by Maya Riley
He tightened his grip on me a fraction more, and I felt myself being lifted up onto my tiptoes. Raising my other arm, I placed my hand on the side of his neck and rubbed my thumb in small circles at the corner of his jaw.
With my newly gained height, I pulled my mouth from his and brought my lips to his ear, whispering, “I want you.”
He growled in response. “I want you so much. But not here. It’s too dangerous.”
“My middle name may as well be danger,” I purred.
He chuckled and kissed the spot where my neck met my shoulder, sucking ever so lightly. Tingles surged throughout my body and I threw my head back. He lifted his away and brought my head slightly forward again. “While that may very well be true, I have other things in mind for that.”
My eyes popped open as my mind spun in circles. I barely had time to register what he meant when I was spun around and my back landed gently on the house paneling.
His head dipped down to kiss along my collarbone, and he tugged on the bottom of my shirt to free a breast. Rough hands held my hips in place as a hardness pressed into my belly, and one of my hands found itself tangled in his thick, sunshine-colored hair. A hand glided up underneath my shirt and sailed over my smooth skin as it traveled upward until it was sliding up underneath my bra and found my nipple.
He moved his mouth back to my lips and continued to kiss me as he tweaked my nipple. His hardness was grinding against me, pressing me harder into the wall. I couldn’t even arch my back like I craved to.
The soft caress of his lips slowly increased in roughness to the racing beat of my heart. I tried to reach for him, to grab on to him and make him feel the way he was making me feel, but he let go of my hip and held my forearm against the wall.
“Stay.” His whispered command sent a thrill straight to my core, before he let go and dipped his hand into the waistband of my pants.
His hand slid into my underwear, and my breath hitched as he rubbed smooth circles where I craved his touch the most. Finally, he slid a finger inside and began to pump in a slow rhythm. His tongue snuck into my mouth, his hunger for me matching the one I had for him.
I moaned and tried to roll my hips into him, but he still had me pinned. He added another finger, and my moans grew. I felt weightless in his embrace.
The wave of pleasure that had been building up deep inside threatened to break free.
“It’s okay. You can let go. I got you,” he whispered, as he pulled his mouth away from mine to suck on my earlobe.
After a few more thrusts, his fingers curled inside me. I tightened my hold on his tangled, golden hair as my other hand clenched, my nails taking off chunks of the peeling paint in the process.
I held on to him and the panel of the wall behind me, until my breathing slowed and my mind came falling back down to earth again. He pulled his hands from my clothes, and rested them above my hips, applying only enough pressure to keep me standing upright.
As he pulled back, I noticed the pleased expression on his face, and I cocked my head to the side. “You look mighty satisfied with yourself.”
“I am.” He kissed the tip of my nose before grabbing on to my hand and peeling me off the wall.
“Wait, what about you?” His breathing had also returned back to normal, but I was surprised to see he wasn’t walking with a limp after that.
“Later. Like I said… later.” He pulled me along to the front of the house where the others were finishing their search of the outside. Mateo greeted us with his very own personalized scowl, while Lincoln simply winked, and Maura hid her face. Jonah’s ears were tinged red.
I felt as though I should be mortified, but I wasn’t. Everything felt right, as though puzzle pieces were falling into place.
The wooden steps creaked under our weight as we hurried up them. Mateo was the first one through the door, his knives held out, ready for the possibility of a threat inside. The others spread around to investigate farther down the street, with Puppy following behind them.
I stepped through the door and moved around to Mateo’s side, looking around at what seemed to be the living room. Dust filled the air and coated every inch of the interior. The house hadn’t been touched in quite some time.
There was no sign of life that I could see, so I moved to inspect the rest of the house. My hand slid into my pants pocket as I moved, and gently touched the handle of the knife, ready to pull it from its sheath.
On the other side of the living room sat a couch riddled with gashes in the dirtied, tan fabric. Behind that was the kitchen, and to the left was a hallway. After a quick inspection of the kitchen, finding nothing other than empty cupboards and a fridge full of spoiled food, I made my way down the hallway.
The first door on the right was wide open. Inside was what appeared to be a little girl’s room. Pink fabric, from what used to be a blanket, lay in tatters across the floor. Various items were strewn about, and the frame of a mirror that stood on top of a small white dresser was empty. The shards of glass littered the floor below it.
After a quick peek inside the closet and finding nothing of concern, I stepped back out. The door across the hall led to a bathroom with nothing inside that could be of use.
The last door at the end of the hall was shut, but very faint creaking sounds could be heard on the other side.
My hand tightened around the handle of the knife and pulled it out. With the knife raised in front of me, I wrapped my other hand around the doorknob, twisted, and pushed it open.
Inside was the master bedroom. The room looked to be in the same disarray as the rest of the house, except this time there was a rotter.
The moving corpse lay on the bed with a handcuff attaching its wrist to a bedpost. The face turned in my direction and lifted its nose to sniff the air. The unhinged jaw swayed around from the movement.
