by Toby Neal
“That was the worst moment of my life.” Her heart squeezed with remembered agony.
“Mine too.” JT lifted her glasses off and set them on the night table. “I’m sorry. I should have told you how I felt, asked you to stay with me. I wanted you to be safe, be with your family if that’s where you wanted to be.”
She touched her finger to his lips, silencing him. “I know you were trying to do the right thing—keep me safe. And I am not sure what I would have said, to be honest. I had to see my parents, had to find out what was going on with the virus—and I’m glad I did.” She gazed at him. “But I don’t want to be anywhere but with you. JT, I love you.”
“And I love you, Elizabeth Bailey Johnson.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I love you so much.” JT held her gaze. “I’m never letting you go again.”
She smiled. “Not even for my own good?”
“Not even if it would save the world.”
JT
Her breasts were just the right size to fill JT’s hands. He enjoyed their heft and softness, thumbing her nipples through demure lace cups before bending to kiss them. She whimpered and sighed, just the way he liked. He unclipped the bra with a grunt of satisfaction—it had the kind of clasp he could undo with his thumb. “You got this just for me.”
“Mom did.” And she laughed.
He laughed, too, because really, it was funny.
Elizabeth reached up to slide her fingers across his pecs and down his abs, stroking him almost reverently. “You’re so beautiful, JT. The most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, the best man I’ve ever known. I can’t believe you came back for me. Through all that.” Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears as she flapped a hand in the direction of DC.
“I never should have let you go in the first place.” He couldn’t seem to say that enough. “I love you, E. I didn’t think I’d ever love like this again, but you’ve brought me back to life.”
She smiled a little secret smile and aimed a glance at his equipment. “So it seems.”
He smiled back, slid her to the side, and pushed her higher up on the bed, levering himself to lie alongside her. Much as he wanted to just plunge in and bury himself in her, he knew they needed more time just to get used to each other after all that had happened: the wounds, the losses. He settled himself beside her, drawing her close and tucking her head onto his good bicep. She turned her face into his chest, breathing deeply as if imprinting his scent.
JT slid his hand back and forth across the satin of her side, her belly, and played with a lock of her long hair, twisting it around his finger, teasing her breast with the end to watch the nipple tighten.
She hissed a breath through her teeth, tightening her ab muscles, as he tickled the other breast.
He couldn’t stop touching her. Touching her would help heal the fresh wounds she carried—and help his heal too. He leaned forward to lick her nipple and she squeaked. He’d never get enough of that. He stroked his rough palm down her smooth, curved side, leaving a wave of goose bumps in his wake. Good. He loved how he affected her.
“I need you, Jacob Teodoro Luciano. Don’t make me beg.”
JT smiled with satisfaction as his woman wriggled restlessly beneath his hand. “Oh, I’m gonna make you beg.” He wanted to see her really surrender and let go, fragment into bits crying out his name—the thought made him harder than ever.
Elizabeth gasped and arched as JT leaned over, brushing his lips softly over her nipple. He was so sensitized to her that every touch between them seemed to crackle over his skin like static electricity, and to judge by how she was reacting, she felt the same.
“I love you,” he whispered, kissing his way down her torso.
“And I love you,” she hissed as his tongue laved her hipbone. He would never get enough of hearing her say those words.
JT grasped her pants and panties and pulled them off purposefully. He slid his hand up her leg, gazing down at her. Elizabeth tried to close her legs, embarrassed, but his big hard hands held her pinned. He lowered his head and she tensed.
“You’re so beautiful. Let me,” JT whispered, kissing the inside of her knee, catching her gaze with his. “Please let me.”
“Now who’s begging?” Her voice was breathless.
He smiled, a leopard contemplating prey. He held her blue eyes pinned as he continued to kiss the inside of her knee until she finally let her legs go. He kissed his way down to the satiny skin of her inner thigh, tonguing and nibbling, his hands still roving over her body. By the time he blew on the soft hair that covered her, she was trembling with anticipation.
