Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed (10 page)

Several minutes later, I regained enough composure to kiss her neck and then get my weight off of her.  She shuddered as our bodies parted, then rolled to face me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“You’re going to kill me,” she whispered.

I tensed.

Her tone was benign and joking, but her words still sent a ripple of terror through me.

“Did I hurt you?” I asked.

“Fuck, no!” she replied with a laugh.  “You’re…you’re fantastic.”

I let a breath out through my nose and tightened my hold on her.  Closing my eyes for a minute, I tried to shake
away images of blood and splattered brains and concentrate instead on the woman in my arms.  Her fingers crawled up my neck and cupped my face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said automatically.  “I’m just…still a little tired.  I think I could really use a shower.”

“I have one of those.”  Lia smiled.

The shower felt wonderful, even if it was one of those tiny little stalls with barely enough room to turn around.  It was still better than a group shower in prison.  Before I had managed to wash the soap off, Lia joined me.  I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass, so I grabbed her by the thighs, held her against the cheap shower wall, and fucked her again.

Much better than prison.

We had to take another shower to clean off.

Lia had the makings for sandwiches in her mini-fridge, and I
devoured two of them quickly.

“Hungry?” she asked, amused.

“Do you have any idea how much prison food sucks?” I asked with a grin.  “These are fucking awesome.”

She giggled, and my cock responded.
  I polished off the last couple of bites and then crawled over to where she sat and thanked her with my mouth.  I took her again on the floor and then let her change into pajamas, which she wore just long enough to get into the bed before I tore them off and tossed them across the room.

I couldn’t get enough of her.

Sometime around midnight, I started to feel tired.  It didn’t make any difference though.  My body continued to demand more of hers.

My mouth pressed against her stomach as my hand moved up her side.  With
a light touch, I brushed over the tops of both her breasts as I kissed up the center of her body.

“
Again?” Lia giggled.  “Do you ever run out of energy?”

“
Eventually,” I admitted. “Fucking you just makes me want more though.  I'm trying to see if I can make it to round six before I pass out.”

“
I'm going to be sore,” she said.

I maneuvered over
the top of her, nudged her legs apart with my knee, and looked down into her eyes.

“
Does that mean you'll feel it all day tomorrow—feel it constantly, no matter what you’re doing, and think about my cock inside you every minute you’re awake?”

Lia's breath
quickened, and she stared up at me for a moment before she swallowed hard and nodded her head.

“Probably.”

“Good.”  I wrapped my hand around my shaft and drilled into her.

I felt whole again.

It felt too good to last.

*****

I woke up in ecstasy.

At first I thought I had to be dreaming, but I quickly remembered tha
t my dreams were never so pleasant.  The feeling through my skin, my muscles—my entire body—was like lying in a cool meadow with the springtime sun blanketing me.  My mind was relaxed and calm in a way it hadn’t been in years.  There was only one word to describe it.

Peace.

It was nearly enough to bring tears to my eyes.

My cheek rested on Lia’s abdomen, and I felt her hand against the back of my head, cradling me to her body.  I had my arms wrapped around her center, and I held her close against my chest as I lay beside her on the small bed
that reminded me too much of the one in the cabin.

I didn’t move.  I only inhaled deeply to embrace the scent of her.  It was
her own, sweet fragrance combined with the smell of our activity from the night before.  I curled my fingers around her hip, touched my nose to the skin against her belly, and I inhaled again.  My fingers reached up to briefly touch the quarter on its chain around her neck.  I had to pee pretty badly, but it wasn’t worth disconnecting myself from her flesh, so I didn’t.

I don’t know how long I stayed that way, eyes closed and just reveling in
the sensations around me.  At some point, Lia’s fingers twitched, then slowly started massaging my head, which caused me to moan out load.

Lia’s soft laugh filled my ears.

“You like that?”

“
Mmmhmm,” I replied as I snuggled against her stomach and tightened my grip on her.  “Feels good.”

She kept it up, slowly dragging her fingertips from the top of my head, through my hair, and down to the back of my neck before she started all over again. 
I lifted my head and shifted up until I was face to face with her and wrapped both arms around her shoulders to hold her against me.  Lia’s hand stroked my cheek, and I watched her eyes as she gently traced the veins in my arms.

“I could wake up like this every day,” I said.

“Me, too.  You’re gonna have to let me up, though.”

“Why?” I protested.  “I don’t want to.”

“I have to go to the bathroom!” Lia laughed.

“So do
I.”

“Well, this time would be a lot worse of a wet spot than what I put up with last night, so you better move.”

Something about the crudeness of the remark amused me to no end.

“Come right back,” I ordered as I held in a laugh.

“Yes, sir,” she responded with a grin that made my cock twitch.  “Now let go.”

I sighed but rolled away from her so she could get up.  True to her word, she curled right back up with me when she
returned and started to run her hands up and down my arms again as I tucked my head against her chest.  I dozed off briefly, and when I woke, she was propped up on an elbow and just looking at her fingers wrapped around my bicep.

“What?” I questioned.

Lia smiled and looked away as her cheeks tinged with flowing blood.

“Nothing,” she said softly.

“Tell me.”

Her eyes met mine again.

“I just…I feel so safe with you, like nothing could ever happen to me as long as I was with you.”

