CHAPTER NINETEEN
Amelia
“Tell me a story.” I take a bite out of my apple, and even though I’ve been here two and a half months, it still feels like an unbelievable luxury to eat fruit.
“A story?” Jackson flips his burger, grabs my potatoes out of the oven, and pops them on a plate. He’s a way better cook than I am, so I’ve gotten used to waiting in the chair while he prepares dinner. He proves this when he splits the potatoes open and pops a slice of cheese into each.
“Yeah. You went to college. Tell me something about, like, the Egyptians, or how gravity works, or what exactly happened with Yellowstone that we’re still in this winter six years later.” I’ve nibbled everything I can off the core, so I toss the rest in the garbage. “The Civil War. Anything.”
“What for?” he asks, slipping his patty between two slices of bread.
I shrug as I pull the plate of potatoes—two potatoes!—closer. “I don’t like feeling stupid.”
Jackson was headed for the table, but he hesitates. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did.” I will never forget what he said to me. I’ll never forget the pain he caused with his words or his body. I didn’t deserve the ass fucking, but he was right otherwise.
“Amelia, shit.” He plunks down in his seat and runs a hand through his hair.
“You hurt my feelings, but you were right.”
He huffs and tilts his head. “No one stupid could’ve survived as long as you did. You’re a freakin’ genius, and I’m an asshole.”
I smile and take a forkful of potato. The heat melted the cheese, and I don’t care that it’s still steaming. I shove it in my mouth, but a second later I grab my water to cool the burn.
“Genius, huh?” I scoop out more potato, but this time I blow on it. “Dad was always saying Matthew and I came from a long line of very superior people. Sometimes I’d catch him looking at me, and it was like he expected a genius to pop out any second. He wanted me to be something important like a senator or a scientist. You should have seen his face when I told him I wanted to be a ballerina.”
“Well, that’s important.”
Yeah, right. “How do you figure?”
He spreads his hands. “How many ballerinas do you think made it through all this alive? You could be the only one.”
“Trust me. I’m not a ballerina. Although I did score an audition with the American School of Ballet.”
Jackson swallows his bite. “What’s that?”
I smirk and bat my lashes. “Only one of the most famous classical ballet schools in the world.”
“Well shit. That sounds huge.”
I shrug. “Dad wouldn’t let me go.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“He said art feeds the soul, but it’s hard work and ambition that puts food on the table.”
“Maybe you could have married someone rich.”
“He had an answer for that too.”
He rests back against his chair. “Oh yeah?”
“He said never depend on anyone but yourself. The world could drop out from under you, and you might have to pull yourself back up someday.”
“So he was psychic.”
“If he was psychic, he wouldn’t have gone to China, and he’d have gotten me to that bunker of his.”
He straightens, his eyes suddenly alert. “Bunker?”
I wave that off. “It’s nothing. He called right after Yellowstone went off and told us not to worry. He and some friends had a place and he’d have them come and get us. No one ever came. They were big duck hunters. It was probably some lodge in the woods.”
Jackson fiddles with his burger and shoots me a peek up through his lashes. “You know that first time I saw you, it was like watching art breathe.”
His face goes red, and he rubs his lips together. Even his ears are red.
My heart gives a little tweet. It’s the sweetest thing he’s ever said to me. That doesn’t mean I trust him, though. “I’m a little rusty.”
“You can dance here,” he suggests. We dispensed with the cuffs a long time ago. Where would I go, and really, why would I want to?
“I do sometimes when you’re not here.”
“Why won’t you do it for me?” He actually sounds a little hurt.
“I don’t know. It’s embarrassing. Besides I don’t know any real ballets anymore. It’s just freestyle.”
“I don’t care.” He runs his hands up and down his thighs. He licks his lips again, and it looks like he really wants me to. How long has he been working himself up to ask me? I lean forward and kiss him.
And then I dance for him.
When I’m done, he takes my hands in his and rests his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry. I’ll never be rough with you again.”
“What?”
He looks me straight in the eye. “I’m not going to fuck you anymore. We’ll make love.”
“But… no. I like it the way it is. I look forward to you coming home all day.”
“No one as little and graceful as you should ever have to put up with an animal.”
“Look who’s suddenly developed a conscience.”
“I just want to make it beautiful for you.”
“Beautiful is for spoiled little girls with daddies who give them piano lessons, put them in pink and white rooms, and dress them in designer clothes. They’re never afraid today’s their last day.”
“I wish you could’ve had those things.”
“What could frilly curtains and stuffed rabbits possibly do for me now?”
“You would have had them, at least for a while.”
“I don’t need things. I need people.” Once in a while. I don’t want to get dependent or anything.
“I don’t want to be like that anymore. It’s sick.”
“What’s sick?”
“The one night I hurt you, I liked it. It scares me how much I liked humiliating you. When you cried, it made me come.”
“Are you serious?”
He ducks his head. “Yeah.”
“What you did was a dip in the pool on a hot summer’s day compared to most of the stuff I’ve been through in the past six years.”
He frowns. “You make me want to do better.”
