by Pam Godwin
“Jackson loved these shoes.” She ran a hand over a strappy red stiletto, her lips trembling, unable to hold her smile.
“I lost my husband, too.”
I had no words of solace, no comfort to share. After Joel died, I’d found some semblance of peace in silence, so that was what I gave her now.
In the quiet moment that followed, I sensed a welcome sort of bond pulling us together. Her gaze drifted to mine, her stricken expression cleared, and her gentle smile returned.
Roark grew quiet beside me, and I realized he’d fallen asleep.
“Hey.” I tugged on his dreadlocks until he opened his eyes. “Go switch places with Jesse. He needs a nap more than you do.”
Arguing that we didn’t need a guard in here and one at the front door would’ve been a waste of time, so I didn’t bother.
Roark left with a kiss on my nose, and a few moments later, Jesse walked in holding a mug.
Shea looked up from her elaborate makeup kit and watched him out of the corner of her eye. She seemed suddenly more guarded, her fingers moving slowly, distractedly, through her supplies. Surely, he hadn’t scared her on their walk over here? Or was there something else going on?
I nodded in his direction. “He doesn’t bite.”
Her eyes flicked to me and back to him. “He doesn’t talk either. Is he mute?”
He scanned the room, his body stiffening as he took in the flowered wallpaper, the spread of makeup on the floor around Shea, and the lingerie strung on hangers around the room. He looked really uncomfortable and out of place, with his frayed clothes and fuck-off expression. Was he allergic to girly crap?
I thought back to the first time I saw him. His gorgeous looks aside, I had not been impressed. How many times had I watched him walk away, mumbling to myself, What a dick?
“He’s not mute,” I said. “He’ll grow on you.” Then he’ll steal your heart.
Hopefully not Shea’s heart. I didn’t want her to discover how big of a possessive bitch I could be. I really liked this girl.
Glancing down at the mug in his hand, Jesse approached me and held it out.
I accepted it with a smile and moaned as I sipped, the robustness of dark coffee warming my throat. “Ahhh, that’s heaven. Thank you.”
Chin lowered and shoulders back, he stared at me with his silent watchfulness, the kind of stare that used to make me insanely uneasy. Now I expected it. Loved it, even.
With nothing else to do but look at each other, I joined Shea on the floor. Jesse propped his bow against the mattress and sat on the bed, his unwavering gaze caressing my face.
Shea chattered on, lamenting the end of fashion magazines and celebrity styles and the manufacturing of push-up bras and tampons and well, everything. My thoughts drifted to weapons training, building her strength and endurance, and transforming her into an aphid-slaying machine. Yeah, okay, she was very feminine, and the nymph fever had eaten away her body weight. But her frame was sturdy and solid, and with enough cardio and strength training, I bet she could wield a fierce amount of muscle.
My fingers twitched with restlessness, anxious to get started. But this was her first day out of the animal clinic. She needed time to go through her things, to mourn her husband, and to accept this miserable world she’d woken in.
I glanced back at Jesse, and just as I’d hoped, his dark lashes lay over his cheeks, his upper body slumped, still and comatose, in its upright position. My heart gave a heavy thump. For him to let his guard down enough to fall asleep while guarding was a testament to his level of exhaustion.
No need to worry, though. My carbine sat a few feet away, and I knew Roark stood on look out at the front door. So I silently crawled across the floor and joined Jesse on the bed.
His eyes fluttered then snapped open in shock, locking on his bow beside him.
“Shhh.” I pressed against his chest and shoulder, coaxing him to lay down.
He pushed back at first then let me guide him to rest on our sides. Across the room, Shea ducked her head and picked through her makeup kit.
With my chest against Jesse’s back, I ran my fingers through his soft hair, trailing them over his face and smoothing out the creases in his forehead and around his eyes. Soon, his breathing evened out and his muscles grew heavy against me.
Shea watched us from the floor, picking at the skin around her fingernail, her voice quiet. “Is that how you tame him?”
