“Is that a bad thing?” His hands had slipped up beneath my sweater. The warmth of him bled into my chilled skin, and I shivered briefly.
I stared up at him. Beautiful eyes studying me. His heart beat was wild under my hand when I touched his chest. “No,” I admitted.
He just stayed that way then. Staring. Holding me. He almost seemed to vibrate with unused energy. With want and need and life. He felt like life, that was it, I realized. He felt alive.
I grabbed his head a bit too rough and didn’t care. I hauled him in to kiss him—really fucking kiss him—even as he laughed at my ham-handed assault.
“Kiss me,” I said, mashing my lips to his.
Evan’s hands cupped my face. We stayed that way for a few beats then he cradled my head and deepened the kiss, his other hand straying along the flat of my belly to slip beneath my bra and stroke my nipple. “I am kissing you.”
“A quickie. That’s it.” I was bargaining with no one but myself. I knew that. But I needed to say it aloud. “Just because our egos are bruised. And we’ve killed people…things today. Because it’s just been a craptacular fucking day,” I finished.
My clothes were a nuisance, but so were his. We tugged and pulled and stripped until I was bare from the waist down and so was he. My jacket flung aside, my sweater hiked up to my neck, my bra pulled down. I was too on edge, too wired and tired to get utterly naked.
Fast, rough, desperate—that was what I needed.
I leaned heavily against the counter. The lip of it bit into my lower back. Evan grabbed my right leg, hauled it up high by his hips and effectively spread me. His fingers dipped between my legs, found my wetness, painted my clit with it. “You are definitely turned on,” he informed me, a small smirk on his face.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I growled. There was no heat in my retort. Just a gasping kind of need. I arched my hips to drive my body down onto his thrusting fingers.
He had me opened up, spread wide, and he was touching me. Watching every flickering dance of his fingers on my body. “You have washed your hands right?” I snapped.
Honestly, I didn’t care. Not right then. Not really. But some part of me needed not to fall backwards into my pleasure. I needed to remain alert. On guard. I needed to keep control.
He shook his head and sighed. “Oh, Eleanor. You do know how to kill a mood.” He didn’t mean it because he found my nipple with his mouth, bit it, licked it until it stood up in a tight pink pucker.
“Well?” I demanded. My belly fluttered from the sensation of his teeth on my breast. The rough suck he delivered to my other nipple. It tugged me from throat to cunt, an indefinable sensation that simply felt like desire to me.
“Purell. A few minutes ago. When you were dicking around with your boots. I let it dry thoroughly because I knew I’d get an interrogation. But yes, my hands are clean. Are yours?” But then he ground his lips against mine, his tongue intruding into my mouth, until I sighed, opened wide—kissed him back.
“Thank you.”
“Shut up, Eleanor.”
I nodded and almost laughed. Instead, I simply settled for a smile. But then I found his cock and squeezed him hard. He groaned into my mouth, grabbed my waist and pulled me flush to him. Trapping my hand between us and grinding his cock to the split of my pussy lips.
“Evan.” I didn’t know what was supposed to come after that. Hopefully me. I simply wanted him in me. I wanted to be full of him, so that there was no room for worry or fear or regret. I wanted to focus on nothing but him. Us together.
“Hush.” He pulled back from me, lifted my leg again and slid the tip of his cock along my drenched slit. He teased me until I groaned, and he teased me some more.
“Please,” I said.
I rarely begged—anyone for anything. But that one word sounded like begging to me.
“Oh, you know how to get me, sweet Eleanor.” He slipped into me. Slowly. One inch at a time, stretching me as he went, watching me with his dark eyes the whole time. I felt as if I were a butterfly pinned to a board, but in the best possible way. At his mercy, under his spell…scariest of all—safe in his hands.
I grabbed his hips and tried to pull him closer to me. Deeper into me. “Fuck me,” I half snarled. The feeling of safety had really thrown me. I’d felt flickers of it before now, but it was becoming clearer every time we were together. A clarified sense of stability. The sense of not being alone.
