Dead of Eve (29 page)

I rocked in his lap, calves sawing against his back. We found a rhythm and the pleasure built. My body tensed, prepared to unfurl. Our tongues disentangled.

“Come with me,” he mouthed.

I tightened my arms around his neck. I was there, teetering, nodding.

My back hit the mattress. Muscles trembled above me. Hips met mine, over and over. The pace became harder, more impassioned.

“Now
.
” His exhale heated my cheek.

Deep inside me, his cock enlarged, stilled, released. Submerged in his groans, his scrunched face, the fists in my hair, and the drugging grind of his pelvis against my clit, my cry joined his and I followed, riding his tremors, fully sated.

When I came back to myself, I pushed against the hard muscle crushing me. It didn’t move.

“Roark?”

A snore answered. Still buried inside me, his cock twitched. As I succumbed to orgasm-induced sleep, I basked in our connection, his body in mine, his perceptive ability to read my mind, and the way he wound himself around my heart.

The cave bled around me. I rolled, met the gentle features of a woman’s face. Her eyes were closed. I shook her shoulders. Her head wobbled and detached from her body.

My heart pounded. Her body lay gutted. Her womb turned inside out. Bile filled my throat.

Laughter echoed. Black boots approached, kicking the swishing hem of a sable cape. “Shh. Do not fear Allah. You are a necessary instrument in my design.”

My eyes snapped open, lungs pumping, my hands searching the bed beside me. Empty. I sat up.

Roark stood from the prayer bench, dressed in full cassock, rosary twisted through his fingers, expression severe. It occurred to me then, he dressed that way when he meant business.

I swallowed past a parched throat. “What’s with the fuck-all mood?” I glanced at our supplies, packed and waiting by the hall. “Is it the trip today? Or something else?” Please don’t let that be resentment in his eyes.

He perched a hip next to mine and cupped my face. “Was that a nightmare?”

I nodded. “They’ve been worse.”

His hand dropped, fisted. “Bloody hell. I’m sorry. I was…” His eyes flicked to the prayer bench then the floor. “Do ye still want to leave today?”

“Yes. You?”

“Ready when ye are.” He smiled, but the mirth was missing from his eyes.

I slid a finger under his white collar and tugged. “What’s this about?”

He rose, a pained expression twisting his beautiful face. “I’m a man of God. Least I can do is dress like one.” Taking long strides, he swept toward the hall.

Unease boiled to realization. “Oh my fucking God. You regret it? You regret what we did?”

He froze, turned. “Ye should find another blasphemy. Coming from a non-believer, that one sounds hollow.”

Fire swept through my bloodstream. I marched toward him, gloriously naked, aware of the remnants of sex crusting my thighs and how my tits bounced with every stomp. I put my face in his and shoved him. The mountain didn’t move.

“You self-righteous fucker.” I shoved again. “Whose name were you groaning while pumping your saintly dick in me?” I cupped my chest. “‘Oh, Evie. Oh, love.’ Certainly wasn’t your god’s. You fucking enjoyed it and that makes you feel like a rat-bastard.”

His eyes flared, face crimson.

My heart hit the floor and shattered into a million pieces. My voice came out whispered, broken. “You’re safe with your vow. I’m going alone.”

A hiss whistled through his teeth. “Ballix. I vowed to protect ye, if it’s the last vow I can hold.” He stepped back. “I’ll be waiting by the door.” Then he spun, leaving a tornado of emotional debris in his wake.

In the truck, loaded with food, ammo and petrol, our journey north took us through rippling moors and quaint villages. The drive was tedious, dodging men and aphids. And the brooding priest beside me made it worse.

He wouldn’t talk about the barbed-wire wall erected between us. His silence only stabbed the spikes further in my wound.

When I pushed, he jerked the truck over and foraged for additional supplies. These unnecessary stops resulted in risky battles with aphids, so I stopped pressing.

At night, we slept in the truck, two feet apart. Might as well have been sleeping in separate countries.

So, why hadn’t I shaken free of him? It was as easy as holding the carbine to his head and swiping the keys.

Memories of his drunken laughter, his innocent smile, and his not so innocent lips formed a knot in my gut, replacing the fury there. In my fucked up mind, I convinced myself he was just a sentinel. Someone to watch my back.

Weak. I was so fucking weak.

Several days and seven hundred kilometers later, we reached the basin of the River Tweed, which bordered England and Scotland. We didn’t know how we were going to cross the Atlantic to Iceland, but he planned to filch a boat and use the ferry route to Northern Ireland. The same route he took two years prior when the outbreak forced him afield.

He sat upon a stone wall that edged a moss covered bridge and watched me bathe in the stream below. “Ye think that bloody Lakota is shadowing ye?”

I glared at him and forced myself a final dunk in the frigid water. Maybe the naked show would make his dick so hard it would crack and fall off.

“Would we know if he was following?” he asked.

“Nope.”

