Folsom (End of Men, #1)(25)
As soon as they’re gone, I bite the inside of my cheek and watch her.
“They shouldn’t be in here…exciting you.”
“Exciting,” I repeat. “I assure you I’m completely flaccid right now, both in pants and mind.”
She makes a sound of pure exasperation and I grin.
“You’re very possessive,” I note. “We have sex one time and you’re chasing every female in a mile-wide radius away.”
She looks so annoyed that I’ve said this, I laugh.
“I—I’m concerned about your health.”
“Of course,” I tease.
“I have to go.” She storms out without another word and I close my eyes satisfied.
This is the way it should be. Men allowed to hunt.
The proximity to Laticus affects me in both a negative and positive way. The Society does not forbid us from meeting our children, though it is highly discouraged. They believe it removes our focus, personalizes what we’re doing in an unhealthy way. Five sons and he is my oldest. I knew this day would come, when the work of the End Men would start paying off and my offspring would be handed over to a society of piranhas.
Jackal left two days after he arrived, being summoned back to the Green Region by the Society. But before he left, he contacted the boy’s mother to let her know he was safe. He gripped my hand before he left and very seriously said, “If you need me, I’ll come back. Fuck the Society.”
I believed him.
Gwen is the face I look forward to seeing. She comes in multiple times to check on me, sweeping through the door and bringing with her the scent of outside and citrus.
“What shall we read today?” she asks, waving some kind of medical journal, a worn novel with a bare-chested man on the cover, and a copy of Moby Dick.
I point to the man with better abs than mine and frown. “Who is he?”
“Ride Me Harder it is,” she says and I swear she nearly skips as she sets the other books down.
I scowl harder when she starts to read and the guy in the book is demanding that the woman get on her knees while he fucks her from behind.
“You said you were a virgin when we had sex,” I interrupt.
“I was!” She holds her place in the book and looks at me.
“Not if you’ve read this trash,” I tell her, indignant.
She rolls her eyes and keeps reading, a little bead of sweat appearing over her lip when the heroine is having multiple orgasms.
I’m frustrated when she leaves, and the feeling is foreign to me. It must be the long dry spell…who knew I could ever miss sex? Or it could be Gwen. Maybe this is what it’s like to want a woman.
The next time she comes she shows me a picture of Laticus on her Silverbook. I see my brother straight away in his face and the way he holds his shoulders. Laticus is just two years younger than my brother was when he died. I stare at the photo, washed in emotion, not wanting to speak for fear of my voice cracking. Gwen removes the photo from her screen and stares at me hard.
“I’m sorry, I never thought about how hard it must be for you to see him. Someone you’ve never been allowed to know.” She swallows hard. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “You learn to get used to it. All of it. It becomes a lifestyle. Most of the younger guys have never known anything different: family and the idea of marriage…”
Gwen looks bothered by my words. More and more in the last few weeks, I’ve learned to read her facial expressions, which in turn has caused me to pay more attention to her face. Her upper lip is an arched bow, fuller than her lower lip; when she doesn’t know what to say, her lips say it without words. They are too sensual to go unnoticed. She is not typically beautiful like the women in the Regions who alter their faces and bodies toward perfection. Her face is untouched, odd in its striking beauty.
“I don’t see how that’s fair,” she says finally. “I…I know that we need you desperately. But when what is right for the whole world becomes wrong for an individual, what is to be done?”
We sit quietly for a long time after that, our eyes the only thing communicating, finding each other every few minutes. There is intimacy in quiet, in being with another person and not needing to say anything. Gwen and I learn this together as the days go on and she comes to sit with me for a while each day. On most days, she has news of Laticus—he is healthy, and smart, and charming, and everyone in dome five is taken with him. On others, she brings me something sweet from the cafeteria or a book from her collection, and she is melancholy. I don’t ask her what’s wrong; I don’t believe I’ve earned that right. On those days all there is to do is watch each other from across the room, asking questions in our mind. On one of her quieter days, she suddenly stands up and walks quickly over to where I’m lying on my bed. She lowers her face very suddenly to mine and I think she’s going to kiss me, but instead, her head veers left and I feel her lips graze my ears as she speaks.
“I’m pregnant,” she says quietly. Her face lingers next to mine and I can feel her heat. I have the urge to turn my head a degree so our faces will touch.
There is no joy in her voice.
“That’s what you wanted,” I say. I could use the same words of comfort for every woman across the Regions. She straightens up and stares down at me as if she’s contemplating if she wants to say more.