Page 12 of Trade (After the End #7)

Chapter Six

We walk for a while longer. The atmosphere between Dalton and me has changed.

I’m not cataloging the vegetation anymore.

My brain is whirling too much, trying and failing to make sense of it all, and since I’ve let them off of tree duty, my eyes keep wandering to Dalton.

He’s carrying his backpack now, switching it periodically from hand to hand, I guess to give his shoulders a break.

He’s built like a statue, expertly sculpted and larger than life, but he strides along like an animal with perfect balance and grace.

The way he moves reminds me of a puma from the nature documentaries Dad would screen on a wall in the atrium before AP’s film projector broke permanently.

Those were good nights. Afterward, Dad would quiz me on the flora and fauna I’d noticed.

He was so proud of how much I could identify.

What would he think if he could see me now?

He’d be afraid for me, but wouldn’t he also be a little jealous?

He loved the Outside from the Before. He mourned its loss his entire life, and it was out here the whole time.

Of course, it could be slowly and silently killing me. Kind of like aging does anyway.

Just like I’m not gawking at plants anymore, Dalton isn’t staring at me every second. He’s scanning the woods. Is there a threat? Darkness is falling, and this is when predators would be waking up, right?

Dalton catches sight of something and grabs my hand. I startle. He tightens his grip reassuringly. My belly flutters. I suddenly feel fifteen again, like I’ve snuck out.

“Come on,” he says and leads me into a copse of trees. I follow without argument, my heart pounding. I take light, cautious steps in case we’re hiding from something.

“What is it?” I whisper when we stop in front of a bushy, willowy tree with delicate pink blossoms.

“A dogwood,” he says. It takes me a second to realize this is why we’re here. He’s found an interesting tree to show me. “Come fall, it’ll have red berries. Don’t eat them.”

He folds his arms and admires his find. It is lovely. Upon closer inspection, the petals are white-tinged with a bright, cheery cerise. The whiplike branches are as thin as twigs. We don’t have one in our collection, and it never caught my eye in a book.

“Why is it called a dogwood?” I ask.

He lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know.”

An idea strikes me. “Are there still dogs Outside?”

He actually smiles. It’s quick—there and then gone—but I catch it. “Yeah. Plenty of dogs.”

“What about cats?”

“Never heard of ’em,” he says and sneaks a glance at me from the corner of his eye. He’s teasing.

“There are cats!” Housecats was my favorite page in A History of Domesticated Animals. I was obsessed with those furry little beasts lolling around or grooming themselves like lazy tigers.

“Shhh,” he says. “One will hear you and come over. Then it’s yours. That’s the rules.” His mouth is so soft, he’s almost smiling.

“What else survived?”

The crease on his nose appears. The question throws him. “What was around before?” he asks.

Oh, yeah. How would he know? I have no idea what his life has been.

Brutal, I’d imagine, if what we were taught was true, but things are clearly not what we were told.

Dalton is strong and healthy. His face is hard, but he carries himself with assurance.

He sure hasn’t been made into a monster by a pitiless hellscape like the Outsiders in the stories the older kids told at slumber parties.

“Did you go to school?” I ask. My curiosity is rising fast and furious.

“I’m a scrounger,” he says like it answers the question.

“What’s that?”

“It’s what I do. I scavenge for shit. Fuel. Machinery. Weapons.”

“So you didn’t go to school?”

“My father was a scrounger. I’m a scrounger.”

“But there are schools on the Outside?”

“I guess at the Mill. The kids don’t work there, if that’s what you mean.”

For every answer, I have a hundred more questions. I open my mouth to ask, but Dalton is walking ahead. He reaches into the tree and breaks off a pink blossom. “Here,” he says, coming back to offer it to me. “For your pocket.”

When I take it, our fingertips graze, and my questions fizzle away.

He’s staring at me again with that expression in his eyes, the longing that’s so raw it’s almost anger.

He wants to touch me again, and he’s not trying to hide it at all.

His cock tents his pants, and his gaze has settled on my lips.

“I’m sixteen years older than you,” I murmur, quiet because he’s standing so close and the woods around us have grown so still.

“Yeah,” he says.

“You don’t know me at all.”

He shrugs. “I guess.”

“You don’t really want me. You just don’t have any other choices.”

“You don’t know shit,” he says, dropping his backpack and hauling me up so he can devour my mouth.

He’s holding me too tight. He presses his lips too hard on mine, mashing them against my teeth. I don’t think he’s kissed before.

