by Sylvia Ryan
She saw that he was watching her with his night vision as she approached.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
They walked and chatted until they arrived at the spot where they had separated from each other the last time he walked her home. He let his rifle hang from the strap on his shoulder and then turned to her. Placing a hand at the small of her back and guiding her toward him, they stood face-to-face. Grace had to crane her neck up to look at him as he stepped closer.
He held her so sweetly, skimming his hands gently over the back of her body. Every glide of his hand was tender. Every hushed word in her ear swelled her heart.
“So beautiful,” he whispered and then sucked her earlobe into his mouth. “I don’t want to let you go.” They were cheek to cheek, his whiskered face prickling her skin. “Thank you for coming back. I’m glad I got a chance to see you again.”
Grace lifted herself to her tiptoes and kissed his lips in response. What she had intended as an innocent, soft peck, Van transformed to a fevered clinch. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he tucked her in tightly to the sensual security of his hard body, his hard cock. The hard flesh pressed between them urged her to linger. She could lose herself completely to this romantic man with the gentle hands and sweet words.
He broke the kiss with a sigh. “You better get home. We’re pushing our luck.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to come back anytime soon.” She peered up at him.
His vibe changed. He was suddenly hard and serious. “Stay at home. It’s not going to be safe for anybody pretty soon.”
“Including you.”
Van smiled down at her. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy.” His eyes flickered with mischief.
“Yes, you are.” She followed the words with an eyebrow wag and a smile.
But Grace couldn’t have felt worse. She knew in just a few moments she would have to walk away from him and leave him standing alone in the street.
“I’m sorry—”
“Shhh. Our paths will cross again.” Van ran his hands over her shoulders and down her arms.
“I have to go. I’ve been gone too long.”
He nodded and let her go.
When she turned, she caught the dim outline of a form coming toward them.
“Shit. There is my guardian angel now,” Grace said, nodding to the shadow in front of her.
“Not a boyfriend.” Van’s tone was wary.
Grace smiled at him. “No.”
As Sarge walked up, it was clear that he was fuming mad. He took his hand off the butt of his gun when he got a good look at Van. “What the fuck, Grace? We’ve talked about this. You can’t just take off by yourself like that.”
“I told her the same thing,” Van said, stretching out his hand to Sarge. “I’m Van.”
“Sarge.” They shook hands.
Grace started walking, leaving them behind. “I told you I could take care of myself,” she called over her shoulder, through the tight lump in her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to look back. It felt like crap leaving Van out where it was getting more dangerous by the moment.
The men followed, pacing themselves about twenty feet behind her. She could hear the murmurs of their conversation, but couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about. And right now, she didn’t really care. She felt like she was leaving a friend to die alone. How ironic, the field trip, her little diversion away from Sarge, had served its purpose, because now she was struggling with other feelings. Remorse had completely overshadowed what she’d been running from. It was the only emotion she was dealing with now. Survivor’s guilt was going to be a bitch.
Back inside the shelter, Grace stripped down to her thong and switched out her wet tank top. She was about to climb into bed when Sarge returned to the pitch blackness of the shelter with the usual bobbing of his flashlight beam lighting each step before him. He didn’t say a word to her. He didn’t need to. Anger swirled around him, as tangible to her senses as any object that could be seen or touched.
He moved toward the bed quickly, and before Grace knew what was happening, she was being pulled by the wrist toward the edge of the bed.
“Let go of me!” she yelled, trying to struggle out of his grasp. Instead, she landed on her belly, the wind partially knocked out of her. “Stop,” she hissed.
Sarge’s thighs were underneath her.
“No.” His palm landed firmly on her ass with a crack. “You need…” He smacked again. “To learn a lesson.” Sarge landed two more stinging blows. “You will follow my rules.” Another arc of pain and heat stung her as his palm met her ass again. “Do you understand?” Another blow landed with a slap.
Sarge released his grip on Grace’s wrist, and she scrambled away from him. It was too dark in the shelter for Grace to see the expression on his face. But she could hear him. They both were breathing hard.
Grace was blindsided by the lust that tackled her. She was stunned. Moisture pooled onto the narrow strip of fabric between her legs, and words escaped her. She should be enraged, but instead she was incredibly turned on.
The black void of the shelter was filled only by the sounds of their ragged breathing for several moments.
“Now come to bed. I’m not going to spank you anymore tonight.”
She heard him moving on the bed. She stepped forward cautiously until she found the edge of the mattress and slid onto it, facing away from where he lay. Their backs touched.
Grace’s mind drifted and hovered on the verge of sleep when the pounding started and startled her awake. It came from somewhere upstairs.
She felt Sarge jerk awake.
“What—”
“Shhh,” Sarge whispered. He leaned over her. “Where’s your gun?”
Another house-vibrating pound sounded.
“On the table.”
The pounding continued as he slid off the bed.
When he returned to the mattress, Grace felt his hands groping around for her, and then he handed her the weapon.
