by Godwin, Pam
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.
The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.
The Holy Bible, Matthew 26:41
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A NUN’S TITS
“Your smell is intoxicating.” Roark sucked in a breath through his nose.
The swell in my throat trapped my speech. With my face smashed against his neck and the screeching outside our tomb, my muscles cramped.
“Gun oil,” he went on. “Mixed with embalming fluid and the heady tang of sweat.”
My fingers twitched with the impulse to punch him but our cramped quarters kept me in check.
The scratching persisted. The aphids’ hunger called to me. And so did Roark’s tang. Under the mask of whiskey, an incredible oakiness blended with chocolate and spice. I tried to pry my nose off his neck and my head met the felt lining above us.
I found my voice. “Hiding your fear of those things behind humor?”
“I think I have more to fear in here than what’s out there.”
My body tensed against the hard ridges of his.
“I can feel their buzzing rippling through ye, lass. And after seeing ye fight last night and out there today, I know ye move like them, ninety to the dozen. Ye could’ve outrun them if I hadn’t slowed us down.”
“I’m not—”
“I’m not suggesting ye are. But ye haven’t been honest. I think you’re the one hiding fear.”
The safe’s steel casing moaned as aphids piled on. I felt their need like words in my ears. He was right. I was hiding my fear. Fear of what I was becoming. Fear of losing my immunity, or never having it to begin with. “I can sense them before I see them. And right now”—for the first time—“I understand them. They’re not going to give up until they’ve fed.”
His fingers curled into my hips then relaxed. “It’s been ten minutes. Getting enough air?”
I nodded against his neck.
“Then we wait.” He rolled his knees out.
I settled between them and eased my grip on his shoulders. God, how I missed the feel of Joel’s body under mine. I relaxed into the heat enfolding me. My heartbeat slowed, parroting the steady one below me. “Explain this joke of bank vault we’re smashed in.”
“It’s a bit of a town, lass. Wee families with wee quid.”
Something pounded the side of the safe. The door rattled.
“Tell me they can’t open that.”
“The inside knob slides the pins. But if they can turn the outside wheel, they can open it.”
I closed my eyes and focused on the vibrations. Their frustration echoed through me. And their desperation. But nothing intelligible. No way could they figure out the wheel. Right?
“Keep your alans on.” He stroked my back. “Why den’ ye tell me more about your super powers?”
The corner of my mouth crept up his neck. He was trying to distract me. Maybe both of us. So I told him about the glowing aphids, my fighting speed, my training with Joel. Then I told him about my visions. How I found my father’s body, the Lakota and the nymph. And the unexplained urgency to cross the Atlantic. It felt liberating to talk about the spirits of my children. Was it because he was a priest that I was able to talk so freely?
“And this pull, where does it take ye now?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t.”
“Ah.”
The din of moaning and scraping crept along my spine. I shivered.
His hand skimmed over my ribs. “How about your nightmares? How do I lull ye from the next one?”
“If we get out of this mess, you’d be wise to get the hell away from me.”
“Blarney.”
I wished I could meet his eyes. I wasn’t about to tell him about skin-to-skin contact. “Your vow.”
He sighed and the cords between his shoulder and neck contracted against my mouth. My lips tingled with the urge to explore. “I’ll tempt you. I know I will. I have…issues.”
“Like now? Are ye tempting me now?”
His groin was pressed against my thigh. He didn’t feel tempted. Though, the predators clawing inches from our heads offered some distraction. But not enough to distract me from the sudden urge to grind against his leg. There was a sure-fire way to send him running. “I sort of have a sex addiction.”
The air in safe thickened.
“That’s what I was diagnosed with anyway, a few years back. It wasn’t a big deal before. I had Joel.”
He laughed then. He laughed.
“I’m glad you find it so damn entertaining.”
“It’s just”—more laughing—“it’s bloody brilliant.”
“Really. Enlighten me.”
