Blood of Eve

by Pam Godwin

  Roark sat with his back against the wall of the van, one knee bent, his hand moving over Darwin’s pelt as he watched me with the wary look a husband might’ve given his wife when she turned into a nymph. Like I was going to suck the blood from his soul, but he loved me too much to stop me.

  I crawled over to him, made myself at home in his lap, and hugged his neck.

  A relieved breath stumbled past his lips, and he cautiously moved his arms around my hips. “After everything you’ve been through…”

  “Shhh.” I ran my hands through his hair and nuzzled his neck, showing him without words I was fine. We were fine.

  He kissed my temple, his accent nursing the words. “I didn’t want to do it.”

  “I know.”

  He leaned his head back until our foreheads touched, my hair falling in a curtain around us as he whispered, “I’ll make it up to ye tonight.”

  Wouldn’t be any different from any other night for the past two weeks. Whether we were sleeping in the van, an abandoned building, or beneath the moon, he, Jesse, and I managed to find an hour or two of privacy. Just one of the many security advantages of traveling with a band of soldiers.

  My lips meandered across his cheek, bringing my mouth to his ear. “What position are we going to try tonight?”

  His breathing picked up. “I’m going to ride ye from behind while you’re licking Jesse’s balls.”

  The huskiness in his whisper reverberated between my legs.

  He kissed my lips, and all the air seemed to circulate toward him. “Then Jesse’s going to flatten ye while I watch.”

  Any lingering anger I might’ve harbored vanished with those words. Yeah, maybe I was an easy lay, but I’d never been a casual lover. When I gave my body, my heart went with it. Jesse and Roark were part of me. They’d become my sanctuary, and now that I had them, I wanted to spend as much time as I could in the refuge of their arms.

  That night, Roark made good on his promise. In the secured wing of a dilapidated hotel, I writhed beneath Jesse’s weight as Roark lay spent beside us, catching his breath.

  The mattress groaned with the force of Jesse’s thrusts, the fire in his gaze burning me everywhere it touched. I reached for Roark’s cock, knowing how hungrily his arousal fed on the sight and movement of our bodies. Once he recharged, he would join us again. But I couldn’t wait. Jesse had hit the right spot, the perfect tempo, and my orgasm was seconds from reach.

  Just as I was about to fall over the edge, the tingling low in my belly took on the ugliest form. Dozens of aphid vibrations broke through my concentration.

  Darwin’s head popped up from the floor. He sprung toward the closed door, whining and pacing in front of it. Muffled footsteps pounded on the other side and faded down the hallway, followed by shouting.

  “Fuck.” Jesse slowed the roll of his hips then stopped, his jaw clenching.

  I knew the aphids could sense my arousal, something to do with the pheromones I sent out, but it had been so long since they’d disrupted me in a moment like this.

  Staring up at Jesse, at his just-fucked hair, at the frustration replacing the heavy-lidded look in his eyes, I didn’t want this to end. I always hated those green bastards, but dammit, I really hated them right now.

  Just die already!

  The vibrations in my belly vanished. Just like that, every single one of them blinked out at the same time. Poof. Gone. I gripped my stomach, as if I could somehow find the sensations with my hands.

  “Evie?” Jesse pulled out of me and glanced around the room.

  “Wha’ is it?” Roark joined Jesse’s side, his gaze sliding to the door.

  It crashed open, and Link stormed in, his clothes covered in black blood and hunks of fleshy pieces.

  I yanked the sheet over my body, but his eyes were distracted, staring at—I glanced over my shoulder—nothing?

  “An army of aphids got past our perimeter.” His dark gaze leveled on me. “Then their bodies simultaneously exploded from the inside out.”

  Dressed and armed with my blades and bow, I stood in the lobby of the three-story hotel, taking in the scene piece by piece, and there was a lot of foul, unrecognizable pieces. I covered my nose with my hand, but the signature stench of rancid aphid bowels seeped in with my inhales and made me gag.

  Across the dimly lit room, a man bent at the waist and retched on the floor. The dozen or so guys standing around holding flashlights and kerosene lamps looked just as green around the gills.

