Beyond Green Fields | Book 3 | Lost & Found [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology] Read online

  “Do I really have to get naked?” she whines.

  Ladies and gents, my wife.

  I pause for just a second. “Yes, you have to,” I tell her in no uncertain terms—and then set to give her a little incentive, even though that might slow down that getting-naked part. Bree lets out a frustrated groan—that turns into something else a second or two in—but eventually caves, reaching for the zipper of her jacket. Since I don’t want to get in the way, I withdraw my hand from her torso, and just for fun, slide both hands underneath her ass so I can lift it up and bury my face in her dripping pussy.

  Yeah, that gets her attention. I’ve seldom seen her get out of her clothes that quickly while I do nothing to help. And it’s not like she isn’t getting something out of this herself—two somethings, if I’m not completely mistaken.

  As soon as she’s naked and once more stretched out before me, I kiss a hungry trail up her body, linger a little while to tease her nipples before I reach her mouth, kissing her deeply. Her token grunt of protest is just that—a low sound in her throat—while her lips part eagerly and her tongue seeks out mine. I have to admit, I need longer than she did to shed my own clothes, her working on my pants getting in the way more than it helps—but I’m not stupid enough to murder the moment by pointing out that fine motor control isn’t quite her thing right now.

  Then we’re both naked. Finally! Yet before I can crawl all over her, she gives my shoulders a good shove, making me lie flat on my back instead. So it’s her doing the crawling while I get to enjoy the view, both of her bouncing tits and how she takes my cock and holds it firm so she can rub her swollen, dripping pussy all over it before she takes me inside…

  Bliss, pure and simple.

  Home, and all I’ll ever want and need in life.

  Her smile, hungry but also with a sweet twist that I rarely get to see these days… woman, you have no idea how you undo me.

  Because I can’t just smile sappily up at her—she’d suspect that it was a ruse and would start questioning my motives, and that would not end with mutually assured destruction of the carnal kind—I reach up and start massaging her breasts, both to tease and entice but also get her going. She does, insatiable minx that she is. By the time I let go and run my hands down to her hips so I can better grind up into her, she has her head thrown back, biting her bottom lip hard to keep as silent as possible—and not for the first time I wonder, what did I do to deserve this?

  But then, I do my very best to make sure to do right by her as well.

  Even though I’ve tried to take things slow at first, there’s none of that willingness left now—which is likely for the best, because Bree is not beyond punching me in the face if I do something that deserves her ire. Physical satisfaction wipes my mind clear of thought. I can admit that much: we both needed this.

  Only when she sags onto me, just as spent, a stupid grin on her radiant face, do I realize just how much that is true. Not necessarily to take the edge off—although that is nice—but to connect; to put all the bullshit of the past months behind us. All that is over and done with—now we can, and do, move forward. If that comes with this kind of movement, all the better.

  I’m content. Happy, even, I realize as I reach up to brush her hair off one shoulder so my fingers don’t get tangled in it as I run them up and down her back. It’s not often that I see her with her hair down, but she washed it last night and left it down to dry. The same is true on an emotional level—

  And it’s when she opens her eyes and studies my face, concern heavy in her gaze rather than post-orgasmic bliss, that I feel something in my stomach twist. We’re not on the same page, apparently, because that’s not her freshly-fucked vacation face. At least I hope it’s not, or else the near and far future will be full of a lot of annoying conversations.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, no intention in my mind to try to avoid whatever rubs her the wrong way. With Bree, doing that always leads to disaster.

  Her eyebrows draw together, the very question irritating her. “You tell me?” When I don’t—how can I when I have no fucking clue what she’s alluding to—her mouth twists into a less than happy configuration. I’m tempted to kiss her until she forgets what got her ire going—not that hard, usually. But I don’t, because if I did, I’d never hear the end of it, and since we’re stuck together, all on our own, that’s not a risk I’m willing to take—yet. Knowing me well enough that I don’t pose return questions, she answers herself. “Is this still because of what happened in Canada? I’d thought that we’d exorcised that demon in France, when we were, you know…”

  “Fucking like animals?” I suggest succinctly, mostly to make her smile.

