18. Fully Sated
Fully Sated
Solace
Sleep was all I could ask for. I needed more of it.
More of him—his touch. Especially now that his voice consumed me.
I was laying on a wide bed that was low to the ground, staring out into darkness.
The room was sterile, all cold bone-white walls and a strange hum somewhere in the paneled ceiling.
Beside me, Jude ran his fingers across the bare skin of my hip, slowly tracing circles until goosebumps rose under his warm touch.
“God, you’re stunning.”
I rolled toward him, propping myself up on my elbow. I smiled when he leaned over to press a kiss to my neck, mouth trailing lower.
“You taste even better.” His tongue carved a slow path back up to my ear. “Don’t wake up,” he whispered. “I want to try something.”
“Never,” I breathed. I wasn’t sure I could wake up, even if I tried.
I was exhausted. We’d talked for hours the last few days, and between that, I had been working to find a solution to my water shortage.
If I wasn’t talking to Ransom, I was reading textbooks and banging on pipes I had absolutely no business messing with.
Outside of that, I slept. More and more lately. Longer, too. I had nine days left. Nine days before the bunker ran dry.
I still hadn’t told Jude.
Instead I kept things light, and like always—whenever I avoided the hard stuff—we talked about movies neither of us got to see, how much we both missed cereal and energy drinks, and debated music like we did when we were kids.
It was like building scaffolds of nonsense, so that neither of us had to stand beneath the weight of what was coming.
Occasionally, when the lull lasted a second too long, Jude would ask the hard stuff.
Like about Milo, or our parents. It was oddly therapeutic to remember my little brother with someone who loved him almost as much as I did.
“He’s out there somewhere,” he had said lightly. Sometimes it was easier to believe our lost loved ones had only gone ahead of us on some longer journey, and that their absence was only the distance between stops. “Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, I know he’s doing it well.”
Yeah. I grinned. “Milo would have killed to go to space.”
“It kind of feels like we all killed to go to space…”
I couldn’t help the pain in my chest whenever Jude’s voice took on that sorrow-filled, wistful, hardened edge. He’d seen it all happen, albeit from space, but it still happened. I couldn’t imagine the horror.
I mean…
I guess I could. I’d dragged dead bodies into essentially a broom closet.
“How is Adam?” He had issues with his dad, probably even more than he had when we were little, but at least he still had him.
He groaned between beeps on the relay. “He’s fine, I guess. Looking old.”
“Aren’t we all.” I was going to be thirty-one in a few months… well, if I made it that long.
“He’s been trying to connect more and more. His wife made it to the shuttles and they’re still together, surprisingly enough.”
“Wow, that must be tough.” Imagine the person you despise the most, the person who made you feel little all your life, wound up floating in space with you for eternity. Now imagine that person was actually your father who abandoned you as a child.
“I’ve got a little brother.”
What. “No way. How old?”
“Seven. She was pregnant when she got up here. First baby born on Echelon One, actually. His name is Dylan. It’s still kind of weird because I’m old enough to be his dad, but despite it all, I enjoy spending time with him.”
“Cherish it,” I told him. He moved on to ask about Bridget and Paul, then went on a full rant when I told him Paul never got around to installing a hydroponic garden. I was vindicated, even if Paul wasn’t here to hear it.
Jude still had work to do, but when we could spare the time, he told me what life in orbit was like—how humanity was faring after the end of the world.
Elias said hello. His wife, Kit, popped in too, long enough to tell me she admired my strength.
To which I had to laugh. She was the one pregnant in outer space.
A fact that seemed to stress them all out.
No one wanted to mention the obvious problem: nine stations and one habitat was not enough to support a widely growing population.
That was where SOL and Ransom came in.
What had once been survival-prediction software was now a fully autonomous system monitoring Earth’s atmosphere.
According to its data, the radiation levels in my region were not nearly as high as they’d once believed.
At least… that’s what his numbers said. The problem lay within the ARS-7 readings, which I had no clue about.
Turns out, the atmosphere above could still kill me in minutes.
So that was cool.
Except none of that mattered in my dreams. The impending doom was faraway enough when I was wrapped in his arms. It was a safe haven we’d carved out of the apocalypse just for us. Sometimes I couldn’t tell what was real, and what was fake anymore.
For the last week, we’d met here every night.
There was something to be said about the end of the world and desperation—it had a tendency to strip people down to their ugliest instincts. Mine had manifested as being completely, and hopelessly drunk on the sight of Jude Ransom’s perfect ass.
