Page 8 of Trade (After the End #7)

I lie flat on my back and straighten my legs. Only my upper half is on the jacket. My head rests in the grass.

What am I supposed to do now?

I don’t have to wonder for long. In one smooth movement, he kneels, straddling my hips. A startled cry slips from my lips.

“You’re okay,” he says gruffly.

I freeze. I’m trapped underneath him, but he’s not putting his weight on me. The stretched-tight crotch of his pants hovers a good inch or two over my body.

I don’t know where to put my arms. They’re bent at the elbows like chicken wings, kind of hovering over my chest.

He gently takes me by my wrists and guides my arms to my sides.

He stares down at me so intently that a crease appears on the bridge of his nose. His brown eyes have gone black, his chest rising and falling as if he’s done a session on the treadmill at top speed.

He unzips my coverall until he’s blocked by his own body at my waist. The cool air hits my bare belly, my skin prickling immediately with goose bumps. My lungs hitch.

He’s breathing so heavily, that’s all I can hear, his breath and the blood pounding in my ears.

“Take your arm out,” he says, lifting my left cuff and drawing my arm out, and then repeating with the right. He lays my sleeves out on the ground like he did with his jacket. I huddle my forearms to my chest.

“No,” he murmurs, drawing my arms back to my sides again. He takes a long minute to stare at my breasts in my dingy gray cotton bra. It’s my best one. It was my mother’s, and it still has two out of three hooks left and all its eyes.

He goes to grab it by the band. He’s going to pull it off. He’ll stretch the elastic. Break it.

“No,” I rush to say, and his eyes flare, burning darker. “I’ll get it.”

I do a crunch, reaching behind my back and unclasping the hooks. I lie back down, clutching my balled fists to my chest. His gaze rises to my face. His eyes narrow. I put my arms back at my sides.

He peels my bra off. My nipples instantly pucker. My arms jerk to cover myself before I remember where he wants them.

He stares like he’s never seen breasts before. The breeze whispers across my chest, and a ray of sun warms a spot right over my heart. I’ve never felt sunshine on my bare skin before. Never felt wind. There has never been so much space above me. So much air.

No one has ever looked at me like this. His gaze travels urgently from my face to my breasts and down to my belly. I tighten my abs out of habit. With Bennett, I’m careful to put myself in the best light. He says I still look good, but the older we get, the more help nature needs.

Not that it matters how I look now. What’s wrong with me? I should be fighting. Pleading, at least.

The man cups my breast. I gasp. He pauses a second, waiting, I guess, to see if I scream or struggle. When I don’t, he cups my other breast, too, and holds them, kind of weighing them in his rough hands. He strokes a nipple with his thumb. I shudder. He doesn’t do it again.

He squeezes gently, pressing his fingers into them, his breath coming quicker and quicker as he stares intently at what he’s doing.

A flush spreads across my chest and my nipples harden into painful, achy, swollen points.

Every few seconds, his gaze flashes to my face like he’s checking for something. For what? Permission? Encouragement?

I stare back at him. He meets my eyes. Shameless. Guarded.

Fascinated.

A bird caws overhead. He takes it as a signal, swinging a leg off of me so he can unzip me the rest of the way, and then, all of a sudden, he’s in a hurry.

He peels off my coveralls. My panties. He unbuckles his belt.

Shoves his pants to his thighs. Settles himself between my legs, his trunk-like thighs holding mine open.

He reaches down, shoves his fingers between my lips, and frowns. I’m dry. I tense. I’m scared. More than scared. I don’t want it to hurt.

He lifts his hand, spits on his palm, and rubs it on my pussy.

Then, before I can tell him no, or think of the thing I can say that will make him stop, or freeze time, or throw him off with the superhuman strength I’m supposed to have in a moment like this—he pushes his cock into me to the hilt and groans.

I whimper. It’s tight. The stretch burns.

I look up. His eyes are finally closed.

He pulls out and thrusts again. He’s big. Bigger than Bennett. He thrusts again. And then once more. This time, he goes in a little easier.

And then he groans like he’s dying, shudders, and tenses above me, braced on his hands in a plank.

Hot cum dribbles out between my ass cheeks.

He blows out a long breath.

He’s done?

I don’t dare move.

He pushes himself up and slips his cock out. More cum seeps from me onto his jacket.

His face is as hard as it was before as he rakes his gaze down my body. What is he checking for now?