He wants inside my mouth, so he grips my chin and coaxes it open. I brace myself for too much tongue, but instead, he licks, tasting, tentative but curious. He doesn’t want to dominate; he wants to experiment. My surprise melts into a warm buzz.

My feet dangle inches above the ground. His forearm digs into my back as he holds me up and against his chest. I’ve got no leverage.

I slap-tap his shoulder. “Down,” I mumble into his mouth.

He immediately lowers us both to our knees as he explores my mouth with his tongue, his hand cradling my head. He doesn’t let go or ease up for a second.

My skin flushes, nerves waking up as he discovers one thing after another—sucking on my top lip, nibbling, tugging my swollen bottom lip in between his teeth, twining our tongues. He’s fascinated, captivated, and hungry, so hungry. He’s famished, and it’s intoxicating to me.

It was so, so easy for Bennett to drop me, for Neil and the others who’ve known me my whole life to banish me from my home, for the bunker to shove me out.

But Dalton holds me like nothing could take me away from him, and I know it can’t be real, but it feels like he’s returning a piece of me that they stripped away, and I clutch it like a lifeline.

I push on his chest, and he falls to his back, tipping me over so I’m sprawled on top of him, breathless and brainless.

“Hold up,” he pants, unbuckling his belt and unstrapping his knives in record time.

I resettle myself, straddling him, and he lets out a moan of pure torment.

My lips curve. I’ve become two people—the old Gloria, Mrs. Smith, Assistant Head of Agricultural Preservation, and this goddess, this smiling woman whose world’s been shattered, but who cares?

The most beautiful man in existence is lying perfectly still underneath her like he’s afraid if he even blinks, she’ll get up and leave.

He gazes up at me, dark eyes blazing, panting, desperate.

This is power. I’ve never felt anything like it before.

I arch my back, letting my hips tilt until his hardness presses exactly where I want. He grits his perfect white teeth. I grind slowly, stoking the swirling, achy, needy pulse throbbing in my pussy.

“Come here,” he growls, but he doesn’t dare make me do it. I might stop.

I smirk and rest my palms on his hard stomach, rocking, chasing the pleasure coiling tighter and tighter inside me. This isn’t me, but then again, I’m not me anymore, am I?

He folds his arms behind his head and tries to look amused, but his hips are pumping, and he keeps biting his lip, realizing it, stopping, then biting it again seconds later.

“Does it feel good?” he asks.

I hush him.

He grins. “Come back down here.” He reaches for me but doesn’t grab me. His hands hover over my shoulders like he can make me come closer through some kind of telekinesis.

Maybe he can. I bend forward, and he catches my lips with his. His hands wander to my ass, fingers digging into the cheeks, as he pumps his hips harder. Our foreheads rest against each other. His kisses soften.

“Tell me it feels good, Gloria,” he says, breathless.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” I’m so close. I want more, but I don’t want to break this moment—this feeling of being on top.

“Come on, Gloria,” he pleads, teasing and playful but serious, too, and I close my eyes and grind harder, stalking the pleasure I shouldn’t be having on top of the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen under a pink tree that shouldn’t exist. “Let me watch your face when you come.”

“You’re not the boss,” I say, and because I can—because I am that other Gloria now, and I want to feel good, but I want to feel powerful much, much more—I jump up, brush off my coveralls, and wander off a few feet before turning to watch Dalton push himself up on his elbows. The crease between his eyes is deep.

One of his knives is lying in the grass by the toe of my boot. I duck, grab it, and shove it into my pocket, crushing my leaf collection. I feel a tinge of remorse.

He raises a dark eyebrow and smirks as he catches his breath. “You like to play games, Glory?”

“No one calls me Glory.” Not anymore. That’s what Mom and Dad called me when I was little, but then Mom died, and Dad started calling me by my full name. It made me cringe at first since I was only called Gloria when I was in trouble.

Why am I thinking about that now? My mind is falling apart.

Dalton’s smirk disappears. He hops to his feet and buckles his belt. When did he undo it?

He straps his machete back to his leg and reattaches his knives, all except the one sticking out of my pocket. He slings his backpack over his shoulder. He’s not staring at me. He’s sneaking glances at me from the corner of his eyes.

When he’s got himself back together—all but his erection, which is still poking through his pants—he sighs and holds out his hand. “Come on, no-one-calls-me-Glory. It’s going to get dark soon.”

My skin is hot. My nerves are raw. His hair is a tousled mess.