I traced the outline of his short beard, marveling at the hues of brown and red. “This one can’t be tamed,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t want to anyway.”
“You said you have three guardians?”
With that question, our conversation took a somber turn, flowing back and forth in hushed tones. We talked about Michio. We shared stories about her husband, my husband, Annie and Aaron. Then we talked about the Drone.
I considered sliding to the floor with her, but Jesse hadn’t stirred and I was reluctant to give up such a rare moment of unguarded nearness with him. He looked so at ease and beautiful in my embrace with his jaw relaxed and lips slightly parted.
For the next couple hours, I combed my fingers through his hair and caught her up on everything I knew and some of the things I speculated. She was a natural listener, asked smart questions, and took it all in with astounding bravery. Not a tear in sight. Not even a tremble. She had just been told that ghosts existed and mutated bloodsuckers prowled the perimeter by the hundreds and the future was dependent on an unborn child.
Maybe she thought I was full of shit.
Still sitting on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her, she stared across the room, her focus narrowing on the sleeping man wrapped in my arms. “I’m a believer. Practicing Baptist, actually. But the religious institution doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” She smiled to herself. “Point is, I’m a woman of faith, Evie. If God has a plan, not you or anyone will be able to stand in His way.”
“Noted.” I gave her a half-smile and lowered my mouth to Jesse’s bare shoulder, relishing the heat of his back against my chest. “But I’m not a woman of faith, and I don’t think God has anything to do with who I have sex with and if I get pregnant. We don’t even know if women can carry to term. Or if a child can survive its first breath.” I swallowed, suddenly anxious to change the topic. “How are you feeling? No more nausea and headaches?”
She chewed on her lip. “I feel weak. Too damned skinny. I mean, look at these puny arms.” She tried to flex her bicep and sighed. “But I’m ready to get out there and help y’all however I can.”
Yeah, she and I were going to get along just fine.
“But there’s one thing.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t had sex in two years, or if it’s from all the man meat you’ve got walking around up in here.” She glanced at Jesse. “But I’m itching to get laid. Like, for real. I’ve never been this horny.”
If Elaine experienced a heightened libido, she never mentioned it. But she did show it, with her hands and hips all over Michio. I wished more than ever he was here to answer Shea’s questions.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Jackson, I’m so sorry, baby. I miss you terrible, and if you were here, I’d fuck you senseless. But you’re not, and I’m going to have to deal with this little problem without you. I love you. You know I do. Always will, baby.” Her lashes fluttered up, her eyes watery. She pulled in a deep breath and smiled at me. “I’m good.” She sniffed. “I’ll be fine.”
What exactly was she planning to do about her problem? I felt a tug of possessiveness over my guys, but that faded quickly in light of the overwhelming awe I had for her. She confronted her grief with inspiring determination. I’d been a barely-functioning zombie for weeks after Joel died, wandering alone and longing for death.
And to think, Shea’s husband died the day before we found her. Such bittersweet irony that he survived and cared for her to the end and inadvertently led us to her, yet he never got to see her healed.
> Beneath her watery smile, her grief strained, tightening the skin around her mouth.
I started to move away from Jesse to—I don’t know—hug her? Did she need that? I was out of my element here.
She held up a hand. “Stay with your man.” She cleared her throat. “So what’s up with my urge to hump anything that moves? Cuz, honey, that ain’t normal.”
I rubbed a lock of Jesse’s hair between my fingers. “Remember I said I might’ve passed on some of my…traits?”
Her brow furrowed. “You’re horny, too?”
I pulled my fingers from his hair and shifted to the edge of the bed. “Something like that. It has to do with high testosterone.”
“Ah.” She stood and stretched her arms over her head, exposing the skeletal outline of her ribs through the thin shirt. “You said your missing guardian is a doctor?”
I closed my eyes, my chest clenching. “Yeah.”
Her footsteps approached, and her soft hand on my cheek drew my gaze to hers.