  It works, if only for a moment. The frown remains. “I’m really not protesting,” she protests, making it hard for me not to snort. “But this is highly unusual behavior for you.”

  I shrug. It’s not like a part of me isn’t still chewing on that, but I didn’t waste a second on it this morning. “Maybe about time that I changed that?” I propose.

  She blinks slowly, once, conveying a world of annoyance in that simple gesture. Because that’s never enough for her, she cocks her head to the side and narrows her eyes on me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I smile, in spite of the crap I know she’ll give me for it. “Maybe I just wanted to spend some quality time going down on you? Easing up a little might do you some good.” Sure—do I have to antagonize her? No. But I’ll be damned if I miss a chance like this.

  A muscle in the corner of her mouth jumps, making it obvious that she’s trying hard to contain a flash of mirth. Her voice remains even as she responds, but steel is slowly seeping into her tone—same as I can feel her tense. “Did you just call me a stuck-up cunt?”

  As much as her constant bristling annoys the fuck out of me, it would be so dull without it—and since it’s only been weeks since she was too out of it to give me that, I’m fucking glad she has snapped back to her charming self in every possible way.

  “Your words, not mine,” I point out, then use the motion of stretching myself to make it appear as if I didn’t deliberately remove my arm from around her where she can easily grab and twist it. She sits up, glaring down at me, her eyes following the motion of said arm until my head is cushioned on it. Her mouth opens, ready to snap at me, but she looks away before a single word makes it over her lips. I feel a thread of trepidation sneak up my spine when I realize that she’s conflicted about something. “What’s wrong?” The first time I asked her this, I expected some minor gripe. Now, I’m actually suspicious, my mind already gearing up for a fight. Did she hear something? What did I miss?

  Bree lets out a chuff, still staring off into space, but relaxes as her attention snaps back to me. False alarm, obviously, but something is bothering her. “It’s just—” she starts, even adding a helpless gesture with her hands to underline her frustration. The motion makes her glance down at her fingers, and, like clockwork, she crosses her arms underneath her breasts so she can hide her hands in her armpits. Sadness, paired with exasperation, runs through me. That will take some time and lots of work still.

  “Just what?”

  My prompt makes her shrug. “It’s just weird, is all. It’s not that I’m not used to having great sex with you. Because if you’re lacking something, it’s not experience in the sack.” She gets a toothy smile from me for that, which she ignores, but her mood lifts a little further. “It’s just not what we do, you know? And with every fucking thing changing around us, I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  Only she can come up with a protest like that. Shifting onto my side—the one that aches less—so I can more easily look up at her, I reach for her knee, idly stroking her scarred thigh as I respond. “Maybe it’s a good thing that some things change. Only way to get out of a rut is to switch things up.”

  Her attention is momentarily torn between listening to me and frowning down at my hand. Hearing that, her gaze snaps up to meet mine, low-gra
de anger churning in it. “Did you just say that our sex life is stuck in a rut?”

  One of these days I’ll ask her if she’s ever been part of a debate team. Must have been hell for everyone else. I’m sure that if she hadn’t been working day and night, she would have been one of those pissy online activists.

  “No, but it sure could use an upgrade sometimes,” I snark back—also because it is still somewhat of a sore topic for me. It’s one thing to be struck with involuntary celibacy because it’s too fucking cold and you’re in the middle of too many assholes, but I would be lying if I hadn’t noticed that both our libidos have taken a hit over the past months. No longer, that much I can tell, seeing as the anger that thought brings with it is enough for things to stir down below. Suddenly, the idea of spending the entire day screwing each other silly to chase away the ghosts and cement that they are gone for good sounds like a damn fine idea.

