by Pam Godwin
My womb.
It contracted in response, and vertigo spun over me as the meaning of Roark’s story took hold. I had enough spots on my back to account for my sorrows, but I was no Blessed Lady. I wanted to fuck three men, not to become pregnant and save the world from its pests. I wanted to have sex with them for the carnal pleasure, the intimacy, and the possession. Because I loved them, greedy sinner that I was.
My legs felt weak, wobbly. I hardened my stance. “Ladybirds also bleed from their knees when they’re scared.” Startle one, and a foul-smelling fluid might drip from its joints. Something I’d read in the insect book I pilfered in the U.K. “What’s your point?”
He held my face in his hands, his jaw hardening into steel. “Part of me believes ye are meant to give the world this miracle, to bear a child that would be reared and trained by three men of three faiths and three weapons.”
I shook my head in his hands, working my throat to swallow the shock. “What?”
“That part of me heart belongs to God.” He pressed my cheek against his bare chest and wrapped his arms around my back.
Of course, he would apply his own theological beliefs to Annie’s forewarnings.
“But the other part…” He rested his lips against the top of my head. “The half of me heart that belongs to you wants an ultrasound to guaran-fecking-tee that no one can get ye with child. Because, prophecies aside, pregnancy will slow ye down, make ye weak and vulnerable. And we den’ know the effects of the virus on a babe. It could become sick in your womb. It could kill ye.”
A sharp pang stabbed in my chest. Like Jesse, he was torn between spiritual purpose and his need to protect me.
My exhale stuttered out. “Jesse won’t go there, and I’ll stop him—”
“He will, and you’re incapable of saying no to your guardians.” He pulled the strap off my shoulder and set my carbine on the ground. “I saw the chubbed-up look in his eye before he left.”
True, Jesse needed to get laid, and perhaps any woman would do at this point. It was a miserable thing to accept. He gave me his life, following my crusade and providing me unconditional protection. Yet he wouldn’t allow me to give him the simplest, most human thing. My body. I couldn’t take away his pain.
Roark circled his arms around me. “He’s fighting a battle he won’t win, love.” His accent dropped a few notches. “And so am I.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and pulled back to see his face. “You? What do you mean?”
His eyes lowered, hooding into emerald slivers. “I’m a man, first and foremost. And you’re…” Calloused fingers slid over my tailbone, crept under the hem of my shirt, and splayed across my spine. “The greatest words in the English language can’t begin to describe ye, but…”
As he studied me, I savored the oaky scent of his breath, waiting for some vulgar colloquialism I had no chance of decoding.
“When I look into your eyes, I den’ see yellow or green or… Is there even a name for that color? All I see is liquid sunshine.”
Wow. Okay. “That’s…” Decipherable. I kissed his lips. “Thank you.”
His hands moved over my hips, across my belly, and cupped my breasts beneath the shirt. “These are… bloody hell. Ye could breastfeed the baby Christ and all the animals around the manger.”
“Ew!” I knocked his hands away. “What’s wrong with you?”
Laughing, he gripped my butt and yanked my hips against his, grinding the hard evidence of his wrongness against my pubic bone.
“Ye have an arse on ye made for slapping.” He demonstrated, ripping a startled yelp from me. Then his big hands cupped and squeezed both cheeks. “I bet these steely muscles would break me knob on the way in.”
The fantasy of him fucking my ass suspended me somewhere between resentment and need. Resentment of his vow and a thrilling need for him to break it. I was torn. Should I shut this down? Or molest him until his rosary burned a hole through his pocket?
“Roark—”
“I want that.” He buried his face in the curve of my neck and groaned. “I want to feel wha’ it’s like to fill ye there.”
Oh, my dirty, dirty priest. His religious beliefs gave him precepts to follow, a sense of structure to live a moral life during a time of terrible violence. But the precepts he’d made for himself forbid anal sex. Which baffled my mind since he regularly, albeit guiltily, fucked my mouth.
I slid a hand over the tangle of dreads and braids and stroked the skin on his temple. “You fill me in other ways. Important ways. Like my heart.”