He turned away from me for a moment, shifting in the sheets. I watched the movement of his back, the slow stretch of muscle beneath warm skin. Even here, in this strange dream-room with the faint scent of metal, he moved with the same careless confidence I remembered.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced over his shoulder, that crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “An experiment.”
“With what?”
“With this.” He rolled back toward me, sliding one arm beneath my waist as he pulled me closer. The length of him was hard to escape. He was solid, and pressing all the right spots.
The breath left my lungs in a quiet rush. “Jude—”
“Shh,” he murmured, brushing his thumb along the curve of my hip again. This time his touch grazed even lower. His mouth found the hollow beneath my ear, and the warmth of his breath sent a shiver down my spine. “You feel real,” he said softly.
I laughed under my breath. “You say that every night.”
“Because every night I’m terrified I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone again.” My fingers slid into his hair without thinking, tugging gently until he lifted his head. His eyes searched my face in the dim light, softer than I’d ever seen them. “You’re not allowed to disappear this time.”
“I’m not planning on it.”
“Good,” he murmured. He kissed me then, slow and deliberate, as his hand drifted between my thighs.
His finger slipped inside, testing the warmth there before pressing deeper.
Another followed, curling gently until a breath left my lungs.
He propped himself on one arm above me, lowering his mouth to the front of my throat.
One kiss. Then another. Higher and higher until he found my mouth again.
“More.” The word left me before I could stop it. Every night I needed more of him. If I was going to starve and thirst, I was at least going to die fully sated on Jude Ransom.
He slid his fingers away, holding them between us like he was admiring a piece of art. They caught the dim light as he brought them to his mouth, sucking them slowly, deliberately. “Delicious.”
“More.”
He tilted his head, that wicked grin appearing. “More?”
“Mhm.” Yes. More.
“As you wish.”
He shifted between my legs, knocking one knee aside and pushed the tangled sheets out of the way. His body settled against mine as he slid forward, teasing the space between my thighs without quite pushing inside. “Like this?”
“More,” I groaned.
“I don’t know—” he started, pulling back
I wrapped my legs around his waist and dragged him down, forcing him deep inside me in one hard thrust.
“Fuck.”
“Fuck,” I echoed, eyes squeezed shut, fists twisting in the white sheets beneath me. “Jude—”
“I know, baby.” He braced himself on his palms, pressing a kiss to my cheek before he moved again, pulling back slowly before thrusting deeper the second time. Harder. “You feel perfect.” His breath ghosted across my mouth.
My hands roamed over the strong line of his back, memorizing every inch of skin I could reach. I breathed him in, threading my fingers through his hair and tugging hard. “Fuck me, Ransom.”
The pace he set wasn’t hurried, and I almost cursed him for it.
Strong and deliberate, never rushed. It was like having all the time in the world—and precisely none at all.
We danced along a line I’d daydreamed about as a teenager, lovesick for her best friend.
It wasn’t sex for the sake of sex, though that was certainly a bonus. It was something more.
“God, Solace—I…” He let out a frustrated breath, thrusting again. “You feel so good. This feels so fucking good.”
I lifted my hips, grinding against him until he slid deeper inside me. My stomach tightened as he rose to cup my breasts in his hands. He pinched one nipple, twisting it lightly before covering it with his mouth. The sudden heat of his tongue made my back bow off the sheets.
“We shouldn’t have waited,” I admitted breathlessly.
“I’d wait forever for you—” a thrust “—just to have you like this. Even once.” He shifted to the other, taking the stiff peak into his mouth. I melted into the sensation—tongue hot against my skin, the steady rhythm of his body moving in time with mine.
His pace faltered and I thought he might be close— but instead he pulled me upright, arms around my waist, until I was seated in his lap, his knees beneath us both.
I rose and fell against him, glancing down where our bodies met.
His hands found my waist, my breasts flush against his chest. Then one hand slid into my hair, threading through before tugging gently, tilting my mouth up to his.
“I am going to fuck you all night.”
A shiver ran down my spine. Please, I wanted to beg. “As long as the spell lasts,” I murmured, brushing a kiss along his jaw.
He caught my lips again, teeth tugging lightly at my lower lip before consuming me entirely.
But the universe was cruel, and I woke drenched in sweat, fingers slipping between my thighs and an alarm blaring through the bunker.