A catch blossomed in my throat and threatened to choke me. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I held on tight to his perfect hard ass and moved with him to take him in. Every driving plunge jarred me. The faded, chipped countertop bit into my butt adding sparkles and flares of pain to my pleasure. He thrust harder, and that shock of his pubic bone to my clitoris set me off. I shivered against him, coming with a long low moan.
“Sweetheart,” he groaned.
He moved from me, and I felt the absence of his body from mine. I reached for him, but saw him glancing around.
“What?”
He finally settled on his leather jacket, dropping it on the counter leather side down, fabric lining up. “Up,” he growled, and hoisted me up before I could react. My ass hit the counter, and he stepped in fast between my spread thighs.
My height and angle now allowed him to bury his face between my breasts, licking my skin as if the salt of my sweat was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.
I spread my legs further, let my head fall back. “This is supposed to be a quickie,” I said. My heart thundered in my chest, my ears, my cunt.
“I know, I know. But, Eleanor, when we get to Vermont…” His words drifted off as he grabbed my bottom to steady me. He thrust in hard and deep, and my whole body seemed to sigh with the goodness of it.
“What? What?” I demanded as he rocked into me and I strained up to meet his body.
“I’m going to lay you out on a bed—a proper bed—and fuck you for hours.” His voice was rough, his breathing harsh.
My pussy clenched tight around him, the tension inside me increasing the friction. I was close, so close and I could tell by his body language that so was he.
“Hours?” I gasped. I touched him—everywhere, anywhere—my hands roaming his stubbled jaw, his strong neck, the flexed plane of his chest. I skated my fingers over his belly and felt the muscles twitch and dance from the stimulation. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I tightened my inner muscles on him and heard the air leave his lungs.
“Fucking hours,” he growled. “Babe—”
Evan came, his body flexing restlessly under mine as he emptied. His final thrust nudged my clit just so, and I came a split second later, his big arms wrapped around me as I shook. Laughing. Smiling.
A rustle and a thump at the window. We both turned to see the shelving unit shudder. Then a whaling, whimpering cry.
“Jesus,” I hissed and we were struggling to get dressed, find our weapons. Get back into a killing mindset.
Another sound came by the door. There was more than one.
“Hollows,” I snarled.
“Hurry.” Evan looked stricken. Not from them, but because we’d been in danger. Caught up in ourselves and so terribly compromised.
I leveled a shaking finger at him. “No more!” I snapped. “No more losing focus until we’re safe.”
He looked hurt, angry, frustrated, but finally he just nodded. “Fine. No more losing focus until we’re safe. But El—”
“Yeah?” I wasn’t really paying attention. I shoved my foot into my boot.
“Then all bets are off, you hear me? I just found you again, and I am so ever-loving sick of this running bullshit.”
I glanced up, surprised. “I hear you,” I said. I meant it, too.
Chapter Eighteen
We did a sweep. While we’d gotten reacquainted with each other carnally, several hollows had come out of the woods.
“They must be truly hungry,” Evan said. “They don’t usually come out and hunt during the day u
nless drawn by something big—like freeway noise. Dusk and beyond, sure. Sometimes a loner will come out in the daytime. We killed some and now…more.”
“I guess the people who didn’t leave this town were already infected.” I peeked out the peephole on the back door. The fish-eyes lens told me the back was clear. I saw a gravel lot and a sloping hill behind the store. It was opposite from the side we’d come in. “So far we look clear back here,” I told him.
“Well, we’re not clear up here. So I say we take the backdoor and haul ass to whatever lays beyond.”
“A field, it looks like. A big fucking field, but you never can tell through these damn security holes. I swear they give me migraines.”
I pulled back, rubbed my eye. We loaded our overstuffed duffels back on our backs, and I hefted my new killing tool—my mechanic’s wrench.
