After (25 page)

“I'm usually afraid to go to sleep,” he tells her in the morning, “but today when I started to wake up, I didn't want to. I was afraid maybe last night was just a really nice dream.”

Eva is lying naked next to Jake, the covers down to her waist, the sun's slanting rays heating the room and her skin. She ha been watching him sleep. Following the amber waves of his fine hair with her eyes. When he was asleep he looked young.

Seventeen or eighteen. Now that his eyes—which are hazel and have the look of someone who has been to war—are open, he looks closer to thirty.

Jake smiles. Jake looks saddest when he smiles.

* * * *

Eva tells Smith what she needs, and once he's thought of the best place—what was once a pair of adjoining classrooms in a building now out of use—Eva and Smith and John bend it to their purpose. Install two cameras. Disable the lock in the door between the two rooms. Put chairs and a table in one, and a bed and enough other furnishings in the other to make it passably hospitable.

“I'll take bodyguard duty, for the first one,” Smith tells John.

John grins.

“Did you ask Eva what she wants?”

When they ask her she asks them to do the first shift together.

“I don't have a problem with him watching,” she tells John later, when they're alone. “But I'm afraid he won't be able to stand it, watching me with someone else.

Someone other than you. That he'll charge in and break it up.”

“Yeah.”

“I figure you can calm him down, if he gets upset.”

“I can try.”

“Thank you. Again. For everything.” Her smile wavers. “I ask so much of you. We all ask so much of you. Too much,” she breathes.

The next day, John and Smith cloister themselves in one room, and in the two monitors—pilfered from the now-defunct theater—re-assure themselves they can see enough of the second room, and watch Eva get ready for her first guest.

“Do you really think this is a good idea,” Smith asks, “or did Eva bully you into this, the way she bullied me?”

John smiles. Then his smile fades. “Good for the men? For the base? Yes. Good for Eva? I don't know.”

“I don't know how she can do it. Just go ahead and fuck them all like it's nothing.

Especially Riggs.” Smith glances from the monitors to John, and shrinks and pales, like he's lost a lot of blood, at the sight of his face.

“You wouldn't say that if you'd ever seen her, after.”

“No,” Smith says, his voice small. “Probably not.”

Through the wall and through the archaic security system a knock can be heard faintly. Both men fix their eyes on the monitors as Eva ceases her nervous pacing and answers the door.

“Hi Jason,” she says to Nichols with an amused grin. When she's closed the door behind him she says, “Is it okay if I call you Jason?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “'Course.” A blush flares from his throat, up his cheeks.

“Here. Let's sit.”

She gestures to the rather austere leather couch pilfered from the building's lobby, from among an assortment of furniture originally chosen for functionality rather than comfort, and they sit. His eyes lock on her, not like he's stripping her naked in his mind, but like he's watching her for cues, the way he might have watched the rigid mother of a new girlfriend his first time in her sitting room. When she reaches over and takes his hand in hers, he catches his breath and fixes his eyes on her with even more careful attention.

“You know,” she says, “I've thought about you a lot since that day in the orchard.”

Now he really blushes.

“I saw, I remember, Jason, that you didn't want to... That you only touched me because they had a gun on you.”

“I just didn't want to hurt you.”

“I know. That means a lot.”

“Is that why I'm here? Ahead of the others, I mean.”

Eva smiles, and after a while, Nichols smiles back.

“When I joined up,” he says, “I thought I'd be doing good. Helping people.

Protecting what's good.”

“Yeah.”

“After it happened, even then I thought we'd do something important. Rescue survivors. Start to rebuild the world somehow. Not doing the things we've done.”

“Well,” she says, “you did good, that day in the orchard.”

“No. I just ran away. Like a coward.”

“You slowed them down. It made all the difference.” She is still holding his hand in hers. “There's always a choice to make. Always a chance to be kind instead of cruel.

To help instead of hurt.”

“Yeah.”

She slips her hand free of his, leans in, and caresses his face. He's watching her in that cue-seeking way again. Blushing again.

“You're so pretty,” he says, like suddenly he can't believe he's this close to the woman he's been watching at a distance for weeks. Or maybe he only says it to end a difficult silence.