“You’re the last woman left. And ye fancy sex. And now you’re trapped in a vault with a celibate priest. Tell me how ye den’ see the humor in it?”
Surely he heard my teeth grinding. “How about I tell you how I used my brilliant position to manipulate a boy a few weeks ago. And how my exploitation got him butchered on our arrival.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed against my face. “Wha’ happened?”
I told him how Ian sneaked me on and off the ship. How the crew members caught up with me in the port. How Jesse followed me. I left out the attempted mastectomy. I didn’t want his pity or his coddling. “Where’s the laughing now?”
“Ye did wha’ ye had to do.” A pause. “I ask ye to do one thing, lass. Put some faith in me discipline. Me vow is as useless as a nun’s tits if I’m spared from temptation. I can handle it, and you’re not gonna get me killed.”
Fine. He deserved to hear all of it. “What if I told you my nightmares are eased, prevented even, when I’m wrapped naked with another body?” Joel tested the theory and I proved it—semi-nude—with the Lakota and poor Ian.
“Then I’ll say a fit prayer of thanks. The bloody couch is brutal to sleep on.”
“You assume we’re going back to the bunker.”
Muffled gun shots rang out. His arms tightened around me. “Aw, pish.”
“Shh. Listen.” Multiple machine guns fired alongside rifles and shotguns. I counted the discrepancies in the blasts. The aphid vibrations magnified, but their attention was redirected. When I sensed them retreating from the back room, I whispered, “There’s at least ten shooters, maybe more. This may be our only chance.”
“Right then. I’m gonna take a gander. If the room’s clear—”
“The room’s clear.”
“Right. If the lobby’s clear, run. Den’ wait for me—”
“Coddling. Just open the damn door.”
He did.
Ruts burrowed through the safe’s exterior in twisted shards of steel. We collected our weapons and crawled over the bent door. Gunfire clapped from the street.
“Sounds like only five shooters left,” I said. “We need to hurry.”
Assuming close combat, I held the pistol in my right hand, knife in my left, and followed him through the empty lobby. The aphids weren’t far given the pulsing inside me. We stopped behind a pillar at the front of the bank.
Across the street, fifty—maybe sixty—aphids formed a circle. Every bug in sight pressed into the frenzy. Rifle rounds and masculine shouting boomed from the center.
“I’ve never seen so many in one place,” I whispered at his back. The contentment from the feeding washed over me, sickening and sating at the same time.
A man detached from the swarm. He ran backwards, firing his machine gun, screaming. Aphids scurried after him, unfazed by his bullets. Roark squeezed my hand.
The closest one clamped a pincer on the man’s neck. His eyes bulged. Then half a dozen mouths pierced his torso. A wet howl cut through the buzzing.
He pulled me through the entryway. We slipped onto the sidewalk and ran the opposite way. When we veered down a side street, the screaming ceased. A muscle twitched on his clenched jaw, but he kept his pace next to me.
Our truck emerged on the hill ahead. The surrounding lawns and homes were barren
. Puffs of steam pumped from my burning lungs. My knees jarred with each smack of my boots on the pavement.
A few blocks later, I swung open the truck door and dropped with a slump on the seat.
He turned over the engine and raced away from the aphid rally. “Where to?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“Back to the bunker, then. Until we have a plan.”
“Okay.” I slouched into the seat and rubbed my chest. I definitely needed a plan.
“So, how do we do this?” Roark asked that night.
I lay in the bed in borrowed sweat pants and a T-shirt. “For it to work, skin to skin is necessary.”
His mouth twitched. I sounded like a nut job.
“How much skin?”
“When I was with the Lakota, they kept a bare arm around my waist and a bare chest against my back. But here’s the deal. If the contact is lost, the nightmare slips in.” Which was why I didn’t have a single lapse when I slept nude with Joel.
He stood next to the bed and stared down at me, his expression grave. Yeah, he was having second thoughts.