  I can tell that she has picked up on my change in mood—or maybe felt my dick stir against her thigh. She gives me a weird look—right, because it can’t be possible that I get a hard-on this close to her hideous, deformed leg—but then a self-satisfied expression replaces the doubt. This is one thing that I don’t understand about her: how can she be so self-deprecatingly self-conscious, always ready to find disgust in every carefully worded response from me, but the second her animal brain realizes that I still find her physically attractive, she’s all over me, all previous doubt forgotten. Try as I might to explain to her that I couldn’t give less of a fuck, she doesn’t accept it. Shit, I’d even fuck her if she was a quadruple amputee, although I’m fucking glad that she isn’t—that would make life difficult. I’d probably have to carry her around strapped to my back like a pack. Would make bouncing her up and down on my dick easy, though. What do two arms and two legs weigh? Thirty, forty pounds? She’s by no means heavy but having to shoulder her entire weight like if we were fucking in the shower, her legs draped over my arms, does make that whole concentrating on getting off thing more complicated.

  And yes, I’m going to hell for just considering all this. I’m well aware of that.

  “Do I want to know what’s so funny?” she drawls, predictably distracted.

  I’m not stupid. No way I’m telling her the truth. “You want to know what’s going on? I woke up this morning and realized that we have nothing better to do than laze away the day, so I figured I might as well start us off the right way. Like a vacation, you know? If I’d had the time before starting my mission, I would have whisked you away and spent an entire weekend making love to you in some less-dingy motel, only stopping so we could order room service.”

  The slightly bewildered look on her face irritates me. That she then throws her head back and laughs—never mind who or what might hear her—is just the icing on the cake. And she’s not done yet—of course not. “‘Making love’?” she echoes, her tone plainly stating how ridiculous she finds the very concept. “Hate to break it to you, but I’m not sure that we’ve ever ‘made love.’” She adds insult to injury by doing air quotes, which, given the condition of her left hand, looks absolutely insane. She must come to the same conclusion, but that only sets her off again. My dick, ever the traitor, jumps, because gleeful Bree usually means easy-to-convince Bree, and apparently, my baser nature is happy to accept emotional abuse if it just leads to more sexual gratification.

  Well, I never claimed to be a complicated man in some aspects.

  “Are you done?” I ask when she finally quiets down. “As much as I deeply enjoy you laughing your ass off at my expense, I need to take a piss, and there’s no reason to defile a perfectly good hiding space up here with not one but three bathrooms down below.”

  As intended, the very idea of using a toilet—even if she can’t flush it, obviously—makes Bree perk up. Not the most hard-to-manipulate being she is, my wife. That talking about the urge must have been the signal her own bladder must have been waiting for is obvious when she makes a grab for her rifle in the same motion she uses to get to her feet, but that’s where she pauses. “Think we can chance it and not get into our full gear? Might actually be easier to flee back up here with no clothes on instead of pants tangling around ankles.”

  Grabbing my own weapon, I reach for the hatch closure. “One mad, nude dash through the house it is.”

  Do I feel naked—as in damn-fucking-vulnerable naked—as I guard the hallway outside the bathroom while she takes care of business? Hell, yeah. But it’s worth it when she’s still giggling under her breath as we pull the hatch closed behind us once more, and doesn’t stop when I launch myself at her as soon as I’ve made sure that weapons are in reach for easy defense if need be. Things start out frantic but mellow out eventually—or maybe that’s just me, when she repays my earlier favor in kind. Damn, but I’ve missed this!

  Yet same as before, when we end up curled around each other afterward, Bree is pensive rather than blissfully wiped out. Only this time it’s easy to get what has her all wound up in the wrong kind of way.

  “I miss them, too,” I whisper, just loud enough that she hears, low enough that she can pretend that she didn’t, if she doesn’t want to talk about it.

  “Do you?” Her reply comes out harsher than I expected, making me frown at her.

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t I? I haven’t been the one who spent almost a decade locked away in quiet solitude with only bacteria to keep her company.”