“Oh . . . please.”
He smiled at her pleading tone, and kissed the bundle of nerves at her center. She jerked upward and he gentled her with his hands until she settled back, and he sucked the sweet bud of her pleasure. Elizabeth shuddered, her hands knotted in the sheets, tossing her head, her cries music to him as he flicked, and licked, and teased, and toyed, and finally curled a finger deep inside her to increase her sensation as he tortured her with his mouth.
Elizabeth writhed and tossed, her head whipping from side to side as she spiraled tighter and tighter. “Please!” She was so close to that release he wanted to witness. “Oh, please, Jacob. I need you!”
“You taste so sweet. Sweet is my new favorite flavor,” he murmured against her.
He bit her lightly and flicked her hard.
Elizabeth cried out his name, her body arching and contorting. He rode those waves with her until she collapsed, melting into the bed, her eyelids fluttering, body boneless.
Just the way he wanted her to be—on a regular basis.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Elizabeth
JT pulled away for a moment, dropping his pants and boxers, taking a condom out of his pants pocket.
“I never knew it could be like that,” Elizabeth whispered, her eyes on the coffered ceiling of her bedroom with its pretty pendant light. She’d likely never see this room again, and she was so glad this would be her last memory of it.
“Oh, there’s so much we’re going to discover.” JT’s grin was wicked as he rose over her. She caressed his shoulders, back, and arms as he kissed her deep, positioning himself.
Elizabeth grasped his buttocks, pulling him in, and he made a low noise of satisfaction and threw his head back, his torso arched as he pushed fully into her, supported by rigid, ripped arms.
He surged into her again and again and Elizabeth bucked to meet him, grasping his hard, muscular butt, until finally he slowed and settled against her, chest to chest, face to face, his eyes holding hers in almost overwhelming intimacy. His hands grasped her hips so hard she knew they’d be marked by his possession tomorrow.
She drew him in even deeper, locking her legs around his, and he started moving again. She met his power with her own. The tension of his desire and the sense of tight fullness were the sweetest, juiciest pain.
JT wrapped a fist into her hair and thrust into her fiercely. He possessed her, gave himself to her, and branded her his, and Elizabeth went molten beneath the onslaught, reveling in it.
He rolled them over so that she was on top. He grasped her hips, levering her atop him, tightening her body around him as he grasped her buttocks. The power of his arms holding her was pitted against the strength of her thighs riding him, and Elizabeth reared back at the ecstasy of the dark tension, bracing her hands on his chest.
The oblivion Elizabeth sought was within reach, a total merging that left them better than themselves alone.
“Elizabeth!” His voice was harsh with need as he crushed her close, his hips lifting and pulsing as he released deep inside her.
Elizabeth let herself go, dissolving around and over him: dissipated, replete.
Hours later, Elizabeth woke to the soft click of Pinocchio’s toenails in the hall. The darkness in the room was complete, with the windows boarded up and the flashlight off. She lay on her back and JT was on his side, one arm over her, his palm filled with her br
east, a heavy thigh pinning hers. His breath stirred the hair beside her ear.
The temperature had dropped as the night deepened, and JT’s body heat was welcome as Elizabeth snuggled close, smiling.
They would face many more challenges: reaching Philly, persuading JT’s family to come with them to the Haven. The journey back across the country to Idaho was bound to be more challenging by the day as systems failed across the country.
But as Elizabeth lay in JT’s warm embrace, she knew that they could handle whatever came their way.
An ache still resided in her chest though: her parents. She’d abandoned them to their gilded bunker because their priorities didn’t match hers—though with the responsibility of managing the precious limited resource of the vaccine that she’d brought, she was already beginning to understand her father’s dilemma a little better.
Elizabeth was glad that JT would be with her to help her decide who received the vaccine and who would not. It was a different way of killing—in her short life she’d stabbed and she’d shot—and now she would end lives by inaction.
