by L. A. Boruff
“What are you laughing at?” he asked with a huff. Clearly, he didn’t think the situation was funny at all.
“Look at us! We’re both covered in blood and running like demons from some crazy guys who were trying to blow your house up. We look ridiculous,” she answered.
A smile crept over Jace’s face, and he chuckled back at her. “Yeah, I guess we do,” he said and pulled her into his lap. “But at least we have each other. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he added, as he placed a kiss on the side of her cheek.
“Me too,” she replied and exhaled a sigh of relief at being pressed into the safeness of his body. After a few moments, Jace began to inspect her wounds and assess the damage they’d both endured.
Satisfied that she would be okay, he turned to her with gentle eyes. “Do you think you can keep going? It would be best not to stay here.”
Aaron was more worried about Jace’s head wound than her own scrapes, but she knew he was right. They were still in serious danger out in the open. Even though she was worried traveling would make his injury worse, she agreed with a dip of her chin.
She threaded her arm through his and feigned the need for help so she could assist him without wounding his pride, not that he would ever be so callused as to push her away or be rude about it. She knew that if he felt like he was needed, he would pull on his reserves of strength and get them there. Trying to carry a grown man was off the table. Even attempting to drag him in a makeshift cot if he fell over would be nearly impossible. She had grown strong and independent since Callisto ripped their world apart, but she knew her limitations all too well.
The moment they stepped through the door to make their way to her home, they heard the sounds of vehicles coming their way and ducked back inside.
“Fuck,” Jace cursed. “If we stay here, they’re going to find us, but if we go out there, we’re dead.”
“I have an idea, hold on,” Aaron said and pulled a grenade from her pocket. “All we need is a distraction, and we can run out the back.”
Jace’s eyes drew down in worry. “We’ll never make it on foot, not injured.”
Aaron already knew that. The wheels in her head were turning faster than she could keep up with. If only she could draw some of them away from one of their trucks, she could throw Jace in it and drive like a mad woman out of there.
“No, Aaron. Don’t even think about it,” Jace said, knowing what she was contemplating, but it was too late. They were all out of options.
“We have to do something, and I’m not willing to let you die.” A few tears rolled down her face.
Jace grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her face to his. “And I’m not willing to let you die either.” The anger creasing his face smoothed as he let out a loud sigh. “If we’re going to do this, we do it together. We’ll have a better chance that way. You sneak out back and throw the grenade, and I’ll wait by the front door to see what’s going on, then snatch one of their vehicles. After you throw the damn thing, run back into the house and wait for me by the door,” he instructed, taking the lead on their crazy plan. They knew it would most likely see them both in an early grave in the next thirty minutes.
Aaron didn’t speak. Instead, she grabbed his face and pressed her lips to his. Her tongue tried to find every corner of his mouth just in case this was the last kiss they’d ever share. Jace wrapped his arms around her middle and pulled her tighter against his hard body, the heat between them rising.
Aaron broke the kiss first; they needed to hurry. The sounds of engines were nearly at the yard. “You know, they may just drive past us,” she whispered with a hopeful tone even though she didn’t really believe that.
Jace gave her a weak half smile. “Maybe so. Let’s get ready anyway while we hope for the best,” he said with a wink.
The roar of trucks was upon them now, so they both turned to look out the still open door from their position against the wall beside it. It was just enough cover so they couldn’t be seen right away, but not enough to keep them safe for long. Sure enough, they had stopped in the yard and men were filing out. Aaron couldn’t imagine they actually knew anyone was here, at least she hoped. She cast the thought aside as a man on a loudspeaker yelled loud enough to shake what little composure she had left.
“Jace Michaelson, we know you’re in there! You have two seconds to come out or we’re going to burn you out!”
Aaron turned back toward Jace with confusion written across her features. “Do you know these people?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, Aaron, I swear. I have no idea who those guys are.”
“But… how do they know your name?” Aaron wondered aloud.
“I don’t know, but… do you trust me?” he asked.
“Of course I trust you,” Aaron replied. She trusted him more than anyone else in the whole world.
“Change of plans. Keep the grenade in your hand, but I need to find out who they are and why they were trying to break into my house. If they want me this badly, they’ll just follow us if we run, and I’m not bringing these crazy fuckers to your doorstep,” he said and walked to the doorway before she could protest.
“I’m here, what do you want?!” Jace yelled back at the man who seemed to be in charge.
“We want your stash of guns, you idiot, what do you think we want! We’ve blown your hideout to hell and we still can’t find the entrance! Show us how to get inside, and we won’t kill you!”
Aaron peeked out through the sidelight beside the door, where she saw the man standing in the bed of an old beat up, dark blue pickup truck. It was so covered in road dirt it looked like someone had painted the bottom half in orange clay. He had unkempt brown hair and a scowl on his face. This guy meant business.
“Don’t go out there,” she hissed.
“I have to. But promise me you’ll stay quiet. There is no point in both of us dying today. I couldn’t bear it,” he countered, speaking out of the side of his mouth so they wouldn’t see him talking to her.
“If they hurt you, I’m blowing them up,” Aaron muttered with a dead serious expression, and she meant it too.