  She gives me a vexed look. “You know very well that I rarely worked on bacterial cultures,” she snaps—but eases up a little. “It’s just, you don’t act like this shit is weighing you down. You think this is a fucking vacation!”

  Ah. So that has her discarded panties in a twist.

  I take a few seconds to formulate my response—often the wrong idea with her but I need some time to sort my own thoughts and emotions. Bree waits with unusual patience, studying my face while I try to come up with an answer that doesn’t sound like an appeasing lie. I owe her better.

  “Do I miss them? Hell, yeah. Do I hate the fact that it’s just us and two people can only fight so much, evade so much, split watch shifts into so many hours? You bet. But what’s the alternative?” I pause to give her a chance to speak up. She doesn’t, not looking happy but silently agreeing with me on these points. “So, might as well try to make the best of it, right?” I propose instead. “Same as we eat full rations now to keep our strength up so we can hunt and forage better, and if we run out go on less for longer, but ideally avoiding that ever happens. Sure, are we wasting a good day right now? Maybe, but from what I can tell, it’s murky and wet out there, and we can spare a day off. I’m sick of always running after the next goal, always pressed for time and forced to ignore everything but the essentials. And if we run out of food or traipse into territory where we suddenly find ourselves further down the food chain, then we can’t take time off. But today I say, carpe fucking diem.”

  She listens quietly, thankfully getting my point—and everything that I didn’t say. A renewed sense of levity seeps into her tone when she finally speaks up. “I’m really disappointed in you, you know? I’d have thought you’d know proper Latin for carnal activities.”

  I stare at her, momentarily unsure what to do. Initiate round three? Throw my head back and laugh? Give her the snide, destructive comment that deserves? And from the smile she gives me it’s obvious that she’s aware of all the possibilities, gleefully provoking me. So spiteful bastard that I am, I shake my head and look away, deciding that ignorance is the best option—followed by some real talk.

  “You know as well as I do that we’re not doing this on a whim,” I tell her. The mirth drains from her face, leaving her staring blankly back at me. Oh, she understands—and likes it about as much as I do. I’m the first to look away, feeling the by now familiar crushing weight of responsibility heavy on my soul. “If it was just us—the Lucky Thirteen, with no extra attachments, or only a few smart, capable extras—I would have said, yes, we risk it. We sneak off
but send Burns with instructions to rally the others, and a few months down the line, we meet up again, and let whoever comes after us have at it. But it’s not just us—there’s Sadie, and her kid, and a good thirty others who’ve either thrown their lot in with us or come up from New Angeles, or flocked to the coast after the hit on the Colorado base… and that’s the numbers from late fall. By now, they’re likely twice as many people, and too many meat shields we don’t want to condemn to that fate for us to act on a whim only. Yes, I miss them, and I know that I’m not enough—”

  “You are,” she interjects with her usual vehemence pouring from every syllable.

  I’m hard-pressed not to roll my eyes at her. As much as my ego likes that reassurance, I don’t need it.

  “I’m not, and that’s okay,” I insist, casting around for words to explain what I actually mean. “You are a social creature, whether you like it or not. You are one of those ‘it takes a village’ people—and you need to be part of the village for others. Try as I might, I can never pick up that slack. But for now, there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  I can tell that she’s tempted to tear into me for insinuating she’s still a babe that needs teaching, but instead decides to go with the intention behind my words, offering up a solemn nod.

  “Yeah, I know. But just because it makes sense to be stuck together out here in the middle of nowhere on an intellectual level doesn’t mean I can’t resent it from the bottom of my heart.”

  No protest from me there. I’ve known this was about to happen, and still nothing I can do about it.

  But she’s not done yet as she narrows her eyes at me. “And that you see this as a vacation only makes it worse,” she accuses.

  “Trust me when I say I’d have had other plans for vacations than this,” I tartly inform her. “But excuse me for wanting to start a single day off with my face between your legs.”