It made the tightness in her chest grow.
She snuggled deeper into JT, breathing in his reassuring scent.
The challenges ahead were both mental and physical—both a long journey and tough decisions. But the end of the world as they knew it had brought her an incredible love, and she was grateful for that one true thing.
Epilogue
JT
JT was sneaking a taste of his mom’s marinara sauce bubbling on the stove when Elizabeth came in. “I have something to show you down in the lab.” She grabbed JT’s hand and tugged.
Ana and Lucy’s voices murmured out on the front porch where they were washing vegetables in a big bucket for the dinner planned later on. JT set down the spoon and followed her, brows drawing together in question. “What is it, E?”
She’d been down in the bunker’s lab every day since they’d returned to the Haven with Lucy and Ana in tow, working on her secret project.
“I have to show you in person.” Elizabeth drew him to the steel door at the back of the pantry that led below and punched in the code. The bunker wasn’t his favorite place to hang out; it still needed so much work that he found it impossible to relax in any of the living areas. They’d been able to make the closest rooms to the entrance habitable for Mom and Lucy, but JT was glad to be able to stay with Elizabeth in his one bedroom in the cabin “upstairs.”
A sensor light, activated by their movement, shed a yellow glow over the narrow metal corkscrew stair. The metal treads rang under their feet as they descended into the cool depths, smelling of earth and mildew—the ventilation system still needed work. He couldn’t come down here without noticing more projects.
Another security door barred entry at the bottom of the stairs.
Elizabeth punched in the code and opened the door, still holding his hand. She towed him down the dimly lit hall with its many exits toward her special domain.
The lab smelled of cleaning chemicals and the fresh cedar-chip bedding she’d brought in for the rabbits, caught in the wild by Roan for her research. They were shy of humans, and skittered away as Elizabeth and JT entered and she turned on the overhead light.
“I wanted to show you this.” She pulled him forward toward the big boxy electron microscope that crouched on her workspace. The microscope hadn’t worked when they plugged it in, a major setback.
Elizabeth gloved up, flicked the lever on the side of the machine, pulled a sealed disc of agar out of the nearby fridge, slid it into the scope and turned to him, eyes blue as the heart of flame in a fire. She stepped back. “Look.”
JT applied his eyes to the viewfinder. Cells lit up in his vision. “You got the microscope working! What am I looking at?”
“Watch.”
JT twitched his shoulders impatiently but reapplied his eye to the scope. A bulge appeared in the side of a lit-up cell, followed by a sudden burst. A swarm of the abbreviated shapes of viruses swam out of the cell’s rupture point.
“It’s the virus.” JT felt a primitive aversion as he watched the virus hijack the next nearby cell for its replication, swirling around to penetrate the wall and inject DNA inside.
They were still up against so much with this microscopic, ferocious enemy.
The knowledge chilled him.
“Yes, it is. But I have viable samples now, and this means I can work on making more vaccine, now that I have the equipment going. And look here. I have another surprise.”
She walked to a cleared off counter area a few feet away and flicked on a powerful light on a retractable arm. A pool of illumination lit twin work areas equipped with racks of pipettes and tools, stacks of slides, and side-by-side stools. “I made us a work area. Together. You can use your biology degree to help me work on the virus—when you’re not out there saving the world, Mr. Deputy.” She smiled. At her urging, and with most of the young men of North Fork lost to the virus, JT had accepted the sheriff’s challenge to support law and order. His badge pinning ceremony was tonight.
JT looked around at the workstation and grinned. They really were better together.
He hauled Elizabeth into his arms. Kissing her felt like drinking from a fountain of life, and in a way it was. She was that—not just for him, but for what was happening everywhere.
He lifted his head to get a breath and gaze into her eyes. “No wonder you’ve been buried! You’ve got the really important stuff going on down here. Thanks for doing this.”
“Oh, JT.” Elizabeth’s eyes shone. She took his face in her hands and drew him down to the deepest, most down-and-dirty kiss. “I love you.”