“I’m a veterinarian,” she whispered. “Now don’t ask me to do brain surgery, but I know my way around organs and bones. Maybe that’ll relieve some of the worry you’re carrying on your shoulders, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Seriously, I loved this woman. “Would you be able to check my IUD?”
She chuckled, lowering her hand. After our little heart-to-heart, she knew about Roark and Michio’s infertility and Jesse’s stance on intimacy.
“Only one reason you need an IUD, and he’s sexy as sin.” She pursed her lips, eyes on Jesse. “You’re optimistic, girl. I like that.”
A hand squeezed my hip, accompanied by Jesse’s groggy voice. “She’s delusional.”
I squinted at him over my shoulder. “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough.” He jack-knifed into a sitting position beside me, hooked an arm around my waist, and tugged me against him. Then he brushed his mouth over the shell of my ear. “Thank you for the nap.” He inhaled deeply. Was he smelling my hair? He was definitely stealing my air. “Really needed that, darlin’.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Shea fanned her face. “I feel like a voyeur.”
I laughed, meeting Jesse’s eyes inches away. “She’s awesome, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, without breaking our eye-contact.
“Pfft. You ain’t seen nothing.” She strode to the door. “Let me show you where we keep the generators and other cool toys. Like my ultrasound machine.” She winked at me. “You know, to check the position and effectiveness of your IUD.”
The fume of machinery oil and corroded sheet metal choked the air. Sweat trickled between my breasts in the stifling heat. I stood in a shed the size of a basketball court with Roark, Jesse, and Shea, the four of us gathered around the only section not piled with clutter. The vacant spot had clearly been occupied at one time, given the square outlines of dirt on the concrete and the amount of stuff filling every other inch of the space.
A stripe of sunlight filtered through the smudges on a single window, illuminating trucks, tractors, weed eaters, rusted skeletons of chain-link cages, and veterinary machines I couldn’t name. An old vending machine lay on its side, and long feeding troughs stacked against the far wall. But no generators.
“We kept them here.” Shea glared at the bare spot on the floor, fisting her hands on her hips. “Jackson must’ve…” She slapped a palm on her brow. “Of course, he used them. Duh. No electricity.”
Jesse turned in a circle, eyeing the space. “We’ve rummaged through every building on the reserve. There’re no generators.”
“Maybe he traded them?” I stepped through the clutter, searching for an ultrasound machine, though I didn’t know what one looked like and was fully aware we wouldn’t be able to use it. “You know, for food or weapons?”
We’d found her husband four-hundred miles away. Maybe he’d been desperate for supplies? Generators were among the first things looted when the lights flickered off. Two years later, locating one abandoned and still working was no easy feat.
Shea jutted her chin. “The fool better not have traded them for bling or dresses. That man loved to dote on me.” She lowered her voice, mumbling, “Even when I looked like a parasitic swamp donkey. God love him.”
I bit down on my cheek. Given the amount of feminine shit we’d found in his truck, my suspicions ran along the same lines. What a damned shame. A generator would’ve given us some comforting luxuries, like light at night, refrigeration for blood, and power for a sonogram.
Jesse reached into a plastic container and removed a football. He palmed it, testing its weight in his big hand, a small smile playing on his lips. How strange to imagine a life of football games, universities, young men competing against each other for something other than survival, and Jesse smack at the center of all of it. But that had been his life in Texas, attending college on football scholarship.
I watched him put the football back and caught his eyes. “You miss it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
Shea broke the nostalgic moment as she pulled a roundish, laptop-looking thing off a nearby shelf. “Well, here’s my portable ultrasound. Not that we can use it without electricity.” Her face fell. “I’m sorry, Evie.”
Maybe we could use one of the cars to power it. If we found one of those AC/DC power adapters that plugged into the lighter and turned it into a normal plug, we could pull electricity from a car battery.
I shrugged, my armpits sticking with the motion. “I still think you’re awesome.”
She flashed me a smile and started to put the machine back.
