The Pulse: Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy

by Shoshanna Evers

  “Potatoes!” she repeated, smiling. “That’s perfect.”

  Mason snapped open his utility knife and stabbed deep into the can, carefully tearing it open. “We can cook them in the can,” he offered.

  “Um, I know this seems gross, but there are some metal bedpans,” Emily said. “They’re sterilized, I swear. It might make a good pot for potato soup.”

  Mason frowned. Why not. “Sure.”

  Emily came back a moment later with an admittedly clean metal bedpan and started boiling water to add the canned potatoes to. She turned to him. “We shouldn’t watch the water boil, it will take longer.”

  He laughed, but as she came up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, his face grew serious. “What are you doing?”

  “Helping you pass the time,” she said, looking up into his face with a small smile.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked. He couldn’t have her coming onto him out of a misguided sense of obligation.

  “I—you’ve been so nice to me. I want to return the favor.”

  He pushed her away, gently. “No. No thank you.”

  She looked confused, hurt. “You don’t like me.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want you prostituting yourself.”

  “That’s what I am to you, huh?” she asked bitterly. “A prostitute.”

  Mason sighed. It had been a long time since he’d had to keep up any sort of conversation, and apparently his skills, if he ever had any, were fading with time spent alone—first in prison, then on the streets after the EMP.

  “I don’t care what you are,” he said. “You do what you have to do to survive. But not—not with me. I don’t want you thinking you have to sleep with me in exchange for protection.”

  “Don’t I, though?” she asked, her voice deadly calm. “You won’t come with me. You don’t want me around. How can I convince you to keep me safe? What do I need to do?”

  She pulled her shirt off then, exposing her small breasts, the nipples immediately hardening in the cool air.

  Mason turned away from Emily, heat rising in his face at the sight of her naked breasts, and groaned inwardly. She was making this difficult for him.

  Damn it.

  He felt her hands on his back, touching his shoulders through the thin material of his T-shirt. He had to stop her, had to show her this was not the way.

  Growling, he turned and faced her, pulling her toward him with such ferocity she gasped.

  “Is this what you want?” he hissed. “To be used for my pleasure, just so I’ll take care of you? Is this what you want?”

  She trembled in his arms and he realized a tear had rolled down her cheek. It left a clean streak through the light dusting of soot that smudged her face.

  Emily pulled away. Turning her back on him, she picked up the can of potatoes with shaking hands and emptied it into the now boiling water.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, picking her shirt up off the floor. “Here, put this on.”

  She took it from him, not looking him in the eye. She’d wiped away her tears, but her face held a stony determination that concerned him.

  “What’s wrong, Emily?”

  “I can’t go back to the Tracks.”

  “No one says you have to.”

  “But you won’t go with me.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I can’t leave. I won’t.”

  Emily nodded, looking into the pot of soup. “I appreciate that you aren’t forcing me to… earn my keep. But, I want to. I really do.”

  Mason wished he could plug his ears like a child so he didn’t have to listen to her tempting him.

  He could ravish her right then and there on the floor if he chose to—why did she push him? “You should be glad I’m leaving you be.”

  * * *

  Emily ate her hot potato soup, enjoying it even more since she wasn’t as starving as usual.

  Mason looked at her. “You can’t leave, Emily.”

  She paused with the mug halfway to her lips at this pronouncement. “I have to. I have no choice.”

  “You do have a choice,” he said, setting his mug down. “Come stay with me.”

  Stay with him? The thought sounded lovely—and frightening. She still had no idea what sort of criminal he’d been.

  He seemed so… good, though, deep down. Like maybe he had gotten caught up in some sort of burglary by accident as a young man, but now he was reformed. Maybe truly regretted whatever he did that had sent him to Rikers.

  Could she live with a criminal? She glanced at him, sipping from her mug to give herself time to answer.

  “Why,” she asked, “do you want me to stay with you if you have no intention of sleeping with me?”

  He scowled. “Then don’t stay with me. I don’t care. I just—I wanted to give you an option.”

  “I can’t stay in New York. They’ll catch me,” she said finally. “I have to leave.”

  “You may as well shoot yourself now, then.”

  Emily gasped. “What are you talking about?”

  “You need me to protect you, you said it yourself. And since I’m not leaving, you shouldn’t either. That’s all.” He looked away. “Forget I said anything.”

  He was probably right. She could die escaping on her own. But what choice did she have? If she stayed in New York the military would find her. And she would definitely be killed then, or worse.

  She couldn’t—wouldn’t—go back to Grand Central.

  They ate in awkward silence. Emily enjoyed the soup, perfect on a cold morning. Funny how her tastes had changed since the Pulse.

  She wanted to sneak off and listen to the radio, to try to get it to work for her. She had been too scared to mess around with it when she first stole it, but now it beckoned her from her worn backpack, calling for her to fiddle with it.

  Why did this radio work, when none of the others did?

  And how, how on earth could something be broadcast on the radio? Wasn’t every place hit as bad as New York City? If the attack hadn’t devastated all of America, then help would have arrived by now. The silence from the rest of the country was a deafening testament to the scope of destruction.