I cracked the back door and stuck my head out. On the left side was a very thick band of hedges. Probably why the hollows hadn’t come around. People were lazy and stupid once infected. Whatever the straightest route to food was that’s the way they went. Picking through a thicket wasn’t easy. But eventually they’d come around the opposite side by the garage bay.
“Let’s go,” Evan hissed in my ear.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing to a distant oddly manmade hump in the natural landscape.
“No idea, but seriously, El, the one is getting close to getting in that window. If I kill it, I’m afraid it will draw more. Maybe they have radar. Maybe they travel in flocks now as if they’re birds.” He laughed when he said it, but we both sort of paused for a second.
Group dynamic. Hunting in packs. Was it possible? Wouldn’t they just eat each other? I had no idea.
“Let’s go, then. Got something handy?”
“Knife and gun. You?”
I waved the wrench. “And my gun. Tucked in my belt.”
He gave me a kiss on the back of the neck, and my eyes drifted shut for just a heartbeat. I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to try to find a safe place to hunker down or hotwire a vehicle to get on the road. I just fucking wanted to take a shower, crawl into a bed, wrap myself around Evan and stay that way for weeks.
No time for that but the brief and fleeting fantasy was nice.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
I flung the door wide but stopped it short of banging against the wall. We checked, double checked, then took off fast for the hillside. When we came down the slope from the garage’s back lot, I figured it out. “Drainage pipe!” I said, huffing and puffing.
A small one, just big enough to route the massive rush of water that must come through on rainy seasons. Probably to keep the field from flooding. There’d probably been plans to put it in the ground and redo the landscape. But those plans were over.
“In, in,” Evan said.
I ducked low and ran along the concrete pipe. Very little water trickled along the bottom. It was about sixteen-feet long and dark. But it didn’t smell bad, and the light at the end of the tunnel framed a wide open field and a house off in the distance. A big-ass white farm house like the one I had wet dreams about buying, living and growing old in.
“So do we make a break for that house and hope they can help us?” I leaned against the side to catch my breath. The concrete was cool at my back.
“If there’s even anyone there.”
He had a point. The town seemed deserted but for the infected. So what was the point of hoping anyone there could help us.
We waited, counting unbelievably loud heartbeats to see if any of the garage visitors would stumble across our small hiding space. After a few minutes with no surprises, I touched him and whispered, “So? What are we doing?”
“If we make a break for it across that field we’ll be running across a big wide open place. So if they chase us, we’ll see them. There’s nowhere for them to hide.”
“Us either,” I snapped.
He grinned at me. “Well, there is that.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. I knew we had to run. We couldn’t stay in the drainpipe all night. That would make us sitting ducks. So we should go while it was light. If there were this many stumbling around, hungry and intent, in the daytime…how many would there be at night?
“Fine. Let’s go. This thing is creeping me out anyway. It’s like a big, round tomb.”
He moved fast, cutting off my cry. Evan pushed me to the damp cold wall of the pipe and kissed me. “See you on the other side,” he said. He tried a chuckle, but it felt forced.
“It will be okay,” I found myself telling him. He’d infected me with hope these last few days.
“I know. Now let’s go before we lose our nerve. And our light.” He smacked my ass once, and I gave him a playful cry. But in my mind I thought of him spanking me in the dark on the bus. And the fucking. I thought of how awful the last few days had been and yet how great because he’d been with me.
“Let’s go,” I said around the lump in my throat. “It’s now or never.”
We ran.
* * * *
Nothing chased us. It didn’t change the clawing panic that they could be, though. Or the three million—felt like—times I turned to look. Or the sheer terror I felt when my foot slipped into an unseen divot, and I took a header in the tall grass. Evan was right behind me, there to help me up, there to watch my back, but after months in my little safe home, it was horrifying to be exposed in the open.