Pound. Crack. Slam. The sound of a doorjamb being splintered and the front door crashing open ended the racket coming from above.
The footfalls of two, maybe three people travelled from the front door area through the house. She heard muffled men’s voices and the barely discernible sounds of drawers and cabinets being opened and closed.
Grace’s fight-or-flight response surged. She was keenly aware of everything taking place above her and was ready to defend herself as she sat on the bed at the bottom of the stairs.
Grace started to second-guess the secrecy of the shelter when she heard the banging of kitchen cabinets and then men’s voices, plain as day, coming from the other side of the drywall that covered the original access to the basement stairs.
“There’s nothing here. Not a single can of food.”
More footfalls and another man’s voice.
“I found a trunk of sex toys in one of the bedrooms.”
A boom of laughter erupted.
“Don’t have much use for them now, do we?”
Grace turned her head slowly toward Sarge. It was too dark to see the expression on his face.
“Don’t Scotty’s parents live in a house like this?”
“Yeah.”
“They have stairs going to the basement right at this side entrance, don’t they?”
“Looks like somebody’s done some drywall work here. Look at the corner.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Grace heard the tapping back and forth on the wall directly at the top of the stairs. They were trying to hear by the hollowness of the tapping sound whether there were studs underneath.
Grace’s heart beat violently in her chest. Of all the people in the world, this jerk-off had a friend whose parents lived in a house like Sarge’s. Grace shook her head. She knew what was coming.
A moment later a fist punctured the board of drywal
l at the top of the stairs. The fist was partially illuminated by a moving beam of light from the other side. It pulled out and punched again.
As Grace moved off the bed, she ran into one of the dinette chairs. The scrape of the leg grating across the cement floor gave them up.
Suddenly, several fists were punching through the drywall and pulling chunks away.
Grace sensed Sarge’s quick movements toward the bottom of the stairs and heard his shots upward through the drywall, into the humans on the other side.
A hand shoved its way through one of the gaps in the drywall and shot blind down the stairs. A hot bullet tore through Grace’s upper arm.
“Aaahhh!” She fell to her knees, dropped her gun, and wrapped her hand around the wound.
Sarge sprinted up the stairs, covering himself by shooting holes through the drywall straight ahead. Then he slipped quickly through the secret cubby at the top of the stairs that emptied into the bedroom closet.
He was sneaking around behind them.
Grace rocked back and forth on her knees. It was an involuntary reaction to the burning pain. Her grip tightened as she tried to stop the flow of blood from her arm.
Several gunshots rang out above her.
“Sarge,” she screamed. “Sarge!”
No answer.
Then the sound of another shot boomed from right at the top of the stairs.
“Sarge!” she screeched.
There was a period of terrified silence before she heard Sarge’s voice. “It’s okay, Grace. They’re dead.” His low rumble vibrated through the charged air. “Stay there while I clear the rest of the house.”
A high-pitched whine began to sound in Grace’s ear, and her head spun. She lowered herself down on her side, bringing her knees up to her chest. Shaking uncontrollably, her body descended into shock.
Chapter 9
“It’s just me,” Sarge rumbled into the pitch blackness as he slipped back through the cubby. The sudden beam of his flashlight swept through the shelter as he descended the stairs. He scanned the basement until he found Grace curled into herself, shivering and bloody on the cold cement.
“Motherfucker!” he snapped as he kneeled in front of her to examine the gunshot wound. Her blue-gray eyes were glazed as she looked up at him with a disoriented stare.
In that moment, Sarge felt fear. In all his years in the service and working at the prison, he’d never before felt this absolute dread that crashed down upon him. It was a vile, helpless feeling that he forced himself to squash.
He scooped her up and sat her in a chair. “Let me see.”
Not waiting for Grace to comply, he peeled her hand away from the wound on her arm.
“Son of a bitch. It’s bleeding like a mother.” He straightened and strode away from her. In less than a minute, he was back, supplies in hand. It took several minutes of direct pressure on the mangled, gaping groove carved out of the side of her arm for the flow of blood to diminish and then stop.
“I need to lie down.”
“I know, Gracie. This will only take a minute. Can you sit for me just a little while longer? Sixty seconds, that’s all I need.”
She didn’t answer. Her head lolled.
“Are you still with me, Gracie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Open your eyes. I need you to look at this and tell me whether I should stitch it closed.”
Before he’d even finished his sentence, her body slumped. Grace had passed out.
Unsure about whether he should try to stitch it or not, Sarge efficiently cleaned and loosely bandaged the three inches of raw meat that now was the outside of Grace’s arm.
When he was done, he scooped her up again and laid her down on the bed. He sat next to her while his heart raced, and his stomach churned. The adrenaline that was still rushing through his body was not going to let him sleep.
After an hour of listening to her breathing and calming his own system, he moved himself away from the bed.