The release of breath behind me sounded out and I tilted my head around, meeting Mateo’s stern expression. “Well, that’s a first.” His gruff voice drifted over me. “That one town had rotters on chains in the basement, but this time it’s handcuffed to a bed. The fuck is wrong with the world?”
A clink sounded out along with the snapping of metal against wood, and my head whipped back around. The handcuff was still attached to the rotter’s hand and the bed post, but the hand was no longer attached to the rotter.
“This must be the first time it’s had a reason to move.” Mateo tried to push me off to the side and out of his way, but I moved forward instead.
The rotter slowly rose off the bed. Dirt and tendons dripped down from where the hand detached and coated the comforter in the process. In one smooth motion, I lifted my blade and the head fell to the floor with a splat that sent gooey material around in a one-foot radius. “That’s disgusting.” I lifted my leg and wiped the top of my boot against the side of the comforter, right as the body fell back and landed on the top of the bed.
Mateo chuckled from the doorway and I turned to glare at him. Did he really snicker at me just now? I opened my mouth to tell him off, but the light glowing across his face stopped me. He wasn’t one to openly laugh, or show much emotion outside of anger and annoyance, so the slight happiness that flashed across his face with his chuckle caught me off guard, and I decided to close my mouth and not try to take it away.
Instead, I raised an eyebrow in playfulness. “You laughing at me?”
The small smile remained on his lips as he nodded.
“Let’s spray you with some rotter guts and see what happens.” The corner of my mouth lifted up. It may have been a small attempt at a joke, but it worked, as his own small smile widened slightly.
“There’s nothing back there, or outside. Did you find anything down the hall?” Adam came bounding to the doorway next to Mateo and looked over my shoulder. His face scrunched up when he spotted the remains on the bed. “Well, I guess you took care of it. The building should be good now.” He stepped aside and I made my way past him and down the hallway.
“The
others are checking out the cars and siphoning gas from them and into whichever one they decide on, so things will be ready tomorrow.” We entered the living room and Adam moved over to the radio, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside it. Static cut through the air as he messed with the dials.
“Don’t we already know where we need to go?” I asked.
“Yeah, but you never know, other kinds of information might be out there,” he responded, without even taking his eyes off the radio.
I moved over to the window and looked out. Lincoln had just finished siphoning gas from one car and into a bucket, and was now moving over to the SUV they’d apparently decided we’d take. As he knelt down to transfer the gas from the bucket and into the gas tank, I saw the slight flinch that stiffened his body. It only lasted a moment, but it was enough for me to notice the tightening of his back muscles through his shirt, and the grimace I could see across the side of his face. He placed his hands with the palms flat against the ground, and shifted so his prosthetic leg would sit more comfortably in its position.
I frowned, not liking that his leg was still giving him problems. I’d already left once because of an argument we had over it, and I really didn’t want to repeat that. Whether he wanted my help or not, I was determined not to have a repeat of the incident that turned the apocalypse even more unpleasant.
Once they finished filling up the car with as much gas as it could hold, they turned around and headed inside the house to join us.
“Hey, do we have any containers that can carry extra gasoline?” I asked, turning to face the others, and then signed the question for Jonah.
Plastics sometimes dissolve in gasoline because of their chemical structures. It would be safer to not risk that happening and covering all our stuff in it, Jonah signed.
Got it, thanks.
Jonah picked a spot on the floor and opened his bag. After rummaging around for a few moments, he produced an old deck of cards. The others moved in closer, getting ready to play.
“We checked inside some of the other houses,” Lincoln announced, as he walked in with a very slight limp. “They didn’t look to be in any better shape than this one.” He went over to the couch and sat down, not at all bothered by all the slashes in the fabric or the mystery stains. He leaned his head back with an arm draped over the arm of the couch and closed his eyes.
A moment later, light snoring was coming from the sofa. I tiptoed over and hovered my hands above his knee. I tried to reenact what I was feeling that night at the fire station, and the night with Adam by the campfire. I so badly wanted to take away some of his pain, to make him feel better. He’d endured enough already.
A prickling tickled over my hands and I felt the buzz of static dance across my fingers. I watched as thin tendrils of lights swam through the air and wrapped around his knee, before the tendrils and the slight glow disappeared altogether. Lincoln took a deep breath, and I backed away before he could wake up.
No matter what happened, how angry he might be with me, if I helped him feel a little bit better right now, it was well worth it.
Blyss
The smell of yew tickled my nose as I sat in the hallway outside of Mama G’s office. She had another one of those air fresheners that you plug in, sending a scent throughout the room. She regularly used them in an attempt to make the house feel more welcoming to those who didn’t live here. To those who weren’t aware of the horrors which were trapped inside these walls.
I hated the yew smell, it was the one tree I never liked. Every time I saw or smelled one, it reminded me of this awful place.
My head was leaning against the wall next to the door as I played with the end of the my braid. My foster sisters and I had a fun makeover session this morning, and they decided I needed a braid. It was low maintenance and the best thing to tame wild hair, they said.