“It’s not enough. Not for me. I lay beside ye every night, connected to your body, aching. A man’s ache. Doc is gone. And Jesse…” He paused, considering, then moved his mouth to my ear. “I wish that I had Jesse’s girl.”
“What? I’m not—” Oh my Rick Springfield. I narrowed my eyes, unable to hold back my grin. “How long have you been waiting to use that line?”
“Too long.” He smiled. “Seriously though, I have ye all to myself now.” Leaning down, he pulled my lip between his teeth and released it. “I’ll have ye again, love. I’m not as obedient as ye might believe.”
My lungs stuck together, laboring against the thickness of the humid air and the strain in his voice. I’d grown used to the constant tension between us, accepted his self-imposed rules, and presumed sex-without-intercourse was the forever future of our relationship.
But since Michio had left, there wasn’t a night I slept without Roark, held tight in his big arms, his erection trapped between our bodies. He was a torment and a refuge. A tempter and a protector. A solid, defined boundary between right and wrong. I was so grateful for every moment I had with him, but I didn’t want to be the reason for his fall from God.
I unraveled my body from his and took a couple steps back. “You ever get the feeling that no matter what our intent is, no matter how hard we try to follow our own convictions, it’s all pointless? Like all the plans in the universe have already been determined, and the decisions we make mean nothing? Like we can’t stop what’s coming because the very energy that forms the molecules in the air, in the ground, in us, are already set on an unwavering path that ends in devastation?”
Okay, maybe I was feeling a little defeated lately. Or maybe it was just the wretched heat getting to me.
“It’s called the Great Tribulation, love.” He reached out, hooked a thumb in my belt loop, and yanked me against him. “The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke predicted the abomination of desolation and fleeing to the mountains during a time of terror, famines, and deadly disease. ‘Tis written that the scourge will affect pregnancies and children and spread throughout the flesh, save for the elect.”
Ugh. He was talking about the End Times, the return of Christ. I didn’t like what that implied.
I took a deep breath, chasing away the cringe in my shoulders. “The elect are the chosen, right? The believers? We both know I’m not a member.”
All this biblical talk was putting me on edge.
“Doesn’t matter what ye believe.” He placed his lips against the juncture of my neck and shoulder. “Ye survived, untouched by disease, an example of God’s grace. You’re the Mother of the living.”
I could argue Shea and Elaine were candidates for that role, but my voice escaped me as his hand freed the button of my jean shorts, slipped beneath the zipper, and cupped the sensitive skin between my legs. A shiver surged through me, and my inner muscles squeezed, empty, hungry.
“God portioned your heart like water,” he breathed against my neck, “so your guardians may share the chalice.”
“Pretty words for such a filthy mouth.” I gripped his huge shoulders and crashed my lips onto his, tasting salt and sweat and the delicious familiarity of Irish whiskey.
His fingers plunged exactly where I wanted him, and the tingling invasion rippled through my entire body. He shifted us, pressing my back against a metal cage, and rocked his fingers inside me, softly, more gently than the greedy thrust of h
is tongue.
There was something so honest and crude in the way he kissed, such a contrast to the delicate motion between my legs. The disciplined priest would forsake his own pleasure and finger me until I came. But the man would be needy and selfish like his kiss. He would hold me down with powerful arms, yank out his cock, and own me the way his tongue did. Ravenously. Convincingly. Unrestrained.
Priests were supposed to be trustworthy, yet I placed my body and my heart in the care of the man beneath the cassock. Because I trusted his openness, related to it, found comfort in it. Because there was no shame in his kiss. Only raw desire and love.
The unbearable heat clung to my skin. Sweat and arousal slicked my inner thighs. And my breaths coalesced with his, forming a swelter of gasps against our faces.
I lifted my hips, encouraging the thrust of his fingers. “Harder. I won’t break.”
He dragged his lips over my jaw, his whiskers scratchy and damp. “No, but I will.”
My chest collapsed, twisting with lust and hope and the pang of resentment that refused to let go.
