Page 19 of Trade (After the End #7)

“I don’t deserve this. I did nothing to earn it.” I don’t know if I’m talking about this beautiful place, the Outside, him, Bennett, or escaping the cage I didn’t realize I was in. Maybe I mean all of it.

He doesn’t answer for a long time. When he does, I’m surprised. “It’s not a trade, you know. Not really. It’s just given. You get it. It’s life. You take it, or you let it pass on by. Or it carries you away.”

“You’re a philosopher,” I say because my brain can’t sort through what he’s making me feel.

“If you say so. I’ll be whatever you say, Glory.”

“Yeah?”

He murmurs in my ear, his voice low and rumbly, “What do you want, Glory? Want me to carry you away? Or let you pass on by?”

He pauses and loosens his grip on me. My body heats. I give my head a little shake. He draws me back flush to his chest.

“You want me to take you, Glory? Or do you want to take me?”

That. That’s what I want. I nod. He chuckles.

We’ve floated out quite a ways, but he swims us back to shore in less than a minute. When we reach the shore, he carries me over the stones and sets me on my feet. I grab his hand and lead him over to a patch of soft, green grass at the base of an American beech.

“Sit,” I tell him and gently push his wet chest.

He smiles like it’s his birthday, drops to his butt, and rests his back against the tree trunk. He looks like a spoiled prince with his messy wet hair, legs stretched, and cock straight up in the air. He grabs it and strokes.

“Hands by your side,” I say.

He grins even wider, clasps his hands, and sets them on his stomach, a few inches above his belly button.

“Hey, I said at your side,” I say as I kneel to straddle his waist.

“You didn’t say please.”

Excitement amps up inside me, heating my blood so the breeze on my wet skin is almost a relief.

I bend forward so our faces almost touch. “Please,” I whisper against his lips.

“Whatever you want,” he says, but instead of lowering his hands, he grips my jaw and steals a kiss and then another. His tongue is demanding. He nips my lip with his teeth.

I grab his cock and squeeze, not too hard, but hard enough that he hisses and then groans in delight. “Okay, okay, Glory. Have it your way.”

But he still doesn’t put his arms at his side. He folds them behind his head, which accentuates his biceps and stokes my giddy excitement even higher.

I don’t care about how I got here or what happens next or the shoulds or shouldn’ts of it—he’s mine. I kiss him, ducking my head away when he tries to take over again. He chuckles.

“Okay.” He rests his head back in his clasped hands. “I’ll be good.”

“Yeah?” I stroke his hot, pulsing cock. His breath catches, and his smile falls away. His laughing eyes are burning now. “You’re gonna be good?”

He nods, his chest rising and falling faster while his gaze gobbles me up.

He can’t pick a pleasure—watching my hand on his cock, or my breasts thrust as I arch my back, or my lips, which I’m sure are curved in a sly smile.

I feel like the cat who got the cream. Or was it the canary?

I feel like them both, like everyone everywhere who’s ever gotten exactly what they didn’t know they wanted.

I lift myself, notch him in my pussy, and sink down as slow as I can so he fills me inch by inch as the remnants of his self-possession fall away and feral hunger contorts his face. He isn’t pretty now. He’s on the verge of ecstasy, and he’s suffering. He’s glorious.

“Don’t come until I do,” I command.

He doesn’t answer.

I stop moving, and he growls. This time, I grab his jaw. “Don’t. Come. Until. I. Do.”

He nods in a way that makes it clear he has no faith that he’s capable of such a thing.

“If you come before me, I won’t let you touch me again.” It’s an empty threat. I don’t even know who the woman is who’s saying these things. I’ve seduced myself, and I’m making Dalton play along with a game I’m making up as I go.

He nods again with a lot more determination, and I begin to ride him again. Slowly. I brace myself on his chest, and I don’t have the leg strength to work him base to tip, so I slide up and down, eased by the wetness that’s nearly gushing from me.

With Bennett—

No.

Fuck Bennett. He doesn’t exist. This is a brave new world.

Gentle waves slap miles of shoreline behind us, and there is no limit above us, no voice from a box on the wall to interrupt, no clocks, only sunshine, wind, and air, and the beautiful man gazing at me like I’m the greatest wonder of them all.

His face is tensing. His hands move to grip my hips. I intentionally slow down.

“Glory. Fuck,” he hisses. “You’re killing me.”

“Don’t come. I’m not close yet.”

“Touch yourself,” he demands. “Catch up.”

