22. Evander
EVANDER
The corridor dead-ends in an old signal room the railway walled off, and since we entered the mountain the world goes quiet.
Clayton's men have pulled back to regroup above us.
Toby's voice comes through our radio broken and far, working his way toward a route onto the ridge.
Below us, Gideon is still moving the vulnerable survivors uphill.
None of those pieces will be in position for a few hours, and with the ridge unstable in darkness, neither side can make its final move yet.
Since yesterday afternoon, this is when we first get to have a real pause from the chaos.
Camille sets the lamp on an overturned crate and lowers herself onto a coil of dead cable. She's shaking, just slightly, the fine tremor that comes after adrenaline burns down and leaves you standing in the ash of it.
"Sit," she says, patting the cable beside her. "You've been running on scraps of sleep for two days. Even lions run out of energy."
"I'm fine."
"You're swaying, Shaw. Sit down before you fall down and dent the mountain."
She's right, and I've learned not to spend energy pretending otherwise around her. The cold concrete leaches through my clothes. Her shoulder finds mine, and it takes some of my weight, which is its own small surrender.
"I keep doing the math," I admit. "How to get you out of here without you knowing I'm doing it.
Which corridor I could put you down, which pride member I could assign to sit on you until this is over.
" The confession scrapes on the way up. "Every instinct I have is screaming to send you somewhere I can't lose you. "
"I know." She doesn't sound angry. That's what undoes me. "I can see it happening behind your eyes. You get this particular look, like you're already grieving me while I'm sitting right here breathing."
"So tell me to stop."
"I'm not going to say stop worrying." She turns her head, and in the lamplight her hazel eyes are steady on mine.
"I'd never ask that. Worrying about me means you'd notice if I stopped being here, and after a lifetime of nobody noticing me, that's not nothing.
I don't need you to stop being afraid, Van.
I need you to trust that we're afraid together.
Side by side. Not you deciding how much reality I'm allowed to handle. "
"That's the hardest thing you could ask me."
"I know that too." Her mouth curves, rueful. "I picked it on purpose, I don't do easy."
I laugh, and some of the terror lets go of my spine.
"No. You really don't." I take her hand off her knee and turn it over in mine, tracing the old scar across her palm with my thumb.
"When this is done, if we get a when, come back to Stonehaven.
Not for the railway, for me. Stay long enough to find out what this is when it isn't burning. "
She's quiet, and I brace for the deflection, the joke, the practiced grace of a woman that has left every place she ever stood, it doesn't come.
"I keep circling one thing," she says instead, slow, like she's reading it off a gauge she doesn't quite trust. "My whole life, leaving was the safe move.
You go first, nobody gets to decide they're done with you.
It's a clean system. It's kept me from ever losing anything, because I never hold anything long to lose it.
" Her fingers tighten around mine. "And in the last week, that stopped working, because now the thought that scares me isn't staying.
It's the mornings I'd wake up hundreds of miles from you, having done the safe thing again.
That's what terrifies me now, not this. That. "
I don't have words big enough that match hers. Instead, I lift her hand and press my mouth to the her hands instead, then to her wrist, then to the fast pulse beating there.
"Van." Her voice drops, softer. "I'm not saying it because we might die. I'm not that girl who confesses things in a bunker because the walls might come down." She frames my jaw with her free hand and lifts my chin. "I'm saying it because I mean it."
I close the small distance and kiss her, and this time there's no avalanche in my ears, no wreckage at my back, no ten-minute clock ticking down someone else's life.
There's only her, deciding to want me in a walled-off room in the belly of a mountain she has every reason to run from.
She kisses me back like she's staking a claim she's spent years refusing to make on anyone.
When she pulls me down onto the folded tarp someone left in this forgotten room a lifetime ago, I go. Not to shield her. Not to carry her. Just to be with her, hands and breath and the extraordinary heat of a person who chose to stay.
It's unhurried, in a way nothing between us has been allowed to be. Her fingers work my jacket open, holding still under her hands when everything wants to take over and manage even this. She notices.
"There it is," she murmurs against my throat. "You just tried to control everything. Don't. Let me have this part."
"I'm trying."
"I can tell. It's very sexy, watching you fail at controlling something."
I laugh into her hair, and then I stop trying at all. She sets the pace, her hands map me, I let myself want her without turning the wanting into one more thing I'm responsible for delivering.
She pushes my jacket and throws it aside.
Her hands pull my shirt off, and I lift my arms and let her strip me.