  “Mason?” she asked, sipping the last of the soup out of her mug.

  He looked at her warily, as if he was afraid she might try to jump his bones again. “What?”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “What happened, when?”

  “The attack. The war, I guess. One minute everything was… normal…”

  Mason nodded and she paused, allowing herself the luxury of reminiscing for a moment. She had taken it all for granted. Electricity. Running water. Cars. If she could get it all back, she’d be grateful every time she flipped a light switch or turned on a faucet.

  “The next thing I know,” she continued, “we were all thrown back to the dark ages. I know it was the Pulse. I mean, an EMP. But I don’t get it, not really. Why doesn’t anything work? Why didn’t generators kick on? Why haven’t they been able to get the power back on like it used to be?”

  “That’s a lot of questions,” he murmured.

  “Do you even know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

  Emily looked at him with interest. His tousled hair fell in his face but she resisted the urge to sweep it out of his eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You just hear… nuclear. And it makes you think—well, when everyone started saying there’d been a nuclear strike against the US, I really expected—something different, I guess.”

  “Like what?”

  “Explosions. Mushroom clouds. Fallout. Radiation sickness…” She looked into her empty mug and sighed. “But there wasn’t anything like that.”

  “No,” Mason agreed. “I imagine they fired just one nuke, right above the center of Kansas. If they shot it up high enough into the atmosphere, there wouldn’t be any explosion or even fallout. Just a big ol’ Pulse, wiping out everything.”


  “The generators too, though? I mean, that was everyone’s backup plan for a big power outage.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s how I got out of Rikers. Everything got fried.”

  But what about the secret radio? she wondered. Why—how does that still work? “Is it possible some things still work, though?”

  She didn’t trust him yet to tell him her secret, but hopefully she could get enough information out of him without making him suspicious.

  “Well, old cars, as you know. If they didn’t have computer chips in them, they were okay. And some people prepared for an EMP and put some stuff—walkie-talkies, radios, that sort of thing—into a Faraday cage.”

  Her face must have registered her confusion, because Mason explained what he meant.

  “Yeah, it protects stuff inside from an EMP. People made them themselves, you know—survivalists, that sort of type.”

  “How the hell do you know about this stuff?” she asked. Then it hit her.

  Oh God—he’s in the military after all, she realized. How else could he know? She stood up suddenly, stumbling over her feet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, not trusting her voice. Of course he didn’t want her to leave. If she left, he’d never find the stolen radio. How could she have been so naïve? She never should have trusted him.

  “I—nothing’s wrong,” she lied. “I just—” Her pulse raced as Mason stood up, towering over her.

  This is why he didn’t want me to leave. This is why he told me to stay with him.

  She felt panicked, her breath closing up as she struggled to wrap her mind around the danger in which she had inadvertently placed herself. Emily took a shaky breath, stepping backward.

  He leaned down, capturing her mouth with his. “Stay with me,” he whispered against her lips.

  “No, Mason,” she gasped. His mouth left her panting lips, kissing her neck, running his hands down her arms. “I—I—” All rational thought left her as he pulled her shirt off her, up over her head, and tossed it on the floor. “I thought you didn’t want me.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I want you,” he said softly, dropping his hand to her breast, running his fingers over her nipple. “I need to make sure you want me.”

  She did want him. She’d never desired anyone more in her life… but he terrified her.

  What if the very man she had asked to protect her turned out to be the enemy? Even if he wasn’t army, he was a criminal.

  So if she shouldn’t be doing this, then why did everything feel so damn good?

  Her nipples hardened under his tender caress. He stepped closer, pressing his hard thigh between her legs, forcing them wide, pushing against her throbbing clit through her jeans.

  He rubbed her between her legs, running his hands up her inner thighs, stopping briefly—too briefly—to rub her pussy through her clothing.

  “I need to know you want me,” he repeated, sliding his hand into her waistband. “Are you wet for me?”

  Oh yes. She could feel the moisture pooling even now, as he slid his thumb across her mound, running his fingers over her wet core.

  “I do want you,” she admitted, even though it seemed painfully clear. He rubbed her clit and her pussy clenched in anticipation.

  “I know that now,” he said. “So if you really want me… you can see I want you.”

  Emily’s knees went weak at his words, and his fingers—oh God, his fingers kept going, building a steady rhythm that had her panting with need.

  Suddenly he looked around and said, “I can’t fuck you on a cold, dirty hospital floor. There’s gotta be a proper bed around here.”

  “Of course,” she said, nearly wailing as he removed his hand from her jeans. “Down the hall, we can go into a room and use a hospital bed.”

  He picked her up, holding her against his chest. She laid her head on his muscular torso, feeling his heart beating steadily beneath her cheek. She loved the feel of being held in his arms as he carried her down the corridor, his head swiveling right and left as he searched for an appropriate location to consummate their lust.

  “Perfect,” he murmured, carrying her over the threshold into a small private hospital room with what looked like a clean bed. He tossed her on her back so she lay with her legs draped over the side. “Hold on to the rail,” he ordered.