His fingers eased from inside me, trembling as he buttoned my cutoffs. Guess that meant we were done.
As I debated the selfishness in pushing for more, the tease that was Roark moved in, so close his lips brushed my face. “We’ll finish this later. Our visitor looks as pained as the back of me bollix.”
Visitor? I spun around and peered through the holes of a tall cage.
Jesse stood inside the doorway, fingers clenched around the bow strap that crossed his chest. His discomfort was palpable in the hunch of his shoulders, the hollows of his cheeks, the shadow of his furrowed brow, and the taut slash of his mouth.
But I also recognized arousal. It hooded his eyes as he watched me move around the cage. It staggered his inhale as I approached, holding his gaze. It made me feel bolder, more decisive, as I raised a hand and placed my palm over his rigid jaw.
My insides throbbed, pooling heat to my center, left unsatisfied by Roark and now focused on the man before me.
His nostrils flared, his eyes burning me from the inside out. “Shea’s ready to see an aphid. I need you.” He turned and walked out, tossing over his shoulder, “Southeast tree line.”
I sighed. Yeah, he needed me. To beckon an aphid, to control it so Shea could get a good look, to prepare her for weapons training, or whatever the task list might be. But to demand he needed me for himself? That went against his martyrdom. If he did lose the battle, he would survive, but how badly would he get hurt in the process? He was strong enough to endure my death, if it came to that. But was he strong enough to withstand the guilt?
Roark’s hand rested against my spine, his body a furnace beside mine.
I turned my neck and kissed his shoulder. “How long was he here?”
“The entire time. He’s a perv, that one.”
“Says the priest with pussy juice on his fingers.”
He popped two in his mouth and licked them clean, grinning.
What a troublemaker. He’d shoved those fingers inside me, knowing Jesse was watching.
I grabbed the carbine from the floor and walked to the door. “You need to stop taunting him. He’s struggling enough as it is.”
Matching my strides, he squinted against the sun’s glare and laced his fingers with mine. “His struggle is headed toward a desperate end, Evie. I want to be there when it happens.”
I pushed sweat-soaked hair from my face. “Why?”
Was he afraid Jesse would take me forcefully?
He shrugged. “I like to watch.”
A snarl sounded deep in the woods, punctuating the waspy buzz soughing through my insides.
I’d walked here to summon an aphid, and my heightened senses instantly latched onto one without effort, tracing a direct line to its location. “Five o’clock. About forty yards in, headed our way.”
Jesse strode from Shea’s side and paced toward me with determined steps, his hand already on his bow, sliding it off his perfect shoulders. “How many?”
Despite his nap earlier, dark bruises smudged his eyes. He carried himself with a high degree of intensity and strength, but the stiffness in his face and arms marked his fatigue. He was going to get some sleep tonight, even if I had to knock him out to make that happen.
“One aphid.” I reached out with my mind, probing the vicinity for more. “I’ll try to isolate it if others show up.”
I glanced at Shea, taking in her restless hands and tense shoulders. I’d killed hundreds if not thousands of these nasty things, but watching someone lay their eyes on one for the first time was like experiencing my first all over again. The bulbous head, cricket-like legs, sucking mouthparts, and the putrid stink of lizard skin were unnerving enough. But the twitchy, inhuman way they moved could make a grown man—as Roark would say—pass a motion in his knickers.
So yeah, my heart pounded and my palms slicked with sweat in anticipation of reliving that day in my backyard, when my first aphid encounter ended in a terrifying struggle at the bottom of my pool.
Jesse reached for the handgun on my thigh, and I gripped his arm, stopping him.
“Shea should shoot with the carbine.” I offered mine from my back. “It’ll give her confidence.”
Elaine had refused to touch a gun or a knife, but as Jesse held the carbine out to Shea, she snatched it from his hand and turned it over, studying it. There wasn’t a hint of alarm in her thoughtful expression. No fear. No reluctance. I fucking loved that.
“Ever shot a gun?” I brushed a hand over the knives on my arm, already missing the weight of the carbine.