Cool air hits my skin, and she runs her palms down my chest, over my stomach, then lower.
She works my belt open, pops the button, drags the zipper down.
My cock springs free when she shoves the fabric past my hips.
I kick the pants away. Naked under her, I stay still and wait.
She sits up and peels her own shirt off, her bra follows.
Her breasts are bare in the dim light. She takes my hands and puts them on her.
I cup them, thumbs brushing her nipples until they tighten.
She leans down and kisses me again, slower this time, while she pushes her bottom clothing down.
When she's naked she swings a leg over me and settles astride my thighs.
Her pussy rests against my hard cock, and she rocks once, sliding along me, leaving a wet trail.
Her hand wraps around my shaft, and strokes from base to tip.
I grip her hips but don't guide her, she rises onto her knees, positions the head at her entrance, and sinks down.
The tight heat of her pussy takes me in one long slide until I'm buried to the root.
She stays there, full of me, breathing against my mouth.
Then she starts to move. She lifts almost off and drops back down, controlled and deep.
Each time she takes me, her walls grip hard.
I dig my fingers into her thighs but leave the pace to her.
She rolls her hips in a slow circle that grinds her clit against me.
The friction makes her gasp. I thrust up to meet her once and she presses a hand to my chest, pinning me down.
"Stay," she say.
I let her ride, and she builds speed, rising and falling harder now.
Sweat beads on her collarbone, and I reach for a nipple, placing it between thumb and finger.
She moans and leans forward, hands braced on my shoulders.
Her breasts swing closer to my face. I lift my head and catch one nipple in my mouth, sucking hard while she fucks me, and put my hand on clit and rub.
The rhythm turns rough. She drops down with more force, taking every inch.
I feel her start to tighten. Her thighs shake, and I keep the pressure on her clit and let her fuck me.
She comes with a sharp cry, pussy clenching and pulsing around my cock in hard waves.
I hold still under her, feeling every flutter, until the last of it passes.
She doesn't stop, she keeps moving through the aftershocks, slower at first, then building again.
I can feel the edge crawling up my spine.
My hands slide to her ass, gripping, but I still don't take over.
She rides me deeper, grinding down on every stroke.
The pleasure rises inside, and when she leans back and braces her hands on my thighs I get a clear view of my cock disappearing into her pussy over and over.
The sight rips the last of my control away.
I come hard, hips jerking and a low groan leaves my throat. My cock expands hard pulsing while she keeps moving. She stays seated on me until the last twitch fades. Then she eases off and drops down beside me on the tarp.
She drops beside me on the tarp and stays there flat on her back, staring at the dark ceiling while her breathing evens out. I turn my head toward her, and our hands find each other, fingers loosely linked. For once, being beside her is enough.
Later we're stretched out side by side on the tarp, boots and jackets within reach, exhaustion finally winning over adrenaline. The mountain is silent above us, but it won't stay that way.
"Promise me something," she says.
"Anything that isn't sending you away."
"Close." I feel her smile against my forearm. "Promise me we won’t act all hero out there. No unilateral sacrifices, you don't throw yourself on the charge and call it love. I won’t either. Whatever we do next, we decide it together, and we both come home."
The old reflex fights me hard. Everything I am wants to leave myself an exit, the noble one, the door marked I'll take this so she doesn't have to.
"I promise," I say.
She goes still against me. "You hesitated."
"I did."
"I heard it, Shaw. You get exactly one. Next time I'm holding you to it."
"I know you are." I press a kiss to the back of her neck, and I mean the promise more the second time for having flinched at it. "That's why I said it slow. So it would stick."
At some point we sleep. Not deeply, and definitely not for long, but when I open my eyes again the black outside the blocked signal-room vent has begun to thin toward gray.
The radio crackles to life against the crate.
Toby, clearer now, breathless. "Van. I've got a way onto the upper ridge.
Ventilation stack topside comes out above the control station.
And Gideon's got the last of the vulnerable ones on the high shelf.
Passengers are as safe as they're getting.
" A pause. "Which means it's just Clayton and the ridge charges left.
You two decent, or should I keep talking to fill the silence? "
Camille snorts and reaches for her jacket. "We're decent, Toby."
"Tragic," he says. "Move fast, storm's thinning."
We dress in the small cold light, gather the recording and the maps and the two contractors' rifles, and I take her hand before we go. Not to lead her. Just to hold it.
"Together," I say.
"Together," she answers. And we climb toward the last of it, side by side.