“It’s hard to keep contact all night anyway,” I said. “Just forget it.”
He put a knee on the mattress. “Scoot.”
I gave him half the twin mattress and blew out the candle. When he settled behind me, I tucked the hem of my shirt under my breasts.
His warm fingers brushed my waist and settled into a fist against my belly. A few moments passed.
“Evie?”
“Mm?”
“This tug ye talked about. Do ye think it has something to do with your wonder woman powers?”
I shrugged and my cheeks twitched against the pillow.
“And your immunity. Any guesses?”
“We know the virus targeted low testosterone and I have evidence of the opposite.”
“Your libido?”
“That’s one symptom. I have others.”
He opened his fist and tucked me closer to his naked chest. Warmth flooded my body.
His breath brushed my hair. “Have ye heard of the Shard?”
Joel’s letter. A twinge burned away my arousal. “Yeah.”
“In the early days, they were campaigning to find surviving women.”
“I know.”
“But the airwaves have been dead,” he said. “I haven’t heard mention of them for six months.”
I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t give a shit about saving humanity. As a priest, it would be his mission to correct my opinion. I was too tired for that debate. I feigned a yawn.
“Night, Evie.”
“Night.”
Three weeks later, I twisted and grunted under Roark. I angled my face away from the sweat doused shirt clinging to his pecs and arched my back. My heartbeat accompanied the pounding drums, bagpipe and tin whistle rattling the gym’s speakers. I rocked my hips to leverage a better position under him. He slipped through my guard. Then he mimed a knockout punch to my face.
“Arrgh” ripped from my throat. “Dammit, you suck.”
I elbowed him off me. His laughter bounced off the concrete walls.
“You learn Jujitsu in three weeks,” I shouted, “and now I can’t last five minutes with you.”
“Woot-hoo-hoo.” He rolled on his back, clutching his stomach.
Next, there’d be tears streaking his face. “Fuck you.” He could’ve at least made me feel like it was an even match. I stormed toward the door, my face burning.
He beat me there, blocking the exit and pinning me with those damn jade eyes. “How ’bout I remind ye I had a stonking teacher?”
I sighed and crossed my arms. “Fine. But I’m still in a snit. Warm up the heavy bag. I’m going to…I’m just going.”
He stepped aside and I ran down the hall. I knew where I headed and so did he. He hollered after me, “I love that short fuse of yours, temptress. If ye keep showing me your buttons, I’m going to push ’em.”
I slammed the bathroom door and yanked my battery-powered bullet out of the drawer. Then I slid to the floor.
He called me temptress. It became a running joke when he gleaned I was escaping to the bathroom with my bullet every time my libido triggered. He called me temptress because I behaved contrarily. I vacated at the first hint of indecency between us. He, on the other hand, was insufferably flirtatious and enjoyed roiling me then watching me run to the bathroom.
I lay on my back with my feet on the door and clicked the bullet on and off with my thumb.
The teasing, I could endure. But I knew under every tease lay a reciprocated truth. I heard it in his cracked voice when he whispered good morning in my ear. I felt it when he touched my hand as he passed. I saw it when I caught him watching me from across the room. And I dreamed about it when he snuggled at my back every night.
I wet the bullet with my mouth, clicked it on and eased it over the throb inside me. My mind was crowded with fantasies and they all fed an impossible hope. Jesse was gone. Roark was celibate. And a battery-operated apparatus was no replacement for the real thing.
But I closed my eyes and let copper ones fill my vision. Jesse’s body pressing mine into the floor, lips parted for ragged breaths. The music of his Texas drawl moaning my name. I found my release with my imaginary lover and emerged from the bathroom, both hurting and feeling better at the same time.
Time toiled by under the freeze line. Snow and bitter temperatures shut us in for weeks. Roark’s stores of food and supplies could last months. But I could not.
“I made a list of travel supplies.” I took a steadying breath. “I’d like to move on in the next couple days.”