  I didn’t blame them. Bits of organs, bone fragments, and ripped flesh clung to the walls and broken furniture. Double-jointed legs scattered here and there, still identifiable yet no longer attached to a body.

  I gagged again, repulsed and baffled. Surely I didn’t cause the aphids to self-destruct? I willed them dead all the time, but I didn’t have the power to make it happen. Maybe the Drone was behind this? Or the aphids did it to themselves? But that didn’t make sense.

  Darwin traipsed through the guts, nose to the floor, rooting through the entrails. I cringed, thinking about all the crap he would track into bed. Not sure why I cared about something as insignificant as dirty paws. We would all need a good scrubbing after this.

  Link strode by, shining a flashlight at the gore and shouting at the men. “Start digging through the shit. Look for anything that might tell me what happened here.”

  “Like what?” one of the men asked.

  “I don’t know, a beating heart or a footprint or the goddamned magic ring of invisibility.” He aimed the beam at a row of men, their pale, nauseated faces stark in the glare of the light.

  Most of the men were half-dressed, wearing boxers and holding axes, as if they had woken when the security was breached and grabbed the nearest weapon.

  “Hurry up!” Link shouted. “I don't want to see anything but assholes and elbows until this place is picked clean.”

  A few feet away, Shea’s posture mirrored mine, her hand over her nose, her tall frame bracketed by Paul and Eddie. In the front of the lobby, the boards that had covered the doors lay broken and splintered on the carpet. The aphids had been in a hellfire hurry to barge in. Only to blow up?

  “Wha’ are ye thinking, love?” Roark scanned the carnage, his shoulder brushing against mine as he sheathed his sword at his hip.

  “We’ve seen aphids explode numerous times, right? But only when my blood enters their systems. Obviously, that’s not what happened here.”

  Jesse stood beside Roark, arms crossed with his fist pressed against his mouth, lost in thought.

  Then his eyes sliced toward me. “I know you felt them arrive.”

  Um, yeah, he was buried eight-inches inside me at the time. He’d probably felt them, too.

  He studied my face with that calculating gaze of his. “What were you thinking about right before you felt them die?”

  I raised my eyebrows and lowered my voice. “Coming on your cock?”

  Roark made an amused noise in his throat.

  Jesse rubbed his knuckles over his jaw, his expression marked with discomfort. Or grouchiness. Probably both. “What else?”

  “I was just as irritated as you were, Jesse. I wanted the fuckers to die so we could…fin…ish…”

  It wasn’t possible, was it? I’d never been able to kill them with my mind. The notion was crazy.

  Tell that to my accelerating pulse.

  Jesse and Roark looked around the room, their eyes sharpening, no doubt following my train of thought. Roark’s lips parted, and Jesse stood taller, his arms dropping to his sides, fingers twitching.

  I gestured at the slaughter. “I just mentally wished this into existence?”

  Jesse arched a brown brow. “Didn’t you?”

  I didn’t know, but later that night, I had the opportunity to find out.

  Squatting outside the front of the hotel, I dipped Darwin’s paws in a bucket of water and washed off the bug guts while Jesse and Roark helped Link and few other guys re-barricade the front doors.
>
  My head snapped up at the sudden encroachment of aphid transmissions. Four pulsing threads wove through my insides, drawing invisible lines down the road.

  “Hey, guys.” I rose, my attention on the dark stretch of asphalt. “Four inbound aphids.” I grabbed Darwin’s collar and hurriedly ushered him behind the boarded door and safely inside. “Before you kill them, I want to try something.”

  Link scratched his bald head, passed me a look that said You’re a freak, then glanced at his men, giving them a single nod.

  Jesse moved to my side and anchored an arrow, training it at the road. Roark shifted behind me, his arms sliding beneath my shirt, ready to support me.

  But I didn’t just want to try the new command. I wanted to try it without help. If there had been some kind of genetic restructuring of my abilities, I needed to retest my limits.

  Stepping out of Roark’s embrace, I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I’m going to attempt this without your energy. There’s only four aphids, so if I pass out—”

  His eyes narrowed into emerald slashes.

  “—catch me?” I grinned, met the same unhappy glare from Jesse, and turned toward the street.

