe for you, if you wanted it, some time, when it's just us, I'd love to reciprocate.”

She blushes so intensely her eyes water. But when she sees his warm smile fade, when he draws a little away from her, she pulls him back and kisses him.

“We've done what we were supposed to do,” he says. “For the cameras. So we don't have to, you don't have to kiss me.”

She looks at him for a long moment.

“Aren't we past that? I like kissing you,” she tells him, her voice and her smile more shy than they've been all evening.

“I'm glad.” The sadness is not gone from his voice, but he smiles. He tells her,

“I'm sorry about tonight. That you had to do that. That I couldn't tell you sooner. Smith only told me when I was on my way. He's got this idea.”

He goes quiet. She waits, but his clenched jaw gives no sign of unclamping.

“What?”

“That it will help to keep the men in check if they can...sort of be with you, vicariously.”

“By watching you with me.”

“Yes. But also by making us act out their fantasies.”

“So, what? One of the men wanted to see me do that? That's why...”

“Yes.”

“And when one of them wants to experience me vicariously by having you beat the shit out of me?”

“Smith swears he'll strip any violence out of the...scripts. On that, I trust him.”

“I'm impressed,” she says, her voice tight. “I couldn't have imagined how this could have gotten any more twisted.” She is quiet for a while. Then, “You shouldn't come to me feeling like...”

Her eyes flick up and meet his.

“A rapist,” he says.

“You're not. If you've been honest with me—and I believe you have—then you're not. It's Smith and the others hurting us, not you hurting me. Yes?” It sounds like she's demanding allegiance rather than asking a question.

“Yes.”

“A lot of this...It's hard, letting myself like being kissed, being touched by you. I hate not having a choice. I want to hate it completely, you know? But I don't hate you.”

She strokes his face. “I...I’m fond of you, John. I trust you. And after all those months on my own out there, with no contact with anyone, being touched by you, holding you, sharing a bed with you feels good. You know that, right? I mean, you can tell, can't you?”

He gives her a tender smile. “Yes.”

“So if you can, stop feeling like our every encounter is a rape. It doesn’t feel that way to me. Okay?”

“Okay.” His voice is small. He looks worn down. Sad.

“John?” She touches his bruise, locking into his gaze. “What happened?”

He gives her a weak smile. “Nothing. Nothing to worry about.”