I waded out, flushing a nuthatch bird from its pecking spot.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. Our interactions were so attuned, we could communicate with the exchange of a look or slight gesture. As we shared a glance across the space between us, we knew the other’s hurt. We didn’t need to vocalize feelings or hash out issues. What we needed was an impossible solution.

The sun dipped below the lea that stretched beyond the bluff we parked on. The night was made darker by the wall of clouds charging in.

An hour later, sleet pounded, drenching our clothes and chasing us into the shelter of a limestone cave.

Settled and dried on our bedroll, he sat beside me, his outstretched hand offering an opened can of chili and a spoon.

“Are ye well?” he asked, five days behind.

I snorted.

“This land reminds me of me boyo home.”

It rained a lot in that climate, which kept the aphids away. But who fucking cared? “We need to talk.”

He dug a spoon in my can then slipped it between his lips, that talented tongue licking both sides. “I know.”

My eyes went back to our dinner. Why the hell was I torturing myself? I wanted him, but I couldn’t have him. More painful silence stretched between us.

He set down his spoon. “Right then. I’ll go first.”

Hands gripped my shoulders, pulled my back to his chest, and legs straddled my sides. His breath teased my nape.

My reaction was to explode in a whirlwind of attacking limbs, but it only came out as a flinch and a sputtering broken heart. Never mind days of pent up anger. It was comforting to be close to him. I reprimanded myself, but didn’t pull away. I missed him and that was that.

“I den’ regret making love to ye. It was brilliant, amazing. Sacred.” He sucked in a breath. “I will never forget it.”

My chest constricted. “That sounds…final.”

His brow touched my shoulder. “I’m still a priest.” A heavy sigh. “A priest in love with a beautiful woman. I broke me vow. Doesn’t make it go away. I just have to try harder.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. In love? Had I become so greedy as to try to turn him away from his god or prevent him from being the man he wanted to be? But I’d felt his desire, he’d been there with me, every step of the way. “So the ladybugs, the song, the magnetism between us…that means nothing?”

His arms snaked around me, squeezed. “It means everything. Wha’ we have”—his hand pressed against my chest—“this bond won’t go away. I can’t stomach the idea of not holding ye, laughing and fighting with ye, kissing ye—”

I shoved his hand away. “Kissing me?”

“Friends kiss.”

Friends. “So I let you kiss me and paw me and pretend your steel hard dick—which is currently stabbing my back—doesn’t exist?”

He groaned. “Aye right.”

I spun in his arms and raised a brow. “And I can prance around naked, use my bullet in bed beside you as long as fiery, sweaty sex remains off the table?”

A bulge bounced in his throat. “Ye wen’ make this easy, em? The answer’s the same.”

I climbed to my feet, a heaping dose of doubt fortifying my stance. “Problem is, Father Molony, we’ve moved beyond friendship. The little ditty you brought to light—you know, the shivering dance of electricity you feel under our
friendly
touches?—I can’t ignore that. So, while you’re clinging to your celibacy, remember one thing. I took no such vow. You being unavailable makes me available to others.” The thought made me sick.

His gaze drifted up, eyes insoluble despite the wetness there. “I told ye. I den’ expect the same in return.”

I wasn’t sure if I was more hurt by his rejection or the fact that he accepted me sleeping with another man. The agony of it pivoted my boots, sent me tearing through the pelting rain.

Lightening illuminated a rapeseed field in a golden glow. The protection of the rain ensured no aphids. I took advantage of the respite and ran through the sodden stems, leaves clinging to my jeans. On and on I went. My legs softened and my body shook with chills.

Eventually, exhaustion won and I found myself trudging toward the truck, slumping behind the wheel and fighting sleep as the miserable fucking night forced itself upon me.

Tap-tap.

I shivered awake. Curtained by the night sky, stars speckled through the windshield. The rain had moved out, which meant the aphids would move in.

Hard muscle curled around me. Oh, hell no. How had I not heard him climb into the truck?

I tugged his arm from under my shirt and turned it over to read his watch. I blinked and read it again. Almost sunrise. I tossed his arm.

Though his breaths hiccupped, his rigid jaw—which had been locked for days in resolution—was at ease under the pull of gravity. Whiskers shadowed the perfect sculpture of his face. I reached out. Just one stroke—

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

A fingernail on glass. I scrambled up Roark’s chest and away from the driver’s side window. Darkness hovered on the other side. I shook his shoulders. “Wake up.”

The smooth pace of his breaths in sleep didn’t falter. I shook him again. “Roark. Roark?” His head lolled against the back of the seat. I turned back to the window. Yellow-green eyes glowed over the door.

Come away, O human child:

To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

William Butler Yeats

My pulse kept its frantic beat as the glowing discs dimmed and melted into the dark. I hauled the carbine sling over my head and climbed out. Roark didn’t stir.

The black sky fused with the black landscape and seemed to drain the winter chill from the air. My socks warmed against the dry ground. Dry? How could that be?