  Gripping the cold metal rail, she held fast as he shimmied her jeans off her legs, leaving her naked, the scent of her arousal filling the air.

  He tore his own shirt off and she smiled. He was so incredible-looking—

  —what if he’s the enemy—

  —don’t trust him, this is all a trap—

  No! She thrust the thoughts out of her mind. It didn’t matter what he did to her, she’d never reveal her secrets before she was ready, if ever. So what was the harm in having a little much-needed fun first? She could always leave after. But now… now she needed him. All of him.

  He buried his face in her pussy and latched on to her clit like he was starving.

  Spreading her thighs as wide as they could go, he licked her again and again until she climaxed, the waves of her orgasm washing over her like a dam had broken.

  Her body spasmed as he hoisted himself over her, straightening her out on the bed so their bodies touched.

  His weight felt so right, so good, as he held himself up a bit on his elbows, staring into her eyes. Mason kissed her then, and she tasted herself on his lips. The taste of her own pussy drove her wild with need and she circled her hips up against his cock.

  She could feel the hard, throbbing length of him as he kept her pinned beneath him. A tiny drip of pre-come dripped down her inner thigh and she moaned.

  “Please, Mason, fuck me. I need you in me.”

  * * *

  Mason hovered over her, doubt suddenly clouding his mind. Was this right? He was taking advantage of her. But her moans, her writhing beneath him—he groaned, his cock millimeters from her moist cunt.

  “You want this?” he asked, one last time.

  “God yes,” she whimpered, and he thrust himself inside her. Her pussy clenched around him and he had to struggle to go slowly, to ease into her, opening her to him.

  She felt so good… too good. He slowed even more, pulling out to the head of his cock, and slid into her again, feeling the wet heat surround him.

  How could he let this girl leave?

  Staring down into her beautiful brown eyes, he knew if he let her go he’d never forgive himself. What happened to his sister Stephanie might happen to Emily, and then what?

  He shook his head, pushing the thought of Stephanie out of his mind. He wanted to focus completely on Emily now.

  He slid his hands beneath her ass, massaging the warm flesh as he gripped her ass cheeks hard, pulling her up, tilting her pelvis so he pounded into her in a way that made her face flush as she gasped.

  “You like that?”

  “Don’t stop, Mason, don’t stop,” she begged, clutching his shoulders as he kept up the pace. Her body stiffened and then relaxed in his arms, her pussy clenching his cock spasmodically as she climaxed.

  Grunting, he pulled out of her. He was going to come soon too, and he wanted to see her mouth on his cock before he did.

  Straddling her head, Mason pressed his cock against her lips. She opened her mouth hungrily, sucking his cock past her lips as if she could read his mind.

  “Swallow it all, Emily,” he said, holding her head still with his hands as he fucked her mouth. She murmured her agreement eagerly and the vibration of her throat made him come, crying out with desire as she sucked every last drop from him.

  He carefully extricated himself from her mouth and lay next to her on the narrow bed, still breathing heavily. He hadn’t had sex in a long time. Too long—and he’d never had sex that good.

  There was something about Emily that turned him on in a way no other woman had. “It’s been so long for me,” he said, barely aware he’d spoken aloud.

&nb
sp; “Because you were in prison,” she said softly.

  Mason sighed. She deserved the truth—if she knew the truth, she could make a decision as to whether or not she wanted him around like she thought she did. If he didn’t tell her why he’d been in prison, it was as bad as lying to her. She had to know.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I know you won’t hurt me, Mason,” she whispered.

  “No,” he agreed. “I won’t ever hurt you.”

  “So tell me.”

  Sighing, he looked up at the cracked white ceiling. “I was at Rikers waiting to be sentenced. They were gonna ship me upstate.”

  “For what?”

  “Murder.”

  She stifled a gasp. “But—but, you were innocent, right? You didn’t do it?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I did it.”

  “Was it—a crime of passion?”

  He wondered if she thought a crime of passion was more forgivable. After all, some people could understand the idea of snapping, temporary insanity—but it was still murder. He had to tell her what really happened. She deserved the truth.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But either way it doesn’t change the outcome.”

  “How do I know you won’t kill me, if not now, then—at some point in the future?”

  He laughed, but she looked dead serious. “I don’t go around killing people for fun, you know. I’m not a serial killer or something.”

  “Can you promise me—can you swear to God you’ll never kill anyone again?”

  Mason thought about it. His first instinct was to say yes, he promised—but he never made a promise he couldn’t keep, and if anyone ever tried to hurt Emily, he’d kill them. Simple as that. So no, he couldn’t promise.

  He shook his head. “There are reasons for killing, Emily. I’m sure that doesn’t make sense to a girl like you, but… there are reasons to kill.”

  * * *

  Emily lay as still as she could in the bed next to Mason. She couldn’t believe what she had just learned. He was an actual murderer?

  It was worse—way worse—than she could have imagined. How could she trust him with her safety now? But then, how could she not?