She rises to her feet, extends her hand, and draws him up with her. He's breathing a little fast. With another little amused smile Eva steps close and puts her arms around him. After a few seconds, he wraps his arms around her. It's a stiff, awkward embrace at first. But little by little they soften against each other, and soon he's cradling her head to his chest, pulling her tight against him with the arm at her waist. His breathing speeds, gets heavy.

“God, it feels good. So good, just holding you,” he sighs.

She pulls him a little closer, caressing his back as they hold each other. Then she lets go, backs out of his arms, shoots him a teasing grin.

“Does that mean you're not interested in the rest of the evening's program?”

Nichols smiles and blushes and raises his eyebrows.

“Well, I wouldn't exactly say that.”

Smiling, then, watching him watch her, Eva strips out of her pants and stands there facing him in her t-shirt and panties. Panting, and with a nervous little grin, Nichols pulls his t-shirt over his head and drops it on the floor.

Gazing up at him, Eva trails her fingertips through his hair, over his cheeks, down his neck and chest and belly. Even before her touch brushes his nipples, his lean abdomen is quivering, and his erection shows in plain relief under the trim cut of his military slacks.

“Do you want to touch me?” she asks him. A smile is his only answer. “It's okay,”

she says, and lifts his palm to her lips, kisses, then places his hand on her neck.

Slow and careful he begins to touch. Hard, belly quivering, he strokes down the length of her arm, her throat, her cheek. Then, still watching her for cues, he brings his hand to her breast, and gently traces her contours over the khaki cotton of her tee.

“You can undress me, if you want to,” she tells him.

He looks away for a second, then looks back.

“Would it be too weird if...”

“What?”

“Could I maybe kiss you?”

There's a tick, then she smiles.

“Sure. Jason. Yes.”

He leans in close, brings his mouth to hers, and gives her one soft kiss. Then comes back, warm, slow, deep, and tastes her.

In the next moment he looks at her, checking in, and takes the hem of her tee in his fingers. When she raises her arms, he lifts her shirt, baring her belly, her breasts, then pulls her tee over her head. Then he sinks to his knees, fingers the border of her panties, and, when he gets the smile, slides them down her legs. He wraps his arms around her naked hips, kisses her bare belly, inhaling the scent of her skin, tasting her flesh.

When he lets go, Eva sits on the end of the bed, then scoots back. Lies down.

For a while, Nichols just stands there, gazing down at her, disbelieving or savoring or hesitant. Then he strips, and, on hands and knees, crawls over Eva.

He brushes his lips across one nipple, glances up at her, gets the smile, and descends in earnest, parting his lips, teasing his tongue over her rising, swelling nipple, sucking, releasing, sucking, tonguing until Eva is sighing and writhing under him, raking her nails through his fine, sandy hair. Almost gasping for air, now, Nichols abandons her swollen nipple and, watching her, maneuvers his hips into position between her thighs, and with his hand, guides his stiff cock to her wet sex and sinks into her.

Then he goes still, and for a moment it's like he's too startled to move. But then he does. He moves, first slowly, then with an eager needfulness, harder and faster until he's whining his exhales and gripping her hand in his and panting as he thrusts.

He stops. Catches his breath. Watches her.

Sinking against her, pulling her to him, he whispers to Eva, “I thought I'd never feel this again. Never touch a woman again. Never feel a woman's touch. Never see anyone look at me, smile, while we...”

He smiles. Laughs. Blushes and hangs his head. Eva touches his cheek and he meets her eyes.

“It's good. Isn't it?” she asks him.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah.”

Eva smiles that amused smile, like she's laughing at herself, or something near that.

Then she tells him, “I like how you touch me. How this feels.”

His smile gets bigger.

“Yeah?”

She nods. Little by little he starts up again, moving his body against hers, kissing her breasts, her lips, watching her as she shudders with the pleasure he gives her, then sinks down, pulls her close, buries his face in her hair, and succumbs to the pleasure of their union.

After, she slips into her t-shirt and her panties, then tells him, “Don't rush off, if you want to stay.”