I grab his wrists and push his arms above his head, pinning them to the tree trunk, tipping myself so far over that I can rub my clit against his pubic bone. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I can’t hold it off,” he groans.

“You have to.”

“Fuck, Glory.” He forces his breath to slow, his entire body straining.

“You owe me.” It feels so good. Heat is gathering in my belly, but I don’t want it to end. I want to keep going on and on and on. I want to bask in this greedy, gnawing need. I press my forehead to his. “Don’t you want to feel this way forever?”

“Yes,” he pants. “No. Fuck, Glory.” He’s shaking. His arms are at his sides now, his tightly fisted hands popping the veins. “Please, Glory. Please.”

“No. Not yet.” I’m not done. He can wait. I arch my back, offering up a breast, and he immediately bends to take it in his mouth, lashing my nipple with his tongue, suckling with a desperate determination to drive me over the edge.

“I’m going to come,” he gasps.

“Don’t you dare.” I’m the one coming, tipping over and falling down, shattered and swept away by a swelling, roaring, rushing wave of absolute, perfect bliss.

I plunge my fingers into Dalton’s hair and draw him away from my breast so I can look into his bottomless, wild, starving eyes.

“Now?” he asks.

“Now.”

He shouts, seizes me by the waist, and drives his cock so far inside me that my teeth snap. He comes, bucking and convulsing, his head thrown back, baring his beautiful, strong throat.

He drifts back to earth slowly, a lazy smile breaking across his face as he smooths his rough palms down my back, cupping my bottom.

“Good boy,” I say, and wiggle. He’s still semi-hard inside me.

“Good boy?” He arches an eyebrow, mock-angry, and immediately flips us, lays me flat on my back, and thrusts his hips, fucking his cum back into me while his semi turns hard again. No recovery time needed, I guess.

I grin up at him and wrap my legs around his waist. “Good boy,” I repeat. “Now do it again.”

Later, we swim along the perimeter of the lake for a while, and when we get back to camp, we make love and eat and swim again, until we’re both boneless and exhausted.

As the sun sets, Dalton builds a fire, scattering the herbs generously over it to drive away the mosquitos that appear as it gets darker.

He lays out our blanket, and we lie side by side, staring up at the stars.

His bicep is my pillow, and his body heat keeps me warm.

Our dynamic has switched yet again. I cling to his side, and he sprawls on his back like the king of the Outside.

I feel raw. Peeled. Tender. Excitement thrums in my belly, and it has to do with being here, but it also has to do with him.

This is what I thought falling in love would be like when I was fourteen and fifteen, and I thought it would be the best thing that would ever happen to me.

I’d meet a man, and he would see me, the real me, all the parts of me that no one else noticed but that I knew made me special.

I’d tell him about the plants and trees from the Before, and he’d understand that I was talking about, well, magic, a whole world of growing things, spreading as far as the eye can see, no end in any direction.

He’d listen to me. He’d be strong enough that nothing about me would make him feel small and act big—not my temper or my brains or my needs.

I’d meet him, and I wouldn’t feel alone anymore.

Like I don’t feel alone now.

It’s impossible, right? I snuggle closer, and Dalton tightens his arm around me.

“This can’t be real,” I whisper in the dark.

“Why not?” he whispers back. “It feels real to me.” He knows exactly what I’m talking about. Of course he does.

“We’ve only known each other for, what, three days?”

His shoulder shrugs, lifting and lowering me, like the gentle surface current when the wind skimmed the lake. “I don’t know. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. Makes it feel longer.”

“That long, eh?” I have to make a joke. There is too much in my heart. If I look at it head on, it’ll tip over and spill.

He reaches down and tickles my ribs. I shriek. He hauls me half on top of him and growls, “You might have some years on me, but I’ve got fifty pounds on you easy. Best watch yourself.” He nips my ear. I squeal. He smacks my bare butt and then rubs away the sting.

I relax on his chest, letting the rise and fall lull me. We lie like that a while, and then he speaks. “I don’t know who my mother is, except she lives at the cathouse at the Mill. The women there keep the girls, but almost all the boys they give away.”

“How can they do that?” My mind boggles.

His voice is hard and even, but I can feel his heartbeat speed against my breasts. “They can’t teach a boy how to survive. They know that. So they pick the man they think is a good bet, and if he agrees, they give him a baby.”

“So your father wasn’t really your father?”

“Odds are against it.”

“But he took good care of you?”