“I don’t have a stash of anything, much less guns!” Jace yelled.
“We know you do! Your friend down the road was more than happy to sell you out once we started carving him up!”
“Motherfucker,” Jace cursed.
Aaron was aware that Jace knew a few people around the area, but none of them were exactly friends—just people he traded with. Besides, he wouldn’t have told anyone about his gun stash. It sounded like the poor soul had exaggerated and said whatever they wanted to hear because he was being tortured. Not that it mattered. Even if Jace walked outside and gave them what guns he had, they’d kill him anyway. There was no peaceful way to end this.
When they heard the man start counting backward from ten, they both knew they were out of time. As Jace cleared the doorway, Aaron took action. Jace was only going out there to save her, but she couldn’t stay in here while he did that. As if her body took over, she became disassociated. She was transported, watching from above as she joined him on the porch and shoved him aside as hard as she could. He stumbled and fell to his knees, signaling to her brain that it was show time. Using her teeth, she popped the pins out of the two grenades she held. Then she flung the death devices at the men with every ounce of strength and skill that she had.
As if the gods themselves were helping her, they both flew true to their targets. The first one landed at the feet of the man standing in the truck while the other landed beside the second vehicle. Surprise fell over everyone’s faces as they realized what was about to happen. There was no time for them to run.
Aaron smiled manically as she grabbed Jace by the back of the shirt and pulled him inside a single second before destruction rained down on their attackers. The wall between them and the explosion shook as chips from the ceiling toppled down on them, but by some miracle the structure held together. It had been so loud that
she couldn’t hear anything except a vague ringing in her head, which made her panic for a moment until she glanced back out the shattered window and saw shrapnel and pieces of what used to be men lying around. Not a single person was alive outside the house.
“Are you okay?” she tried to ask Jace. She felt the vibration of her words rumble through her head since her ears were still refusing to work properly.
Jace’s only response was a pair of widened eyes and an open mouth from where he lay after she had pulled him just past the door. After a few moments of staring at her, his mouth moved and she could make out a bit of sound, but not what he was trying to say.
“What? Jace! I can’t hear you!” she yelled.
He shook his head, then hoisted himself up onto his feet. Together they walked back outside. This time there was no porch, only random boards in a semblance of one, and they gingerly stepped through the wreckage and out onto the long dead lawn.
Jace seemed to be assessing the damage, but Aaron already knew the vehicles had taken too much of a hit to be of any use. The blast had turned one on its side with the remnants of the man in charge. The other was just a fiery frame with its guts blown everywhere.
Silently, Jace turned back to her and tried to give her a smile, but it came out weak and weary. Then, he reached over to grab her palm and began pulling her behind him. Sometimes you had to do terrible things to survive, and they were both intimately aware of that fact. The world was no longer the safe place they were once carefree children in. Still, taking life was not something she relished, and she honestly tried to avoid it at all costs. Risking Jace, however, was not something she was willing to do. She would kill a hundred hateful renegades if it kept him safe. And he surely would have done the same for her. Her thoughts turned to the innocent people holed up under the earth, just trying to survive, and anger welled up in her gut. People like those men were the reason society didn’t have a chance to rebuild, and it wasn’t fair. Maybe she should do more than hide and try to live. Maybe she could make a difference, like she’d done today, and convince others to do the same. But there was also a war in her head about ending up no better than they were if she ran around murdering people.
They were almost to her home when she finally snapped out of her thoughts. Jace had been quiet the entire way, even though the ringing in her ears had finally stopped for the most part.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he said suddenly with a chuckle. Leave it to Jace to laugh about something so terrible. He always was good about lightening moods that were heavy enough to strangle a person.
“I didn’t know what else to do, I wasn’t going to let them take you. They would have killed you once they had what they wanted,” she retorted. They both fell back into silence until they reached the car that doubled for an entrance into her house.
Aaron pulled the back door open and folded the seat down to reveal a steel plate with a keyhole strategically placed in the corner so that it wouldn’t look like what it was. Then she pulled out a single key from her pocket, stuck it in the lock and turned. The metal groaned and creaked as she pulled it open, and she dusted the rust off her hands after she let it fall to the side, exposing the dank air beneath. She let Jace go first, and once they were safely inside, pulled the hatch back into position above them and locked it back.
Her home didn’t taper off into the ground like Jace’s. Instead, there was a metal ladder anchored into the side of the Earth that led them straight down. The place once belonged to a survival junkie—the kind everyone thought was crazy until the unthinkable happened, and then suddenly everyone needed what they had. She knew this because there was hoards of food, plant seeds, clothing, and water that lined the walls when she found it. It had saved her malnourished and desperate body from dying. The owner was long gone, probably dead in the blast like most people. She wasn’t sure if there used to be a house somewhere on the land since all she had found was a strange rectangular sheet of metal. In her scavenging desperation, she lifted it and it opened to the last thing she expected. The key, she found later down below laying on a workbench. When she first discovered it, she had grabbed enough food for a week and left for fear of the owners return. But after a few weeks of staking the place out, she had been confident that it was truly abandoned, and moved in and made it her own. It was all a mystery that would never yield answers, but she often thought of the owners and who they might have been. Occasionally she sent a silent thank you into the heavens for saving her.