She shook her head and swatted at a fly on her skinny thigh. “Jackson always shot the tranquilizer guns.”
Jesse spent a few seconds instructing her how to use it. Basic weapons safety to ensure she didn’t shoot herself or us, but nothing so detailed as to prepare her for a gunfight. That would come later, if the next few moments didn’t scare the bajeezus out of her.
The lone aphid in the forest emitted a burst of ghastly signals, vibrating a hunger cry through my gut, seemingly as aware of me as I was of it.
I nodded to Roark, assuming he would be my energy source. “Two minutes tops before it breaches the clearing.”
Roark stepped into position, then stopped at the bark of Jesse’s voice. “I have Evie.”
A blond brow inched up Roark’s forehead. “Do ye now?”
Surprisingly, Roark backed away and even waved a hand at me in invitation.
Jesse yanked off his shirt and slid in behind me, his bow hovering across my chest as if he was unsure what to do with it. His body tensed around my back, and he dropped the weapon, his hands falling to my hips. “Your shirt.”
Taking it off would leave me nude from the waist up, but Jesse and Roark had seen it all before. Tallis and Georges were out of eyeshot, keeping watch somewhere on the reserve and holding the perimeter in place, which was impressive by any standards. They’d set up crude booby traps and audible alarms—like rattling aluminum cans—and monitored the vast property through scopes. In the week we’d been there, only a handful of mutants had slipped through, and they’d been taken down before they sneaked up on us.
I pulled my shirt over my head and leaned back against Jesse’s chest. The humid air thickened the sheen of sweat on my skin and trickled between my breasts. “Shea, I’ll have complete control over the bug.”
That morning in her bedroom, I had explained how this worked, including the skin-to-skin contact.
A swallow bobbed in her throat.
“The gun is to help you feel safe, but you don’t have to use it, okay?” My stomach clenched against the telepathic drone of the aphid. “It’s coming. Just on the other side of that forked tree.”
Her eyes darted to Roark’s sword as he slowly unsheathed it and stepped behind her.
Jesse’s hands slid across my belly, hot and slick, inching upward until his thumb rested against my breastbone. His fingers curved beneath the unde
rside of my scarred breast.
“Do you have control of it, darlin’?” he asked in that southern twang of his.
I licked my lips. “You’re distracting me.”
His chest pressed closer against my back, his breaths becoming louder, shorter. “You better get un-distracted real quick.”
Grrr. I wanted to hip-check him, but the bushes at the edge of the woods rustled with movement, startling a flock of birds in the canopy.
Twenty feet before us, a low growl rumbled over the ground, followed by the blur of a mutated body erupting from the overgrowth. All-white eyes scanned our group and locked on me.
Focusing on my contact points—my back against Jesse’s chest, his hands and arms on my ribs, and his mouth resting against my neck—I tapped his masculinity. A trickle of heat seeped from his skin to mine and crashed into hot waves through my body. A bright light flashed behind my eyes, dizzying, intoxicating, tingling across my jaw and gathering in my chest.
I coiled my mind around the energy, wove it through the aphid connection, and silently pushed the command. Closer. Slowly.
A soundless hum rippled between me and the growling creature. The tiny bristles on its translucent skin stiffened, sensing my transmission. Snot dribbled over its oblong jaw, and segmented feet dragged forward, scraping yellow talons through the dirt.
I peeked at Shea, and her muscles were frozen in shock. The only thing that moved was the carbine, trembling in her hand.
Roark leaned over her shoulder, whispering something that made her chin bob tightly. Then he stepped to her side with the sword in a two-fisted grip. If I lost my focus, he would take the creature’s head without a moment’s hesitation.
I continued to guide the bug forward, siphoning Jesse’s vitality and mentally reciting directions. Ten feet away, Stop bloomed in my chest and tumbled along the invisible leash.
The aphid paused, lowering on double-jointed legs, and a tremor shook its hands, which weren’t hands at all. Its fingers were fused together, curled into hooks, like misshapen pincers.