“Please come back.” Her soft voice whispered through the stark silence of the space, and he smiled at the words. He smiled at the warm feeling that seeped into him when she spoke them.
Sarge lifted the blanket and slid in next to her. “Go back to sleep,” he said as she snuggled close to him. He lulled them both with the gentle combing of his fingers through her hair.
Sarge spent the next two days and nights with his heart in his throat and his body as close to Grace’s as possible. She probably thought he was trying to comfort her wounded body. In reality, he was comforting himself.
The only significant amount of time he’d spent away from her since the home invasion was when he repaired the wall at the top of the stairs. He was thankful that he had the job as well as the disposal of the three men’s bodies to take care of. The physical work gave him an outlet for the rage and fear he felt after Grace had been shot. He’d never felt more satisfaction in his life than when he’d dragged the three stiff bodies out of his house and down the street, abandoning them at the base of a Dumpster in a strip mall at the corner.
They spent long stretches of time next to each other in the small bed since she’d been shot. It seemed as if she’d welcomed every caress and kiss he’d given her during that time. The disparity between the two opposing demeanors he’d seen in her nagged at him.
He cut through the silence, throwing the question out into the miles between them. “Tell me why you ran away from me the other morning.”
She sighed, followed by a long stretch of silence. “The sex was good, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He smiled at her. “I wasn’t worried about the sex. I’m confused about these two different people I’m living with and starting to wonder which Grace is the real one.”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Cut the crap, Grace.”
She rolled over to face him and searched his eyes. “Sarge,” He watched her eyes roam over his face. “The last thing we need is me falling for you for no other reason than you gave me a kick-ass orgasm. I ran away because that’s how I keep myself whole, how I protect myself from my own impulsive decisions and the feelings that go along with them. Running is what I do until I feel centered enough again to not…” She shook her head.
“Not what?”
“Not feel. Not hope.” She closed her eyes and shook her head again.
He leaned into her and kissed her softly on the lips. “Not fall in love?”
She opened her eyes. “Yes, not fall in love.” She bit her lower lip, still searching his face. “I was straight with you about this from the beginning. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.
“I will, huh?” He was amused until he saw the sadness in her eyes.
“Yes, you will.”
A few hours later, Grace broke the comfortable silence in the shelter. “Uh, Sarge?”
“Hm?”
“I want to go back to the lake to clean up.”
He glanced up from his plate of canned stew and sighed. She was obviously feeling better. He knew he had no choice but to say yes, to reward her for asking instead of just going. Plus, he wasn’t sure she’d continue to ask if he said no. He didn’t want to take the chance of her leaving to go without him.
“Sarge?”
His attention snapped back to her. “It’s dangerous.”
Grace looked at him with her lips pressed together, stoic.
He sighed again. “Yeah. We can both clean up and bring some water back with us,” he said, scrubbing his hand over the short brush of his hair. “It’ll be safest for us to go in the middle of the night. If you want to sleep for a few hours, I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”
The shelter was already darkening as sunset approached outside.
“How are you going to stay awake in the dark?”
“I’ll pull down the blackout covers for the skylights and do some reading with the solar flashlight.”
&n
bsp; “You mean I get that huge bed all to myself?”
Sarge laughed. “Don’t get used to it.”
After their first night together, Sarge had inspected the cubby-sized opening in the closet that led to their shelter. There was no way he could fit his queen-size mattress through the small doorway, and if he made the opening bigger, he would lose the perfect camouflage of the false wall as it was. Maybe at some point he’d be willing to take the chance, but not now. Plus, there was a huge part of him that was glad that there was only the small mattress for them to share, because there was not much else in his life that he loved more than feeling Grace’s body next to his at night.
He pulled a chair away from the bed so that his flashlight wouldn’t bother her. Then he went to the four skylights and covered the lenses so that his light couldn’t be detected from the outside of the house.
Sarge tried to read. He held the flashlight and looked at the words on the page, but they didn’t penetrate though the torrent of desire that swirled unendingly around him. It made him practically useless. Whoever said familiarity breeds contempt had never been shut in with Grace. During the last two days, he hadn’t found one single thing about her annoying. She was the female version of her father, and Sarge considered that statement a genuine compliment.
It had been a week since the EMP, and with the twenty-four-seven forced cohabitation, Sarge was falling for her hard. Grace had a lot of exceptional qualities. There was no female speak to decipher with her. No histrionics. No nagging. She was also completely unaware of how sexy she was, of how sexy he found her. She was steady and even. It didn’t seem like those words should be the words that came to mind when he thought about a woman whom he fell for. He would have thought the word “submissive” would describe the one he would eventually keep as his own. But Grace was not submissive. She may be sexually submissive. That determination was still up in the air.
There had been several situations since the EMP that would have had any other person, man or woman, touchy and out of sorts. But Grace radiated balance. She had a quiet composure. Even when he’d spanked her, she took it with dignity instead of the outrage or whining that he would have expected from any other woman.