He steps into his boxers, pulls them up, gives her a grin. They go back to the bed, and for an hour or so, lounge there, just talking.

In the adjacent room, John watches every moment, Eva's and Nichols's smiles often echoing on his lips, while Smith fixes his eagle's gaze on the monitors for a while, then stares down at the floor or over at the blank of beige wall each time the pair embark on a new stage of intimacy.

“This isn't like with Riggs. This isn't hurting her,” John says.

“No. It's not.”

“There's nothing to be jealous of, you know,” John says.

“Probably not. And I know very well, was even prepared, at one point, to make the speech to you, that there's no way for one man to expect to keep her all to himself, while the others are left with nothing. But it's still hard. Watching.”

“She needs us to be able to do this without making it about us. And without judging her.”

“Don't misunderstand me, John. Eva is so selfless, sometimes I'm just in awe of her. And if she can feel some pleasure, experience some joy with someone like Nichols, amidst all this, I'm glad.”

“But watching her smile with him, watching him make her come, for you, it diminishes what you have with her.”

“No. Not diminish. It just makes me wonder.”

“Smith.” When their eyes meet, John says, “You know, don't you, you have something with her that even I can't touch.”

When Nichols leaves, Eva takes a little time to herself, then opens the door between the two rooms. Smith and John walk her back to her room.

“Avery,” John says as Smith turns to leave. It's the first time he's used his first name. “Come in with us.”

Smith looks at Eva. She smiles, takes his hand, draws him inside.

Smith observes as John draws close to Eva, touches her fingers with his, looks into her eyes, touches a light kiss to her crown, then whispers to her. “What do you need?”

While Smith goes on watching this part of their ritual, Eva smiles, tells John she doesn't need the other erased. That she's only eager for him. For both of them. To be with her lovers.

Then she blushes. With a shy smile she says to Smith, “I'll take a shower.”

Smith catches her hand as she turns toward the bathroom. Eva looks perplexed, and then her eyes glisten and pink. Smith draws her to him, seeks her kiss, gets it. Then he is running his fingertips up and down her arm, her back as she invites John to kiss.

To touch. And Smith, too, touching as she touches them, kisses them, takes them to her bed, all naked.

John is tender and patient, and Smith, who has never been anything but urgent and demanding, is, too. Slow and gentle in every kiss, every caress. So much so that their tentative touches, their cautious caresses provoke Eva to go after their deeper kisses, to draw them both to her when they leave her and each other too much space..

In the end, John cradles her from behind, nuzzling into her neck, kissing her shoulder, tracing a light touch over her belly, caressing her hip, raking his nails over her thigh, her ass while she moves with Smith, taking her orgasm and then milking his from him. And then, without even a shift of bodies, when they coax him, John comes into her from behind, still slow, still gentle, teasing her now with an arm draped over her hip and a hand between her thighs while Smith kisses her lips, her breasts, her lips again, holding her close as John provokes her next climax and finally takes his own pleasure.

* * * *

When Jones comes to her, he can't get hard. Somewhere between rage and sorrow, he tries to dress, to leave. But Eva brings him with her, back to the bed, coaxes him to lie down with her, both of them still naked. She curls up behind him, pressing her body close, and for an hour or more strokes his hair, his cheek, his neck, his arms, his chest, his side and hip and thigh. Under her hand, he goes from strained and rigid to soft. Quiet. Before he leaves, he hugs her, holding her tight for a long time before he finally opens the door to go.

Another night, it's Private Hutchinson. Eddy. He's eager enough, earnest enough.

Nervous, but not evasive or malicious. But the moment she asks him, “Would you like to undress me?” he goes into a still and silent state of shock. “Or, we don't have to...” she says. Touches his arm. Seeks his eyes.

“I just...” He looks at her hand on his arm. Keeps looking at it. “No. I want to.

Everything. Just...”

“What?” she whispers.

“If I say something, promise you won't tell the Major?”

“Okay.”

“Or John?”

“Promise,” she whispers.

“I've never... I mean, some fooling around in high school. But not actually...” He blushes and gives her an awkward smile.

'Don't be embarrassed. It's sexy.” She cocks an eyebrow. “I've never slept with a virgin.”