Cruel World(133)

The inside of the building was warmer, and he didn’t realize he was wet and cold until that moment. He paused at the thin divider before turning back and setting up a wide cot in the front portion of the building. The darkness was almost complete. The electric lantern had been turned down to a dull glow, and the windows were lighter shadows in the walls.

Quinn stripped out of his clothing, and hung them to dry on the back of a chair before showering quickly beneath a stream of cool water in the small partition against the wall. After drying off, he slid into the cot, draping one of the heavy blankets over him before curling an arm beneath his head. He closed his eyes to the rippling pulse of lightning and answering thunder in the distance.

He came out of a dream where a field of white tents wrapped around humanesque shapes wriggled and squirmed like an unending plane of maggots. Moans swirled through the air, all of the voices coalescing into a hum of misery that became his name.

“Quinn.”

The whisper wasn’t from his dream. It came from directly beside him.

Alice sat on the edge of his cot, her shape so familiar that he knew it even before the lightning strobed through the windows illuminating her face. She wore a black tank top and matching underwear, her hair a cascade of darkness across the white skin of her back.

“What are you doing?” he asked, beginning to sit up. She placed a cool hand against his chest and stopped him from rising.

“All those times I was looking at you and you thought I was staring at this,” she whispered, letting her hand trail up his neck to cup his face. “I was wondering.”

“Wondering what?” he asked. Heat had blossomed where she’d touched him, spreading outward, downward. His heart was beating so hard he was sure it would rupture at any moment.

“I wondered why you were helping us. I wondered why you were so kind to me and my son. I wondered how you had come by the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen.” She leaned closer to him, only a shadow against the backdrop of darkness. “And I wondered what it would be like to do this.”

She kissed him.

Her lips were soft but strong, moving against his own with gentle pressure. The slick wetness of them was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He reached out, unable to keep from doing so, and put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her closer, feeling the velvety smoothness of her skin. She responded by kissing him harder, her lips more urgent in their movements. Her tongue danced out and slid against his teeth, and he couldn’t help but let out a soft moan.

Alice drew back and pulled the blanket away from him before climbing into the cot. She laid against him, her slender length almost too much to bear. He inhaled deeply, trying to keep control of the heat building in his lower belly.

“I’ve never…” he breathed, her hair brushing his chest and face as she kissed his neck.

“I know,” she murmured. “I’ll be gentle; you’ll survive.” Lightning washed the building again, her eyes dancing in the nimble light.

She peeled her clothing away and then removed his so that they were naked against each other, their skin pressing together as they embraced once again. Her hands moved over his body and then guided his fingers over hers. He explored her, not able to experience enough of her skin. Slowly, she eased herself up and grasped him, before lowering herself down in a settling of pleasure so deep he nearly cried out with it.

“Shhh, not yet,” she said, coming close to him, her breath tickling his ear. She began to move above him, stroking his neck and chest. He clung to her, beginning to shake with a need so great and deep that it became exponential, building upon itself until it was a tower from which he dangled over an infinite drop filled with ecstasy. Alice moaned his name and arched her back before closing the gap between them, their bodies melding into one. There was a tightening inside him that ratcheted up until he thought he would burst. Alice whispered his name and said now, please, please, now, now, now and then he was shuddering with a release so profound all the sound in the world ceased. In the quivering silence, they held each other, spiraling down until he felt like he had returned to the ocean, drifting on his back in gentle waves that rose and fell beneath him.

It seemed like hours before he was able to speak.

“I—”

“Don’t,” she said, putting her fingers to his mouth. “Just hold me.”

“Okay.”

He laid there with Alice pressed against him, aware of every inch of her body, the rising and falling of her chest, the strand of her hair that rested on his temple. He drifted away, the illusion of being on a sun-warmed raft in the middle of the sea carrying him into sleep.