Chapter 10 #2
When I start riding him again, he thrusts from below to match my rhythm, holding on to my hips again to keep me from letting him slip out.
Our motion is controlled and steady at first, but it doesn’t last that way. As the pleasure builds, so does my enthusiasm. Soon I’m bouncing wildly, and he’s bucking his hips up in hard, short thrusts.
We’re both grunting, soft and carnal, and the sofa springs are squeaking shamelessly.
“I’m gonna come,” I gasp out when the pleasure coils so tight it makes my vision darken.
“Yeah. Yeah, baby. Come again. Come now.” His fingers dig into my hips. He must be getting close. Soon.
I have to stuff my fist into my mouth again as I fall into climax. I shake and jerk through the spasms, whimpering and salivating around my hand.
He stifles a groan and holds me down as he fucks me vigorously from below. He’s consumed by it, giving himself to the motion so completely that I’m momentarily worried for the physical integrity of the sofa.
“I want you to let go too, but don’t break the couch,” I say, stroking his chest and squeezing my pussy around him. I’m still getting little aftershocks of pleasure, and the whole experience is delicious. “We’d have a lot of explaining to do.”
He makes a rough burst of sound that I realize is amusement, and it pushes him immediately into his own release. He barely pulls his cock out in time to come in hard, messy spurts onto my breasts and belly.
When he’s worked through them, he laughs softly and pulls me down into a loose hug.
I hug him back. How can I not?
This man has always been everything I’ve needed, and that’s exactly what he is to me right now.
We lie together for a few minutes until we’ve both relaxed. Then the reality that’s happening outside the door finally breaks through my sated leisure.
“We better get up.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Thank you. I… It was really good.”
“Yeah, it was. Thank you.”
I clear my throat, wondering how to deal with the next thing.
“It can just be the one time,” Ben says, making it easy, making it natural. “I’m not lookin’ for something serious, somethin’ not like us. I’m fine if it’s just the one time.”
“Okay. I’d like to do it again, but I don’t know if that would be smart. So let’s leave it at this so it doesn’t get in the way of who we are and what we’re doing.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He strokes my hair briefly before he eases me up and off him. “I know the most important thing. But I’m glad we got to do this at least once.”
A couple of hours later, I’m coming in from a perimeter check.
All the duty rotations have been running like clockwork. This is our fifth day occupying the outpost, and all the teams are organized and dependable. But I still like to see for myself a couple of times a day that all our guard positions and lookouts are ready and alert.
Other than the ambush this morning, we’ve had little activity—enemy or otherwise.
I did the circuit on my own, as I normally do, but my eyes scan the courtyard as soon as it’s in sight, searching for a familiar, broad face among the folks gathered in the lowering light of the afternoon.
I don’t see Ben. He’s probably inside at the command station. There’s a flutter in my chest and my belly at the thought of seeing him again.
Which is absolutely ridiculous.
We had sex. It was good for both of us.
But it doesn’t mean we’re a couple or ever can be.
Neither of us want that.
The fight is the most important thing for Ben and me, and everything else—everything personal—has to fall behind that in priority.
When I open the door to the command station, the first thing I see is Ben talking with Ryan in a low voice—like it’s private and the others hanging around the room shouldn’t be hearing it.
Ben turns his head, sensing me behind him, and then takes a slip of paper out of Ryan’s hands.
He brings it over to me.
“What is it?” I ask, confused and slightly nervous, like a new crisis is emerging.
He nods toward the note extended in his hand, so I take it.
“A message Ryan just got on the radio.”
Usually I hear messages verbally, so this is odd. Frowning, I open the folded paper. Read it. Grow very still.
“What channel did this come in on?” I manage to ask.
“Our internal one. I think it’s real. I think it was Teresa who called.”
Teresa is my sister. She’s one of the few people who know this channel other than Ben’s family beyond the border and a couple of our close compatriots who have settled into homes in the past few years.
“What if it’s another ambush?”
“It could be, but that would mean they’ve somehow discovered your identity and who your sister is and managed to force her to call in the message. In more than six years, they haven’t been able to do that. I doubt they’ve miraculously figured it out in a couple of days. I think this is real.”
I’m shaking inside again—for a different reason now. The scrawled words on the scrap of paper blur briefly before they clarify again.
Mother is sick. If you want to see her before she’s gone, come now.
I look back up at Ben, my fingers tightening around the note until it crumples. “W-what should I do?”
“That’s up to you. Do you want to see her?”
My mother walked out on my father, my sister, and me a long time ago.
She didn’t like my father’s dangerous rebel activity—writing pamphlets that questioned the government—and she wanted a safer, more comfortable life.
She claimed to love her two daughters but not enough to stay or take us with her.
I understood even then that dragging two teenage girls with her would interfere with her goal, which was finding another man who could give her the life she wanted.
Anger clouded my feelings toward her for a long time. So much that it never felt like I really grieved for the loss.
When Ben gave me a way out from my marriage and we left the Capitol, I stopped by to say goodbye to Teresa and see my mother one more time before we crossed the border.
I’m not sure why I went to see her then. Closure or something. It was a wasted effort. She pretended to care but then spent the entire visit chiding me for breaking off an affluent marriage and sneaking out of the Central Cities illegally.
I didn’t want to leave like that, but I didn’t have a choice.
I had to be completely out of Chad’s reach and gone long enough that my old identity couldn’t be connected to my new one.
The year we spent in the wilderness wasn’t wasted.
Ben taught me to fight. To shoot. To hunt.
To drive. To strategize like a military commander.
He settled back with his family in the rural region that isn’t nearly as uncivilized as everyone here believes. He could have been safe and free and content there, so I never expected him to return to the Central Cities when I did.
But when a year passed, I was getting restless, and one day I announced I was leaving at the end of the week. He nodded and said he’d be ready.
So we returned together.
And here we are today.
My mother is dying, and I need to decide whether I want to see her once more or not.
“I… I don’t know.”
“So just think about it,” Ben murmurs. He shifts briefly like he’s about to touch me, but he doesn’t. “We can’t leave till the mornin’ anyway, so take the evenin’ to think about it and decide.”
I swallow hard. He’s right. I don’t have to decide this minute. Then I realize what he said. “We?”
He frowns. “Yes, we. What else?”
“It might make sense for you to stay and make sure things are running smoothly here.”
“No. I’m comin’ with you.” He shakes his head like I said something unforgivably foolish. “Always.”