“Good. Hold that thought, because you’re probably gonna need it.” He gestured to their work area. “Whenever I’m not chasing down bad guys for the sheriff, I know where I’ll be.”
Several hours later, JT inhaled deeply, his chest swelling, as the sheriff he’d met a month ago in Millie’s restaurant pinned a deputy’s brass star onto his shirt.
Sheriff Osgood raised his hand, and JT followed suit in a mirroring gesture.
“Do you swear that you will uphold the standard of the law without prejudice, malice, or partiality as you are directed by the office of the sheriff, using your privilege only to protect and provide justice to those in need, so help you God?”
“I do swear.” JT let his voice ring out in the small, crowded living room of the Haven.
“Then, by the power vested in me by the state of Idaho and in the presence of these witnesses, I name you senior deputy for North Fork County.”
The sheriff stepped back. The room rang with applause as everyone clapped.
JT’s gaze immediately flew to Elizabeth, standing just behind the burly older man. The white summer dress she’d changed into set off a golden tan picked up from days of working outside in the garden when she wasn’t in the lab.
She launched herself into his arms. “I’m so proud of you!”
JT’s chest was tight with emotion as he held Elizabeth. Lucy and his mom laughed as JT gave Elizabeth a smacking kiss, making her squeak. Millie grinned and did a fist pump, and Roan, leaning against the wall, rolled his eyes.
Mama waved everyone out onto the porch, where they’d put together a long table made from a few slabs of plywood and a couple of sawhorses, all of it covered with a plaid flannel sheet as a tablecloth. Split log benches JT and Roan had put together completed the rustic but functional seating. Pinocchio roamed hopefully under the table, looking for scraps.
It was a warm September afternoon, the fields golden for harvest in the distance. The moon was an opal in the afternoon sky, hovering at the crest of one of the distant mountains. JT tightened his arm around Elizabeth.
A big bowl of sausage and meatballs sat at each end of the table with pitchers of tomato sauce next to them. JT took a seat at the head of the table with Elizabeth on one side and his mother on the other as Ana piled plates with spaghetti from a giant pot and passed them
around.
“Bet you’ve never had anything as good as this.” Lucy told Roan. He grunted, sitting down beside her, and she reached past and grabbed the wooden spoon in the meatball bowl. “You might hurt yourself, Roan. Sprain a cheek muscle smiling or something,” she teased as she poured sauce over the mound of spaghetti and meat.
Lucy set a mammoth portion in front of Roan, who eyed it with raised brows. “What? You never had pasta with gravy before?” Lucy yelled down the table to JT. “You never made gravy for your best friend?”
“I’m his only friend,” Roan stated, addressing his plate. He picked up a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other.
“Was that a joke? I’m guessing it’s not.” Lucy laughed. “My hermit brother went to the backwoods of Idaho to find another hermit to hang out with.”
“Hey, I’m a reformed hermit!” JT said as he passed a plate to Elizabeth. “I can’t turn around without tripping over your butt, Lucy.”
Roan’s mouth definitely twitched into a smile at that.
Digging into his plate of food, JT savored an unfamiliar feeling: contentment. In spite of the circumstances, against all the odds, his table was filled with many of the people closest to him.
But his hand tightened on his fork as he thought of dear faces not yet safe: Dolf and Avital.
Luca.
Dante.
Cash.
He knew Dolf was doing his best to get Avital moving out of Philly, and Dante was supposedly on his way from California with Elizabeth’s friend Melody. Cash was making his way toward them too—but there had been no word on any of their progress. Luca was totally incommunicado, and JT worried about him. According to his radio monitoring, Texas was one of the most dangerous states in the country: the plague raged out of control and armed gangs fought for what resources were left. He could only pray that his brother had received his message and would find his way to the Haven somehow.
“I know I said it before, but I’m so proud of you,” Elizabeth whispered, her voice in his ear lifting the hairs on his arms.