  The sound of Roark’s sword unsheathing echoed across the parking lot. Boots scuffed around me, and my hair lifted around my face in the chilly breeze.

  Stretching east and west, the jagged tops of crumbling buildings rimmed the moonlit skyline, and there, between the rubble of foundations, emerged four glowing outlines.

  Their bulbous bodies skittered toward us on soundless feet, blurring through the shadows as if trying to remain out of sight.

  The guys wouldn’t be able to see them, not the way I could with my evolved night vision. Their neon forms filed into the street, their pupil-less eyes locking on our group with the barren parking lot stretched out between us.

  Pulling in a sturdy breath, I concentrated my mind on one simple thought. I willed them dead.

  The wet sound of bursting flesh splattered the silence, their innards spraying the pavement like glow-in-the-dark paint balls. The vibrations inside me evaporated, and in their place rose an invigorating energy, like a full-body shot of oxygen and caffeine, hopping beneath the surface of my skin and fortifying my muscles. I gasped, as if I’d just awoken from a deep sleep, and all the toxins in my body had washed away, my tissues repaired and renewed.

  Jesse’s bow lowered, and Link let out a loud bray of laughter.

  My heart thudded in my chest, my head swimming through the implications. I did that without skin-on-skin contact. Without blacking out or shivering with loss of energy.

  I swiped at my nose and glanced at my hand. No blood.

  How was this possible? I just killed aphids with the will of my mind and felt fucking amazing.

  Jesse’s concerned expression filled my view, his hand resting on my cheek. “Your eyes are black. No whites at all.”

  The spots on my back had probably morphed as well.

  He angled my face into the moonlight. “Your pupils stretch so wide they swallow the rest of your eyes. They’re reverting back now. Did your vision change?”

  “No.” I blinked a few times, peeking over his shoulder to watch Link’s men run across the parking lot and investigate the splatter.

  Whatever was left of the aphids was now completely void of the fluorescent glow.

  If I could do this every time, it didn’t matter if the aphids grew smarter, faster, and more organized, right? So why did the prophecy warn against evolving creatures? And how did a special world-saving child fit into the equation?

  Shifting my gaze back to Jesse, I stared into the infinite copper wells he called eyes and wished for another superpower, one that would grant me access to his raw, unfiltered thoughts. “Are you thinking about the prophecy?”

  He released his hold on my face. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m…I don’t know. I’m missing something. Something crucial.” He laced his hands behind his neck, rubbing them over the back of his head, his biceps stretching the leather sleeves. “Or maybe I misinterpreted the predictions.”

  Roark stepped beside me and touched my lower back, adding pressure to guide me toward the entrance of the hotel.

  “Until we figure it out, we have a brutal aphid weapon.” He glanced at Jesse as he held the door open for us. “I den’ know about ye, but watching her dominate, I was seriously chubbed up.”

  Jesse winked at me over his shoulder, the corner of his mouth ticking up. Grabbing my hand, he hurried me past the godawful aroma in the lobby. Darwin bounded ahead, leading us back to our room on the second floor.

  The plumbing didn’t work, but we had a bathtub, containers of water, and mini shampoo bottles we found in the bathroom. Standing in the tub, I gave Jesse and Roark sponge baths, then they returned the favor. Few things in this world rivaled the sensuality of four lathered hands stroking over my skin in the glow of a flickering candle.

  My arousal returned quickly and desperately, fueled by an endless energy deep in my core. Whatever this newfound power was, it made me ravenous. For food. For sex. For them.

  They fucked me late into the night, stopping only to feed me dried rabbit meat and crackers, then fucked me again. Eventually, they crashed with exhaustion, and I lay wide-awake between them, marveling at the sexual need and alertness that still buzzed through me.

  We hadn’t put clothes back on, and just thinking about their nude forms ran an electric pulse up and down the length of my body. Careful not to wake them, I slid toward the headboard to sit against the pillows, propped up between their heads, my gaze hungrily devouring the musculature of their shoulders, asses, thighs, every perfect inch of them.