“What you do to me empties me and leaves me full.”
His expression goes blank. “Huh?”
“It’s like squeezing a zit. Rough and wild drives everything else out. When you grab my throat, I’m not looking around to see if anyone’s watching me. When you make me come, I forget that I have to be quiet so no one will find me. You wear me out and I can shut my eyes and sleep without seeing death everywhere. Don’t take that away from me. The harder, the sicker, the better the fix. I need that, Jackson. Don’t give me roses and glass slippers. I don’t want them.”
“You actually like that shit?”
“There’s something wrong with you, Jackson.”
“Really, Dr. Amelia?”
“I don’t care, though. I want you to conquer me. Give me every sick, twisted thing you’ve got. It’s the only thing that will save me.”
He blinks, and it’s like dawn rises over his face. I can almost see the perverted things he’s planning, except of course I don’t have that kind of imagination. “Are you sure?”
“One compromise. You can leave out the anal.” Dick up my butt, no.
He grins. “Aw, man.”
I laugh.
And then he throws me over his shoulder, marches into the bedroom, and tosses me on the bed. He rips the shirt off me, and buttons fly everywhere. Then he teases and abuses me until I come not three but four times. He doesn’t stop until I can barely lift my head.
“I want my story now.” I’m too weak to open my eyes.
He pulls me against his chest. God, I love his chest.
“What kind of story do you want?”
“I don’t care. Romeo and Juliet.”
He snorts. “Boring as fuck. How about I tell you ab
out the human brain?”
I peek up at him. “You mean like everyone has one?”
“How did you know? I didn’t get to that part in college.”
“What were you going for, anyway?”
“Neurobiology.”
“Wow.” Ballet. Neurobiology. Next to him I feel about as stupid as a fly. “You must have a giant brain. If you weren’t such a pervert, my father would have loved you.”
I listen to him as he talks about lobes and stems and neurons, and I try not to think about my dad. He was here one day and literally gone the next. It makes me think how at any point things could change for me. For us.
I mean, what happens if “they” come and find me? That’d for sure be the end of everything. Even if that doesn’t happen, what if Jackson gets reassigned? Will he still keep me around if things go better for him, the way he wants?
Not that I care. He’s just that guy who’s holding me captive and fucking me. Just because it feels good doesn’t mean he holds my future.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jackson
“I had my doubts at first, Martell. You came highly recommended, though, and I have to say I’m quite pleased.”
I pull in a deep breath. “Thank you, sir.”
“That diary you found led us to fifteen cannibal settlements. That’s four hundred thirty-eight confirmed kills.”
Amelia all but drew them a map. We should have gotten more.
“What about the, um, others, sir? The ones that aren’t cannibals.”
“The author can’t really know that.”
“The author left a ton of notes on how to figure out which ones are the taints and which ones aren’t.”
He cocks his head. “Look, Sergeant, we’re not completely stupid. Believe it or not, we have noted that some scraps are well fed where others scurry around like rats. The diary just confirms our observations. Well documented, by the way. Almost like instructions.”
“Well, I know if it was me, I’d document everything. Not just to get it out of my head, but to organize my thoughts.”
He nods. “I suppose you’re right.”
“We’ve been concentrating, as you said, on the cannibal encampments. What happens if we come across the untainted?” Amelia’s made me soft, but I have to admit killing some kid’s dad makes my stomach turn.
“That’s another reason I called you here. The counsel was very interested in your diary, Sergeant. It’s been the topic of some heated discussion over the last weeks.”
He looks at me like I’m supposed to say something. “Oh yeah?”
“For reasons I can’t go into now, we can’t afford to let even the untainted go free. It didn’t matter before if they were cannibals or not; we needed the city swept clean. The same is true for Atlanta, but things are escalating in the territories faster than we thought they would, and the Arc wants to speed up the reclamation.”
“Escalating, sir?”
“That’s all you need to know, Sargent.”
“Yes, sir.” Interesting. What has the Arc changing its long-range vision? This business of not letting anyone who survived Charlotte or Atlanta go free… troubling. Amelia might be onto something.
“Your crew’s new instructions are to capture any suspected non-cannibal survivors and bring them in. We’ll isolate them in an internment camp for now. After we put them all through a screening process, we’ll farm them out on work detail clearing and repairing rail lines. Using the scraps will allow the Arc to move its schedule forward as much as two years.”
Internment camp sounds like concentration camp. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Who are these people? “That’s interesting news, sir. What happens when the work is done?”
“I don’t think the work will be completed in my lifetime or in yours, Sergeant. Initially we’re focusing our attention on the areas between Jacksonville, Nashville, Roanoke, and all down the eastern seaboard. We also need laborers to clean up the debris in Charlotte and Atlanta. We had planned to use citizens from the territories for this, but they’re still civilized. We can keep much of the infrastructure in place if we keep the citizens where they are. The new plan is to separate out the scraps and use them for the hard labor.”
“I see.” Well, at least I don’t have to shoot them anymore.