He sits on his heels beside me and pulls his shirt off over his head, revealing a wall of carved muscle.

“Here,” he says and shoves it into my hand, which is still resting at my side where he told me to put it.

My brow wrinkles. What am I supposed to do with it?

“For that.” He nods between my legs. They’re still spread. He’s still leaking out of me.

I sit up and numbly do what I’m told, sopping up his jizz with his balled-up shirt.

It doesn’t do much but spread it around.

When I’ve done the best I can, I offer it back to him.

He takes the shirt and holds it in his hands.

He’s sitting on his butt now, and he’s done his pants back up.

He rests his forearms on his knees and looks at me.

Am I allowed to get dressed? Are we done?

I’m afraid to ask. I don’t want him to say no.

I grab my bra because it’s closest, slowly slipping the straps over my shoulders, watching him back. He doesn’t say anything.

I scoot and snag my coveralls. My panties are stuck inside. I put them back on and then do my best to redress myself while sitting. I don’t dare stand. I’m not sure why.

He keeps watching, his face growing grim. What happens now? Am I allowed to leave?

I’m not as chilly with my clothes back on. More sunshine is streaming through the leaves overhead now, too. The light shines at an angle so I can make out the veins on the leaves on the lowest branches.

It’s a sycamore tree. We don’t have one in the atrium, but I’d recognize it anywhere from the illustration in Peattie’s A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America.

That was the first book Dad gave me from his collection.

It was a thirteenth birthday present. He said since I had it memorized, it was as good as mine anyway.

My nose tingles. I blink fast. I’m not going to cry. Not now, when it’s over.

The man frowns. “Stay here,” he growls, leaping to his feet. He quickly disappears into the woods.

I sniff and rub my eyes. Dad is gone. He’ll never know this happened.

He’ll never know I saw a real, live sycamore.

I hear its leaves flutter, each so delicate, like a webbed palm, its edges like the swoop between your index finger and thumb. When the wind gusts, they sway in unison, and it sounds like an exhalation, like it’s alive in a way that can’t be explained away by photosynthesis and the water cycle.

The man reemerges, carrying a ragged, oversized backpack. He drops it on the ground, kneels, and unclips a metal canteen from a strap. He drinks first, a few gulps, then holds it out to me.

All of a sudden, I’m parched. How long ago was breakfast? What time is it?

I take the canteen and drink. The water is cold, and it tastes strange.

Metallic. Is that poison left over from the End?

I shouldn’t chug it down, but I’m thirstier than I’ve ever been, and the other women must’ve drunk, too, at least some of them.

They came back—most of them—and none of them got sick and died.

The man rummages in his pack and takes out a waxy cloth. He unwraps it and offers it to me. Jerky. I’ve only had it at Neil’s parties. I assumed the kitchen made it special for him. Did we trade for it?

It’s salty, and makes your jaw hurt to chew, but I’m suddenly hungry, too. It’s like my feelings are on delay.

I take a strip. He sits and helps himself to a piece. He’s not frowning anymore, and he’s back to staring at me. I self-consciously rip off a hunk of meat with my teeth and stare at him right back. See if he likes someone watching him eat.

He doesn’t seem to mind. When he chews, his jaw is even stronger. When he swallows, the cords in his neck flex.

Outsiders are supposed to be missing eyes and limbs. Their flesh should be peeling away, their bones poking through gaping sores. All the good artists in school used to doodle Outsiders in the margins of their textbooks, crammed between the doodles from when our parents and grandparents were kids.

Black holes where noses should be. Straggles of hair clinging to skulls. Fingers warped into claws.

“Does everyone Outside look like you?” The question kind of slips out between bites.

For a second, he doesn’t respond, but then he lifts a shoulder, almost imperceptibly. “I haven’t seen everyone.”

Is he being a smartass? He’s not smirking. He answered quietly. His voice is rusty.

I drop it. I was never obsessed with the Outside like some. I thought about trees and vegetation from the Before a lot, but I was never one to wonder about what was left.

We eat in silence. When I’m done, he offers me another piece. I shake my head.

To distract myself from what happens next, I scan the clearing, trying my best to commit what I see to memory.

The sycamore. The red maple, white oak, and hickory, maybe shagbark, maybe bitternut.

The dogwood. Ivy climbing a tulip tree, choking it out.

Brambles and ferns, trillium and mayapple and wood sorrel sprawl and climb between the trunks.