Page 33 of Blood We Steal

“I made good progress here. I’m almost done with my count, and noted which items are close to expiration, though I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.” She chuckled a little bit at her own joke and then continued to prattle on, her brow furrowed in thought. “This should be much better stocked. I’d heard on the news that the city was cutting back on bulk orders to save a little bit of money, but I’d hoped those changes hadn’t taken effect. But apparently they have, so based on a quick calculation at subsistence-level calorie intake, we have enough for two weeks. A little longer if we stretched it but not that much. We’ll need to be mindful of what goes when because some of this stuff isn’t gonna last. But I started a tally and have started to mock up a quick plan on deployment. I hope you like honey buns.” She smiled and tapped the pen against her lip like she’d done all the years I’d known her. Thankfully, she didn’t wrap her full lips around the cap like she’d sometimes done when she was deep in thought or looking for a way to torture me.

“There’s an infirmary here, right?” she said with a chuckle, looking down at her clipboard. “Of course there is. After I finish here, I’ll go find it and take a look there and see what else there might be.”

She looked up at me, her lips tilted in a smile.

“You seem very excited about canned goods, Simone,” I said.

She still wore that soft smile and every second that I stared at it, I felt my rage increase. I had split Davis’s head open with a can of peaches. And Simone didn’t even blink. She didn’t cry. She didn’t look shocked. She just talked to me about calorie intake and inventory like it was nothing. It was that pretend innocence, that…acceptance that had gotten me before, and even now, she continued to perform it.

“Come over here, Simone,” I bit through clenched teeth.

That smile, that one that was torture, dropped. Her eyes narrowed slightly, then flashed with anger, and she covered it over quickly like she did everything else, pushing it back so I wouldn’t see. She was preparing to handle me. It set my teeth on edge.

She was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider. Something was on the tip of her tongue, but she thought the better of it. She walked toward me.

“You have a problem with me. I get that, but can we talk like rational adults? You don’t have to⁠—”

She stopped at my glare. “I don’t want to talk, Simone. I want to fuck.”

Her eyes widened and then went to the open door that led to the cafeteria.

For a split second, her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed hot, but then she put that reasonable mask back on, the one that had me in the state I was in as it was.

“Do you think this is the time and place for that, Rubin?” she asked.

She was trying to play trusted advisor and keep distance from me.

That wouldn’t do.

“Yes, and you do too. Come here.”

“God, you’re so ridiculous,” she muttered. But she walked toward me, her chest heaving with each heavy breath, her body practically vibrating with want. It had been mere hours since I’d been inside her, but if anything, I wanted her more now than I had then.

She stopped in front of me, and I lifted my hand and let it hang there, fingertips barely grazing her skin. I stared at the faint throb of her pulse at her neck, and then pressed my fingers there, the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of her heart the most alive thing I’d ever felt.

A thud that beat in time with my own.

She lowered her lids and then looked up at me shyly. Her soft eyes offered me everything, and I wondered if she knew that.

You fucking fool.

I curled my fingers at the thought.

Of course she knew.

She’d used those big brown eyes, that soft smile, she’d used her—the unremarkable Simone she pretended to be—to get under my skin, only to show me the extraordinary woman I craved and denied myself, only to betray me and prove that I was a fool.

I used my body to trap her against the wall. Pressed my thumb against her lips for a split second before I pulled her pants down and loosened my own.

I didn’t test her readiness and instead pushed inside her with one unrelenting stroke. She was soaked, her cream coating my shaft and her wet tight heat making my legs buckle.

She cried out when I rocked my hips and I chuckled then licked the shell of her ear before I whispered, “You want them to hear me fucking you?”

Her pussy clenched, and she let out a little moan and I smiled against her ear. “You like that? Too bad. Because you’re mine and I don’t share. No one touches you. No one even thinks about you but me.”

I drove in hard, no finesse, and certainly no mercy. Just my hips driving up into her over and over, slamming her back against the concrete hard enough to rattle the shelf beside us, the heavy cans sliding on the metal. She took every stroke and dug her nails into my shoulders and pulled me closer. Her tits were crushed against my chest.

The second time I’d fucked her and I hadn’t even seen a peek of those heavy mounds I’d fantasized about for years. How many times had I dreamed of Simone beneath me, licking the tip of my cock as I fucked those gorgeous tits? I buried myself deeper and pulled back just enough to pop open the buttons on her shirt. I wanted to rip it but refused to let her see me lose control.