He eyed me from the opposite end of the couch, our legs intertwined. “You’re off your bloody nut. Ye want to travel now? In January? It’s the coldest feckin’ month of year. Ye den’ even have a plan. Ye den’ even know where you’re going.”
I turned a page in The Hound of the Baskervilles, my favorite in Roark’s collection. I lifted the frayed hardback until it blocked his face.
He knocked a knee against mine.
While the bunker offered us secrecy from the threats prowling above, we had little privacy from each other. I palmed the stone that lay on my chest. I managed to keep my healing wound concealed from his probing eyes and he stopped asking about it. The scabs and stitches were gone, leaving my chest puckered under a hideous pink scar.
He tapped my knee again.
I sighed and closed the book. “What?”
“Where’d ye get that necklace, temptress?”
The nickname had to go. I dug a toe in his ribs.
“Ackk,” he shrieked.
“You scream like a girl, fickle priest.”
“One of us should play the part.” He caught my foot and kissed it, his smile flashing around white teeth. If only his playfulness could loosen the tension within me.
I traced the veins that webbed the stone. “It was a gift.”
“Tell me.” He massaged my toes.
I told him about my time with the Lakota. About the Great Mystery, the circle, my healing and my peculiar interactions with Jesse. “Besides Ian, the Lakota are the only men who have shown me civility since the outbreak.”
He crooked a brow. “Wha’ about your fickle priest?”
“Hmm. Jury’s still out on that one.”
He locked an arm around my thigh and attempted a hyperextension on my knee. I rolled, twisted out of it and into his lap. He released his grip but kept his arms around my waist. His throat bounced around a swallow, eyes mirroring my hunger. I wanted to close the inches between us. I wanted to find out if he tasted as good as he smelled.
His brogue rumbled from his chest. “Temptress.”
“Prude.”
“Opinionated heathen.”
“Brainwashed god-fearer.”
His gaze drifted over my face, returned to my eyes. “Bugger, you’re so beautiful.”
I swallowed past a tight throat. My self-control was no match for his. I lea
pt off his lap and ran toward the workout room, the farthest place I could get.
He caught my arm in the hallway. My back hit the wall, held there by his hip.
My thoughts were everywhere and no where they should be. “We need to stop this.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this.” His breath was hot on my temple, his accent thicker than usual. “Trust me, lass. Den’ bolt. Close your eyes.”
Put some faith in me discipline.
I took a shaky breath and did what he asked. A few heartbeats later, his fingers brushed my cheeks. My pulse raced. My clothes felt tight and itchy. He pressed his forehead to mine and inhaled through his nose. His fingers sank in my hair as he whispered at my mouth, “Can we show each other affection without making it about shagging?”
I opened my eyes. “Impossible.” For me, at least.
“We’re both lonely. We have no family and friends to hold or care for. But we have each other.”
Deep breaths. “What kind of affection?”
He cupped my face. His lips touched my forehead. My heart thundered. He tilted my head back and dropped a kiss on the bridge of my nose. Then the tip. I held my breath. His mouth swept over mine, soft and warm. He lingered on my bottom lip.
I didn’t kiss back. My insides flailed in objection.
He released my face and placed his hands on the wall, caging me with his arms. Then he dipped his head to meet my eyes. “So?”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets to keep from yanking him back to my mouth. “I’ve worn out my welcome. It’s time I go. Alone.”
“Hmm.” He dropped his hands. “There’ll be wigs on the green, then. Till my last breath, I’m going to protect ye.”
His unblinking glare said he’d tie me up with rosary beads and stuff an alter cloth in my mouth if I challenged him. A challenge I would normally not back down from.
“I won’t be responsible for your vow.”
“Aw, ye pain in the hole. Ye know full well the vow is futile without ye.”
I rolled my head back against the wall. “Like tits on a nun.”
“Feckin’ apt. Dried up useless tits. Now let’s go see wha’ we can scrape up for dinner.”