  They lay on their sides, turned toward me, the sheet tangled around their lower legs. The candlelight gently swayed the shadows and illuminated Jesse’s deep bronze skin and Roark’s paler yet sun-soaked golden hues.

  Asleep, they were unguarded and completely relaxed. No pretense of bravery and strength, and still they looked so powerful, dangerous, and ready to fight. Their bodies were stacked muscles on top of more muscles, each brick and bulge knitting together in a stunning arrangement of masculinity.

  Roark was taller and broader while Jesse was harder, rougher around the edges. With Jesse’s legs slightly parted and the bottom one bent toward me, his cock lay long and flaccid against his thigh, no doubt chafed from hours of use, but no less beautiful.

  Roark’s cock was concealed by the position of his leg, but I knew its shape and size by memory. He was proportioned, flawless, and every time I laid eyes on his girth, tasted it, and felt it moving inside me, I was lost in a tingling, heat-surging-through-my-blood haze of desire.

  I reached toward his leg, my fingers softly tracing the line around his pelvis, between the edge of his abs and bend of his hip.

  The deep rumble of a groan reverberated in the back of his throat. Without opening his eyes, he curled an arm around my waist and dragged me down until I lay pressed against his chest. “Need sleep, love.”

  I kissed his gorgeous mouth, trailing my tongue along his bottom lip. “I could go for a few more hours. Maybe Jesse—”

  “Is worn-out.” Jesse’s groggy voice drifted over my shoulder.

  But a moment later, he inched against my back until I was smashed between slabs of hot, hard, fatigued muscle.

  His lips trailed a path of kisses over my shoulder, and his cock hardened against my ass. Oh God, my inner walls burned and throbbed in anticipation. What the hell was wrong with me? I wasn’t usually this horny. Why now?

  Why not?

  Because Jesse was tired and had already given me hours of orgasms.

  “Hey.” I reached back and stroked the rock-hard flex of his ass. “Go back to sleep.”

  His teeth sank into my shoulder, and his hand shoved between us, gripping his cock. He swept the warm, steely length across my butt cheek, slid it between my pussy lips, and paused to tease the tip against my opening.

  My nipples hardened
against Roark’s chest, and a ripple of pleasure wobbled through me, heating between my legs. Roark grew hard against my thigh, but his eyes remained closed, his breathing even.

  Jesse gripped my hips, pulling me back against him, and buried his shaft in the slick heat of my cunt. I was primed for him, wet and wanton, my channel clenching around him as I rolled my hips back and forth in gentle grinding movements, gliding along his length.

  He thrust slowly, lazily, in a drugging rhythm, his pelvis lightly rotating, stilling, and nudging again. I wondered if he was falling in and out of sleep and loved the thought of that, wanting him to sleep inside me every night.

  His jaw rested against the back of my head, his breaths soft and consistent against my hair. Just when I was certain he’d passed out, his fingers moved over my hip, across my belly, and sank between my legs. He left them there, curling against my folds, even as my movements rubbed the back of his hand against Roark’s cock.

  I rocked between them, snapping my pelvis gently, reaching for that blissful spot that would send me over. The friction of Jesse inside me, the peaceful expression on Roark’s sleeping face, the scent of their male musk surrounding me, all of it kindled into an aching precipice of pleasure.

  My climax came in a low, quiet tide of quivering rapture, flaring every cell in my body with intoxicating warmth. On the cusp of the orgasm, Jesse’s hand between my legs clenched, and he grunted, his muscles hardening then loosening as he sighed his release.

  “I’ll never get enough of you,” he mumbled into my hair.

  A moment later, I knew he was asleep, his cock soft inside me, his fingers slack against my mound.

  My hunger for them hadn’t relented, my mind and body restless. Why? I suspected it had everything to do with my new ability.

  Had I held the telepathic power to kill all along without knowing how to tap into it? Or had some external trigger switched it on? What changed? Intimacy with Jesse and Roark? Were they fueling me through sex? If so, why didn’t sex with Michio have the same effect?

  Or maybe it was something I ate? I grinned at the childhood memory of my favorite cartoon sailor gobbling spinach. Wouldn’t it be badass if I could defeat the Drone with a can of spinach and a thought?