We got to the house in less time than I thought. It felt as if it had taken us years to cross the field, instead of probably less than five minutes.
On the wraparound front porch, we knocked. We knocked normally, didn’t hammer the door with our fists the way we truly wanted to. That would draw attention.
No one answered.
I moved to a side window and saw it was up. Set over the porch, the window as an easy point of entry. All I had to do was kick the screen in and climb through.
“Eleanor!” Evan sounded peeved. I should have told him. He climbed in right on my heels.
“Sorry, sorry!” I hissed. “I’m still operating solo half the time. Old habits die hard.”
“Well, you aren’t solo anymore,” he snapped.
Then in unison, called out in a whisper-yell: “Hello?”
We waited. The grandfather clock in the dining room ticked. The birds outside continued to chatter. The ones that were still around despite the dropping temperature. I cocked my head. Somewhere in the house a faucet dripped.
“Nothing,” he said.
I set down my pack and Evan followed suit. Right by the front door so we knew where it was. Then I proceeded to undo the chain on the door and turn the deadbolt latch. All that remained when I tested the door was the knob lock. That way we only had one lock to turn if we had to make a speedy exit.
I looked right, I looked left, I looked up. The top of the staircase to the second floor was dark with shadow, but no one stood there.
Somewhere in the house a soft sound bloomed.
We eyed each other. I shrugged. “Could be a cat. A dog. Rats. Could be anything,” I whispered.
Evan nodded, pointed toward the archway to the kitchen, and I followed him. We walked quietly, in easy, heel-to-toe strides, single file to the kitchen.
On the stove was a pan. The long-crusted remnants of something in it. It looked like dog food, but I thought maybe that had more to do with age than actual content. A can lay on the floor. The whole smell in the kitchen was one of sweet rot on the verge of turning to dust and mold.
“Old,” I said.
Evan nodded. We went into the dining room. The table was piled high with papers. Newspapers. All of them stacked in neat rows. Headlines being: Man Eats Man! and Infection Spreads!
My eyes tracked them quickly, and my stomach turned as if this were a new horror. Beef Killer Culprit!; Facts on Pica and Protecting Yourself and Your Family from the Infection. Dirty dishes were interspersed with the papers.
“I saw a basement door in the kitchen.”
Evan nodded. “Me, too.”
“So the question is, do we go up or do we go down?”
He smirked at me.
“Don’t be a pervert, Evan,” I hissed.
“Sweetheart, I was just trying to lighten the fucking mood.”
When he said that, I heard the tension in his voice. He was just as on edge ad I was. I bit my lips. “Sorry. I know.”
“I say up,” he said. “Up, then back through the first floor, then down. Agreed?”
“Agreed. You want the head or the rear?”
He smirked again.
“Right,” I whispered. “You take the rear.”
“Darling, I thought you’d never ask.”
I shook my head at him but noticed as I turned away, I was blushing. It’s not as if I’d never thought about it. I just couldn’t think about it now.
I started up the steps slowly. The house had to be at least a hundred years old. Maybe older. Every step we took was a symphony of creaks and cracks. My head felt buzzy, and I realized I was holding my breath. I inhaled deeply and strained to hear anything besides the cacophony we seemed to be making as we advanced.
“Top of the steps pause. We need to check both ways before going on,” Evan whispered.
I nodded. The ascent to the second floor seemed to be taking a lifetime.
At the top we stopped, I turned left, aiming my gun. Nothing but a small room painted algae green. The blinds were up, and I could see a sagging single bed and a chair. Nothing more of the room was visible. I heard nothing but my own anxious breathing.
To the right was a bathroom with black and white tiles on the floor, clawed foot tub under a window. A sink, a toilet—nothing exciting. Another small room. Directly ahead was a room and to the right by the bathroom was another. All the doors were open. All the blinds were up.
“Left,” I muttered. “Then we work our way down the line, yeah?”
Evan grunted his agreement.
Hollow Men Page 13