“Hang on.” Jesse pushed a hand through his hair. “We’ll take it with us.”
I stared at him, stunned. He stared right back, daring me to question him. He’d followed us in here without a word, and I’d assumed he was interested in the generators, not the ultrasound. If we found a power supply down the road and the ultrasound validated the effectiveness of my birth control, would he trust it enough to let me love him the way we both wanted?
The intensity of his gaze told me he would. The tight clench of his fingers at his sides promised he would not be gentle.
Heat flooded my skin, and the hot flash had little to do with the Georgia climate. Mental images of his naked body, his urgent hands, and his hard, needy cock moving over my skin and between my legs did nothing to cool my rising temperature.
My chest tingled, and my breath lodged in my throat. I thought I’d done a bang-up job reigning in my libido since Michio left, but evidently, I was powerless against Jesse’s lusty glares.
He turned away, as if uninspired by whatever he saw on my face, and nodded at the machine in Shea’s hand. “We’ll put that in the truck.”
Then he strode out the door and into the blinding sunshine, leaving me flushed and unbalanced. Shea glanced at me, raised her brows, and followed after him.
I shared a look with Roark. His forehead wrinkled beneath the sheen of sweat. Not with jealousy. No, he was immune to that weakness.
“What?” I asked, following his gaze to my upper arm.
There, clinging to the curve of my shoulder, was a ladybird. Inches from my face, it stretched blood-red wings, dotted with tiny replicas of the black spots on my back. Its triangular head canted, twitching twin antennas, as if tasting my breaths.
Was it looking at me? I sensed a…a…I didn’t know what it was. A soft hum? A dribble of energy? Like the beetle was telling me something, maybe telling me I was an idiot because I didn’t understand. My skin tightened against the sensation, every conscious thought narrowing on the fact that it was here, and I was here, and that was supposed to make sense. Perhaps that explained everything in some transcendental world where spiritual forces made plans beyond my comprehension.
The ladybird whirred its wings and took off, spiraling above my head and out the door. The trickle of energy went with it, as if drawing an invisible path to Jesse, one I felt a strong urge to follow. But why?
I rub
bed my head, berating myself for being so goddamned spiritually constipated.
Roark stared at the doorway long after the ladybird disappeared. His shoulder-length dreadlocks gathered into a knot at the back of his head, giving me a clear view of his jaw, which sawed side to side.
“I can hear your brain chugging over there.” I adjusted the carbine on its sling and wiped the sweat from my forehead. “It was just a beetle. Doesn’t mean Jesus is calling.”
He closed the distance in three long strides and planted his bulky frame in front of me. “Do ye know the lady in ladybird refers to the Virgin Mary?”
I dragged my eyes to his, wary about where this was going. The first time he’d witnessed the crazy beetles swarming my body, he told me it was a sign. That was the night we had sex. The night that wrenched us apart.
“The term originated in the Middle Ages.” He brushed the rough pads of his fingers over my shoulder, his brogue thickening. “Pests were plaguing the crops, destroying the food source. Famine was inevitable. So the farmers prayed to the Blessed Lady, the Virgin Mary, and soon after, the red and black beetles came.”
I took in his thoughtful expression, strong nose, and the rugged outline of stubble. His eyes radiated every shade of vivid green, like a dewy meadow at dawn. He was achingly beautiful, physically, soulfully.
I touched his full lips, because I could, because he didn’t just belong to his god. He was mine, too, and he craved the affection as much as I did. “Let me guess. The ladybirds ate the pests, and the crops were miraculously saved? Famine averted?”
“Aye.” He smiled against my fingers. “The farmers owed their prosperity to the beetles and divinity who’d sent them, so they named them lady beetles. Mary beetles. The red wings represent her cloak, the black spots her sorrows.”
I lowered my hand, my limbs suddenly too heavy for my body. Something inside me pulled and pulled hard, toward the door, toward the man who’d exited through it moments ago. Where was this coming from, this impulse to follow Jesse right this minute? My mind? My heart?