I wanted it to be true so much
.  Maybe I went ahead and believed it on some level.  After pondering a moment, I leaned back and repositioned myself so I was lying next to her and looking up at her face.

“Wha
t is this?” I asked tentatively.

“What is what?”  Lia stifled a yawn with her hand and then turned her head back
toward mine.

“This,” I said as I tightened my grip and held her body more firmly against my own. 
“Us.  What are we?”

She eyed me for a moment.

“What do you want this to be?” she asked quietly.

I thought about it for a minute, but I really wasn’t sure how to answer.  Whatever this was, it was foreign to me.  I didn’t know what to call it.

“What are my options?”

Lia raised both eyebrows at me and tilted her head a bit.  I only shrugged in response, so she tapped her finger against her bottom lip as she answered me.

“Well, you could buy me a giant diamond and be my fiancé.”  Lia dropped her finger down and tapped her chin instead.  “Or we could just go to Vegas and have Elvis or maybe Darth Vader marry us.  If commitment isn’t your thing, we could just be fuck-buddies.”

She turned her eyes back to me and smiled softly as I raised my eyebrow at her.

“Then again, maybe we should just try the boyfriend-girlfriend thing for now and see what happens,” she suggested.

“It seems a little more…realistic than the other ones,” I admitted.  I took a deep breath and looked into her eyes.  “I’ve never done this shit before.”

“What?  Dated?”

“Have we been on a date?”

“I guess not.”  She eyed me with a cynical gaze.  “What do you mean, then?”

I didn’t even know what I meant, which was part of the problem.

“I’ve never put a label on a…a
relationship
,” I said.  “I don’t even know what that means—boyfriend.  Should I go get flowers and chocolates now?”

“That doesn’t seem your style,” Lia snickered.  “Have you ever bought a girl flowers before?”

I licked my lips and considered the daffodils I had yanked out of a window box for Bridgett.  Since they were neither bought nor ever delivered to her, I had an honest answer.

“Never bought a girl flowers.
  Bought a few other things, I guess.”

“Such as?”

“Is this normal girlfriend-boyfriend conversation,” I asked, “me telling you what I’ve bought for other chicks?  What did William get you for your last birthday?”

Lia’s throat bobbed up and down as she looked away from me.

“Fine, you made your point.”

The tension in her face and her refusal to look at me told me enough.

“I must be a boyfriend,” I said.  “I’m already pissing you off.”

She looked back at me, and her face relaxed as she cracked a smile.

“That isn’t a requirement,” she said, “just in case you were wondering.”

“Duly noted.
  All things considered, though, I’ll likely piss you off again.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

“I just want to know more about you,” she said.  “I still want to know what happened to you.”

I shook my head.

“I need to get to my apartment,” I said.  “You also need to get your shit out of this little hellhole.”

“It’s not that bad,” she said as she looked around.

“Yes, it is.”  I untangled my limbs from her body and stood up to take a piss and pull my clothes on.  I shifted a little bit in the pants—they were starting to get a little rough on my ass from the lack of clean underwear.  I definitely needed to get to my place for supplies.

Odin followed me into the bathroom and sat there
as I dressed, wagging his tail with his bone hanging part way out of his mouth.  I grabbed it, ordered him to drop, and then tossed it to the other side of the room.

“I can’t really afford anything else at the moment.”  I glanced in Lia’s direction and watched her pull her shirt on over her head.  “I haven’t even found a job here yet.”

“You don’t need one,” I countered.  I grabbed the bone back from Odin and threw it again.

“
Of course I do,” she said.  “I only have enough to cover rent and utilities for another month or so.”

“You don’t need any more.”  I was dismissive in my tone but didn’t want to come right out and tell her just how much money I had stashed away in various places.

“Well, then I guess I’ll be staying in this hellhole.”

I watched her for a moment, trying to judge her mood.
  She certainly sounded pissy, but her posture was casual.

“I’ll take care of you,” I finally said.

“Evan, you just got out of jail, and we don’t even know when your hearing will be or anything yet.”

“There won’t be one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I cupped her face in my hands, placed my lips against hers,
and kissed her deeply.

“I’m going to take care of it all,” I promised.  “Then w
e’re going to leave Chicago altogether.”

“And go where?”

“I have a few options.”

“You’re being very vague.”

“Yep.”

“Evan!”  She took a step back from me and placed her hands on her hips.

“
Lia
,” I mocked back.  I smiled warmly to try to break the building tension.  “I can explain more later.  Right now, I just need to get back to my apartment and assess the damage.”

With minimal additional protest, we collected Odin and his stuff
, and I called a taxi from Lia’s phone.

“That’s going to be expensive,” Lia remarked.

“No one’s going to let him on a bus,” I said, nodding toward the dog.  “A big tip goes a long way with a taxi driver.”

“I don’t have that much cash.”

“We’ll take care of it when we get back to my place.”

When we did get there, the apartment was a disaster.

The scene was almost enough to remind me of a warzone, but not quite.  There was still crime tape up on the door, but I tore it away and shoved the door open to reveal most everything I owned spewed out all over the floor.

Papers, boxes, even dishes and shit from the cabinets in the kitchen were lying all over the floor, the counters, and the dining room table.  My desk drawers were all pulled out
, and papers were everywhere.  All the cords and shit for my laptop were there in a heap, but the machine itself was gone.