“They’re wild, Sergeant. They’re no longer fit to mix with the general population, but they’re no threat to us if we keep them isolated from everyone else. We’ll give them food, provide them with jobs, and let them live out their life spans. I thought I’d let you know that since you seem very interested in the plight of the survivors.”
“Thank you, sir. I don’t like killing innocent people.”
“A conscience is not a good thing for man in your position.”
“With all due respect, sir, a conscience is a sign of a civilized man. Without it we’re just barbarians.”
“I see.” He presses his lips together and notes something in his folder.
Shit. “With respect, sir.”
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
I’ve got a pain in the back of my head, and it’s about to eat through my eyes. “Will that be all, Commander?”
The commander ignores me. After jotting down some more notes, he flips that file closed and shifts another in front of him.
“That place where you found the diary. There were bodies there,” he says after scanning the first page.
“Yes, sir. A man and a woman.”
“Why didn’t you report this?”
“We see a lot of bodies, sir. It hasn’t warmed above freezing in years.” It’s actually a mystery to me why the cannibals haven’t gone after the dead. It’s not like the meat would have spoiled.
The commander rests his forearms on the desk and peers up at me. “You didn’t tell us about the letters.”
“It’s just some girl grieving over her dead mother. I saw nothing in them that could be of use to us. Quite frankly, just touching them, I felt like I was desecrating a grave.”
“You’re crossing a line, Sergeant. You’re a soldier. You’re not supposed to think.”
“I am a soldier and a man. I apologize if I neglected anything important.” Let’s you and I take an IQ test and see who’s smarter.
“Well, Sergeant, since you’re such a thinker, who do you think this girl is?”
"I didn’t see any names, sir.” ALW. It was on her last letter. I never did ask her what the LW was for. I’ve been balls-deep in the girl for months, and I don’t even know her last name.
“Any idea where she might be?”
“There's no name in the diaries either, sir. The last letter said she was leaving Charlotte.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I tense. “What’s that, sir?”
He flips that folder closed and slides it under the first one. “You’re off sniper duty, Sergeant. From now on, I’m assigning you to find and bring me this girl.”
Fuck! “Find the girl?”
“Let’s just say she’s of interest.”
“Why this girl? Couldn’t anyone—”
“Just follow orders, Sergeant.”
This isn’t a bark; it’s a bite. I recalculate. “Any suggestions where I should start, sir?”
“Just a thought, Sergeant, but what about that neighborhood where you found the grave?”
I grit my teeth as heat flushes through my body. You can’t punch your commanding officer. You can’t even look like you want to.
“We want this girl, Martell. You get her for us, and I can all but promise you that promotion. Second lieutenant. Think about it.”
I suck in a breath. Second lieutenant. “Yes, sir.”
“That will be all, Sergeant.”
I stride out of the administrative building and head for the NCO lounge. I’ll need to give my men their new orders. Then what? Son of a bitch. I can have everything I want. All I have to do is turn over Amelia. It’s been long enough, right? Almost three months. Hell, that’s a record for
me. She’s a cooperative little thing, and I like the way she depends on me. She’s an absolute whore in the bedroom, but I can’t afford to get sentimental.
Really, there’s no other way, and it’s not like they’re going to kill her. They’re putting the survivors to work. Not an ideal situation, but it has to be better than living off rats in the basement of a church. I’m doing her a favor.
So why do I have this pain in the back of my throat?
Every night when I get home, Amelia greets me at the door like a goddamn dog. She throws her arms around me and bends her knees, and it’s my job to swing her around until we’re both dizzy. I swallow and choke on my own spit.
Internment camp. Segregation. I almost picture the scraps as Jews enslaved by Nazis. I’m sure it won’t be like that, though. They just need laborers. They’ve always been decent to me, and I’m just some grunt.
Shit. I can’t think this way. I never meant for this to be permanent. She knows that. I’ll have a last night with her, and then I’ll turn her over. One last night. I’m a sick fuck; she’s better off with them than she is held captive as my own personal sex slave.
I spend the day with Holub and another guy, Corporal Bruce, supposedly looking for the mysterious writer of the diaries. By the time I get home, I’m practically sick. It’s our last night. How can I tell her that?
I walk through the door and spot Amelia on the couch. She’s naked, her legs are spread, and she’s masturbating. It’s raw as fuck.
“Jesus Christ.”
“I couldn’t wait,” she pants.
I shove the rifle in the corner and fling my helmet aside. My clothes are already halfway off by the time I get to her. Now that she’s used to sex, she’s become even more sensitive. I’ve had to get pretty creative, figuring out ways to make her come enough times to leave her satisfied. I swear she’s getting worse. Not that I’m complaining, of course. Tonight she gets me to stop just before I come, like four times. When I finally blow my load, her cunt milks my dick like a machine. Mind-blowing, and by the time we’re done, I’m literally exhausted. Cooking is beyond me, so Amelia slinks off to the kitchen and returns with a bowl of strawberries.
She presses her hand lightly to my chest. “Lie back.”
Five O'Clock Shadow: A Standalone Dark Romance (Snow and Ash) Page 11
