Devil s Due Page 0,86

punched the wall with his right hand, then leaned his forehead against the plaster.

"Feel better?" she asked neutrally. She sipped the cola, grateful for the sweetness, grateful for something that felt normal in this increasingly alien world.

"My hand hurts," he said. "Define better."

"Why did you want to be here?"

"Why did you want me to be here?"

"Turn around," she said.

He did, setting his beer down on the table untouched. She put her drink down as well, and crossed the small distance between them. Neither of them reached out.

"So how does it feel," she asked, "knowing you're going to be a father?"

He laughed. It was a wild kind of laugh, on the edge of fury, and she stopped it cold by putting her hands on his shoulders, then cupping his face. He needed a shave. His beard scraped warm across her palms.

"They took away our choices," she said. "But only for a moment, Ben. Only for a moment. Because it would have come to this, sooner or later, and you know it."

She let go of him, and took hold of the sash that held her robe closed. She untied it with slow, deliberate motions and let the fabric move away, revealing the gap between her breasts, then the inner slopes.

His breath caught, and he reached out to slowly slide the robe across her shoulders, fingers lightly skimming skin, and then down over her arms. She let the robe fall to the floor.

She led him to the bed and put her hands on his shoulders. "Don't move." She'd never seen him this way before, so quiet and yet so tense. It wasn't passivity, it was intensity waiting to break free, and it made her breath grow short, her cheeks burn, her fingers shake. The buttons on his shirt surrendered, and underneath that his chest was defined, not muscular, and covered by a mat of graying dark hair. She ran her fingers possessively through its coarse texture, then down to hook into the waistband of his blue jeans.

He stopped breathing and closed his eyes. Fighting to stay still.

She popped the button loose, and ran her fingernail slowly down the zipper. Teasing. Felt him shudder... He had more control than she could imagine. She remembered him turning away from her, knowing there would be a price for his refusal. Maybe a fatal one.

He'd never expected that they'd abduct her and force a medical rape on her. She had to believe that.

She took hold of the zipper tab and dragged it down, one slow click at a time. He let out his breath in a rushing moan as she put her palms flat on his hips, then pulled on the loosened jeans, sending them tumbling in a heap over his feet.

Well, that answered the questions she'd briefly entertained about his preferences in underwear...not that it mattered now. The briefs followed the pants to the floor. She ran her hands slowly from his collarbone across his chest, down the fluttering muscles of his stomach.

Down.

"Ben," she whispered. "You can move now."

He opened his eyes and she burned in the fire of them, and then that intensity was loose. His mouth was everywhere, finding every untouched place to draw a gasp or a moan, those clever fingers knowing exactly where to press, how to move.

The things he was saying flowed through her, thick and sweet as honey, words shaped on skin. He drove her mad with words, and then they left the hobbles of language behind, and it was only intensity, and passion, and love spoken in flesh.

In the moment of white-hot transcendence she felt herself embrace that spark of life buried deep inside, and wrap the whirlwind around it.

Giving it not just life, but purpose.

Ben collapsed against her, gasping for air, and she ran her hands through his graying curls.

"That," he finally managed to growl, "was not what I expected."

"Not as good?"

"Idiot," he murmured, and put his head back down.

She laughed. After a few seconds, so did he, deep rumbles from his stomach, subsonic waves through her skin.

If Simms could see us now, she thought, and was momentarily chilled by the idea that, just perhaps, he could.

And so could Eidolon.

There was no way to understand right and wrong anymore. There was only good, and she had to seek it.

She turned toward McCarthy's warmth, his love, his sense of safety.

Toward the good.

She woke up fast to a loud buzzing sound, and catapulted out of bed naked, reaching for her gun, before she realized two things. One, the sound was