Lie with me.
Lips locked, the embrace is all he needs before his pace lengthens some; his strokes pick up, sliding in and out of me, his pelvic bone grinding against my sensitive bud.
I meet his kiss with a hunger I didn’t know was carving into me. I need him desperately right now, I need him to love me. So I deepen the kiss and bring my legs down to run my feet down his muscles. I find just the right position, arching my back some, and give him a nudge.
Harder, it says.
Faster, it begs.
He obliges.
Cliff starts to buck against me, a hint of desperation to his movements, his breaths coming out rougher at my mouth. We don’t kiss anymore; his lips just press against mine. Our legs, entwined, are like snakes writhing in a pit. My hands reach for him, grabbing onto any muscle I can grip.
My heat is pulsing, the swell tightening against him. It spurs a deep groan through him. He’s pistoning in and out of me, filling me to the brim. Then, just as sparks ignite deep in my belly, a sudden spread of warmth floods me.
We finish together. My cry is blissful; his comes out strained and gravelly.
Then he slumps over me, his face burying into the nook of my neck.
Lazily, I run my fingertips along his spine. His muscles jump beneath his skin.
I stay in my pretend-bubble of love and care and protection.
Not much longer now…
7
Sprawled over his chest, cheek pressed against him, I stare at the smooth caramel complexion facing me.
My mind is on the pills, though. Already, I feel the calming effects starting to creep into my bones and relaxing my muscles, but I expect a while longer before I’m hit with the bad.
This is a pleasurable way to kill time. Not just the laying together, but the ‘after’ too, because he holds me. Sort of.
His arm is loose around the small of my back, his hand resting gingerly on my waist. It’s me who cuddles up to him. And I do, with my bare leg—tangled in sheets—draped over him, my arm reaching all the way around his broad chest, my head rested beneath his collarbone.
If the moments like this were all that mattered, maybe I could be happy one day. But grimmer realities sneak into life, and that is what consumes me.
This moment between us won’t last long. Not when his unit marches through the commune and he drags me off to join them. Then, I’ll be all alone, just like I was at the sanatorium. I won’t face that again.
So I let Cliff believe he has won the battle of my life and death matters, and embrace the heat of his skin against my cheek. We swim in a light, warm silence that envelopes us entirely—
Until he speaks the thoughts apparently whirling around his head; “You have made me weak.”
I blink, my lashes catching on his chest. One by one, my muscles lock beneath my skin and, slowly, I peel myself off of him.
Moment shattered.
See? I did say they can’t last very long.
As I sit upright and hold the sheet to my chest, his onyx eyes follow me.
“Weakness is not for my kind,” he goes on, his tone low and dangerous, as though he blames me for all that he’s feeling. “It is reserved for the lesser species.”
My face crumples into a scowl that I throw down at him. “Apparently that’s my peoples’ specialty,” I spit before I shift down the bed, keeping myself covered, and grab for my fresh clothes. “You don’t let me forget it.”
“I did not mean...” he trails off with a sigh, then moves to sit up against the headboard. He watches me, the sheet shifted off of his body, his nakedness revealed so proudly. “What you did to yourself,” he says, “is not a mark of weakness, but of pride. Some of the litalves do much the same—in lost battles, standing alone, they will fall on their swords.”
As I wrestle on my underwear, I throw him a withering glare over my shoulder. I know as well as he does that he considers the litalves a ‘lesser species’ and I’m lumped in with not just them, but the humans too.
Now, I understand pieces of the puzzle that were inexplicably lost to me in all my thoughts and mulling-overs. He doesn’t simply fight his feelings for a kuri. He looks down on them—looks down on me.
And that must just tear him apart inside, how a warrior like him can lust after a mere despicable human like me; a crossbreed between the ones he loathes and the ones he despises.
Ramming my arms into the sleeves of the grey top, I mumble moodily, “Yes, they might, but I doubt your kind do the same.”
There’s a rustle of movement behind me. Then, when he speaks, his breath is hot on my shoulder. He’s shifted to kneel at my back. “You are not of my people.”
“You don’t let me forget it,” I echo my earlier words at him.
His hands find my waist before I can push off the bed. Closely followed, I feel his chin settle on my shoulder before he says, “You are angry with me.” The softness of his tone startles me still. “I am selfish, Cora-lee. Your wish to die is not one I can grant.”
“It’s what’s best for me.”
His jaw tenses against my shoulder. “It is not in my nature.”
“Hunger is in mine,” I grumble and jerk out of his hold. “So at least let me eat.”
He doesn’t stop me as I bend forward to slip on my plimsolls, then push up from the bed. But he does follow me—in all his nudity and with the lantern—out of the bedroom.
As I expected, the apartment is a modest one. Out of the door, the kitchen I’m in search of is connected to the small lounge and a tiny study nook embedded into the wall by the front door.
He shadows me into the kitchen, lingering by the counter as I dip behind the pantry door.
As I rummage through the dusty tins and packets, he says, “You want to die, but if you continue with your foul mood in my unit, then your wish might be granted.”
I slam down a tin of beans, hard. The shelf rattles.
Leaning around the door, I narrow my eyes on his stony face and blazing eyes, eyes that reflect the orange flickers of the lantern.
“Let me die,” I hiss at him, “but don’t let me be tortured or ruined or enslaved. That’s my fear—and it’s the fear you’re delivering me to.”
His lashes lower over his molten eyes. “I have already enslaved you.”
I make a face at him before I dip back into the pantry. The sooner I eat, the better. It’s a matter of urgency, really. On a full stomach, the nausea from the pills is less likely to hit me too hard. And the better I avoid it, the less I’ll be sick and tip Cliff off.
The bastard.
But my loot isn’t all that great and, in all honesty, I’m not very hungry at all. Still, I find it within myself to snack from a full packet of corn chips, switching between those and Mars bars.
There’s also an unopened bag of parmesan cheese that calls to me, but since I don’t know exactly how long the world has been lost to the attack of the dark fae and their eternal blackness, I don’t think the expiry dates can be trusted.
Digging into the corn chips, I wander out of the kitchen and into the lounge. Still by the counter with the lantern in hand, Cliff’s gaze trails me around the couch.
I find myself headed for the heavy curtains on the wall, but I know better than to peel them apart and look outside. Without the black powder, Cliff is more vulnerable to wounds should another group of survivors find and attack. From my recent experience, he has stray dark fae warriors to worry about too.