They traveled down into the depths of her home in silence, but the moment she hit the bottom, Jace whirled her around and pulled her body close.
She was glad for the closeness after almost losing him today. Just hours earlier she had been thinking of ways to tell him that she didn’t want to move in, knowing full well that he already had her heart, and now she felt stupid for being so stubborn. It was the two of them against this seriously messed up world, but together they were stronger, and not so damned lonely. In that moment, she truly believed they would be okay as long as they kept holding onto what they had. And while they might never have a white picket fence or two-and-a-half kids, they could still have the kind of love that people from any generation would be jealous of.
“I was so scared I was going to lose you today,” Jace whispered into her hair.
“Me too,” she replied as she squeezed him as hard as she could.
The longer they stayed in each other's arms, the more a calmness settled over her, along with a familiar warmth that built up in her center.
“I need you,” she said into his chest.
“You’re crazy, but I need you too,” he replied.
“No. I need you Jace. I need to feel your skin,” she added and stepped back out of his arms. She was covered in dirt, and her hair was a disaster, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t wait a moment longer to press herself against him, skin to skin; soul to soul.
“Oh,” he breathed. A smoldering fire lit within his irises as he wasted no time in pulling his shirt up over his head.
Aaron walked backward, keeping eye contact, until she felt the wall and reached for the light switch. The bunker was illuminated by the lazy audible flicker of overhead halogen bulbs, and Jace's face came fully into view. In the chaos, she had forgotten he had a head wound and she mentally cursed at herself, but the concerned expression on her face must have told him what she was thinking.
“I’m fine,” he whispered before he claimed her mouth. It was obvious that her need had spread to him as he devoured her with fervor. With each flick of his tongue, her entire body grew hotter. His hold went from a gentle caress of her face to a desperate grab along her back and waist.
Aaron grasped at him with equal urgency as she tugged him towards her bed, leading him where she wanted him to go. But instead of falling to the bed and allowing him to have his way as she did earlier, she turned him until his legs were flush with the mattress, and then gently pushed him. He cooperated with a huge grin and bounced once as he dropped, sitting before her, his head level with her stomach.
“Lay down,” she commanded.
Once he did, Aaron knelt down and unbuttoned his pants, shimmied them down his legs and threw them on the floor. Splatters of grime and blood were smeared across his tanned skin. She could even see a few new injured places he hadn’t told her about. It all made him even more beautiful to her—her tough and kind man.
After she explored his body with her eyes, she slinkily climbed onto the bed and straddled him, then pressed her still clothed body against his bare skin.
“No fair,” he tried to tease, but she kissed him and dipped her tongue into his mouth to cut off the complaint. She wanted to take her time, just like he had earlier.
Once she felt his cock rise against her, she began working her mouth down his neck. After she covered it in tiny kisses, she trailed down his chest, leaving him gasping. The lower she got, the harder he became as if his body was trying to encourage her even lower. And she did, flicking
her tongue out to taste him every few inches. When she reached the peak of hair at his groin, she kissed her way around the sides to taunt him. Every clench of his abdomen set her core on fire. Her muscles responded to his clenching rhythm, a delicious melody between the two of them. Aaron paused to take in the sight of him again and give her heat a moment to simmer down to a bearable level. She let her breathing take over for a few moments. She wasn’t ready for it to end.
Re-composed, she encircled him with her hand and closed her fingers around his width. When he groaned, she began working his cock in agonizingly slow movements.
“Aaron,” he half cursed, and half moaned. A smile crept over her lips as she lowered her head and sucked his tip into her mouth. She used her tongue to taste his head and the bead of cum that had risen at her ministrations. He tasted like salt and earth, but under those things was a spice that was all him. As she finished circling that bit of him, she took his cock as far into her mouth as it would go and sucked hard. Jace’s hips bucked and pushed him even further into her throat, causing her to pull away for a moment. But she was determined to draw his pleasure out, so she pushed back down and swallowed him again.
“Fuck. Aaron!” he cried. He had grown rock hard as she both sucked and jacked him with her hand, and based on his trembling she knew he was getting close.
Aaron wanted him inside her before he came though, so she backed away, leaving him wet and glistening in the light before her. At her absence, he propped himself up on his elbows and frowned. “Come here,” he begged, but she just smiled and began pulling her clothes off.
Naked and full of lust, she slunk back to the bed and straddled him. This time her hot center met his still wet cock, and as she ground against him it glided through her folds, creating a delicious friction. She rocked her hips and a shiver ran down her back as her swollen clit pressed hard against his shaft. Lifting up, she positioned herself above him and sunk back down while taking the entire length of him into her in a rush. Even though she was already soaking and ready, the sudden fullness of him stretching her made her gasp and pause to get used to it. He began to work his hips, rocking into her while adding pressure to her clit with each movement. Watching her, he reached up and flicked her already hard nipples before pinching them between his fingers just hard enough to send another jolt of pleasure to her pussy.