I could barely make out the mumbles of Mama G as she spoke into her phone. She was frantic over something that apparently wasn’t going her way. I couldn’t make out who she was on the phone with, but whoever it was, she wasn’t too thrilled with them.
Her voice rose an octave and then moved, as though she were pacing back and forth through the room while she spoke. The increased franticness in her tone told me that I didn’t want to be anywhere near this spot when she opened the door. It was time to disappear before she found me.
I pressed my hand against the wall. Sitting on my heels, I began to push against the wall and stand up from the floor. As soon as I stood up, the door banged open, and I looked straight ahead to see Maura walking down the hallway at that exact moment. Mama G’s eyes landed on her first, and she moved forward through her tunnel vision.
Mama G’s normally dark eyes flamed with a red tint as her cheeks heated. She was gearing up to take her anger out on the first thing she saw. While I was unaware of what caused this sudden change in her, my protective instincts kicked in. As Mama G began to walk toward Maura, I stepped out from my spot against the wall and slipped in between the two.
I looked the evil, rage filled woman in the eye, and did what nobody else had ever dared to do—I challenged her. If she was going to go after anyone, she’d have to get through me first.
She reached out, grabbed the braid that ran over the side of my shoulder, and tugged. Using more strength than I was aware she had, she dragged me down the hall toward Maura, her mouth agape, my feet slipping and sliding all the way. I threw my arm toward her, motioning for her to go back, to stay away as much as she could, but she remained standing there.
Maura’s stark expression was the last thing I saw before I was shoved around the corner, and then thrown down the stairs and into the basement for another banishment.
My heart pounded in my ears as I startled awake. The dreams of the past haunted me everywhere I went. They were something I couldn’t seem to shake, no matter how much I tried. They said time heals all wounds, but I believed it took more than that. Not even the least vulnerable person on earth could escape their nightmares.
My eyes were open, but the darkness remained the same. It was still nighttime, and I was curled up in a corner of the smaller bedroom. I unwound myself and sat up, letting the hardness of the wall ground me as I leaned my back against it. I could hear the heavy breathing of those still sleeping around me, the loudest sounds in the house. The guys tried to give me the small twin bed to sleep on, but I’d insisted Maura take it. We probably could have squeezed in together, just like old times when we were younger, but that wouldn’t have been very comfortable now. From what I could remember, she was a pillow thief.
The others had sprawled out around us, covering the floor and forming a protective chunk of humans.
The rustling of fabric sounded from somewhere outside the room and down the hall, so I stood up. With my hands on the wall and very slow movements, I managed to step over the sleeping people around me without actually stepping on them. I ran my hand along the rough, chipped plaster of the wall, and eased myself in the direction of the sound. The wall ended, and I felt nothing but air. The door was still ajar.
Stepping through the doorway and out into the hallway, I dragged my fingers along the next panel of painted plaster, nearly knocking down the crooked picture frames in the process.
Once I’d gotten far enough to be right outside the living room, and was within presumed reaching distance, the noise stopped.
“Trouble?”
I smiled in the dark. “How’d you know it was me?”
“You have the most careful and calculated movements of any of us. You’re the most stealthy. Plus…” He paused. “I just had a feeling it was you.” His hand reached up and wrapped lightly around mine, gently pulling me down to a sitting position next to him. His gentleness in the dark surprised me.
He let go, and I lifted my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs. My chin rested on top of my knees, and I stared at the window, which showed nothing other than the night sky.
“Couldn’t sleep well?” His whispe
red breath fanned across the top of my hair. He was so close. I shivered as my body briefly responded to his proximity.
“Bad dreams.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. I mean, maybe someday, but not right now.” I tugged on the fabric of my jacket sleeve, needing something to fiddle with.
“I’ll always be here when you’re ready.”
I smiled and rested my ear on the top of my knees, so I was facing his direction. “That’s awfully sweet of you.”
“Don’t make me regret it, or I’ll not offer again,” he warned, in his usual deep, low voice that could rock the earth.
“Thanks. It’s a bit exhausting to even think about describing right now. Maybe someday though.”
“Just let me know.”
“You may need to keep coming to me and offering.”
There were a few moments of silence. “That bad?”
I nodded before remembering he couldn’t see me, and said, “Yes.”
He reached over and wrapped an arm around me. I tilted my head onto his shoulder, and he leaned his head down to rest on top of mine. We sat there for an incalculable amount of time, simply enjoying each other’s company. The only noise to be heard was our steady breathing, and my heart pounding in my chest.
All else was silent, not even a cricket outside.
“Always will,” he whispered into the chilled air.
“Hmm?”
“Keep coming and offering.”
My heart skipped a beat. I was still getting used to having people around me who actually cared—about me, what I was doing, and my past demons. Even Mateo, who exhibited such a strong exterior, but secretly had a soft center he never let anyone see in the daylight. He’d shown me once before, and I’d ached to see it again, especially after our short talk back at the lab. Until now, when he finally let his soft center present itself again.
He placed a kiss on the top of my head before resting it back down onto the top of mine, and gently rocked in rhythm with our breaths.
