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He stops moving and cocks his head to the side. I freeze. I’ve been found out. I’m caught perving on a quiet, shy man who’s just trying to have a private moment alone in the dorm.
His arm shoots out, and I tense up. Someone so big shouldn’t be able to move so quickly. But he’s not reaching for me. He opens a drawer in a table beside his bed and pulls out a small bottle. It makes a slurping-squelching sound as he upends it and squirts its contents into his palm.
He puts the bottle back and resumes his rhythmic movements, only now, I hear the slickness of the lube or lotion or whatever. It’s so sexy and sorude.
I should look away, butoh,I can’t! He’s so massive and beautiful, and he’s pleasuring himself, and I’m intrigued and warm all over, and my hand is sliding into my shorts.
I fork my fingers into my curls and add tinder to my smoldering desire. It doesn’t take long for it to build into an inferno. But I have to contain it. I can’t make a peep or Brawn will know I’m perving on him. Guilt tries to surface through my pleasure, but the fire has built past the point of extinguishing.
Our movements are in sync. When his arm jerks faster and his breath saws in and out, I speed up too. I have to bite my lip to keep from moaning.
“Fuuuuck,Cora. Like that.Yeeeah,baby.”
My hand freezes. His voice! That was the first time I’ve heard Brawn’s voice. It’s darker than the black dye used to color the velvet lining of a ring box, and it’s soft, like a teddy bear, and he used that voice to saymy name.He wants it to bememaking him feel good like that.
Even though my hand has gone still, the thought makes my pleasure crest. Electric heat like charged lava melts through me, and I can’t hold back my choked whimper. Fortunately, it’s drowned out by Brawn’s baritone shout.
I don’t think he heard me, because he doesn’t immediately turn around, but I don’t stick around to learn otherwise. I whip Jud’s blankets over my head and pretend I’m part of the mattress. When I hear heavy footfalls followed by the bathroom door closing, I scramble out of Jud’s bed and run downstairs. I’m probably blushing like crazy, but Shep doesn’t seem to notice as he puts me to work.
I pass the late morning hours with Shep. We do some gardening, tend the animals, and prepare lunch. After the meal is served and cleaned up, he tells me to enjoy my free time for the afternoon. I pretend to be offended that he doesn’t want my help, but secretly, I’m excited. I’m planning to spend the night with Brawn tonight, and there’s something I want to do for him before I bring him to my cabin. I find Doc and recruit him to help. Scrap gets wind of what we’re doing and pitches in, and by the time I take my place beside Brawn for the evening meal, I’m practically bouncing with anticipation.
Sitting with Brawn is a little awkward, since, you know, I totally perved on him this morning. But I suck it up and remember my resolve to focus less on me and more on the guys. Brawn isn’t just a big, deep-voiced, shy, sexy giant. He’s a person. He has feelings and a past and issues, just like me.
I want to learn his issues and help him, if he needs help. I want to listen to him and hold him and be there for him. If he’ll let me. We’re not off to a great start. I feel like I’m sitting a mile away from him because he sits with his legs spread so wide, he practically takes up a whole cafeteria table all by himself. I’m perched on the edge of the bench, and he’s made no move to allow me closer. He hasn’t acknowledged me, either, unless you count the brooding glance he sent my way when I sat down.
Physically, he’s keeping me at a distance. But I’m not discouraged. Earlier, when he was pleasuring himself, he said my name and called me baby. That means he must like me on some level. So, unless he tells me to leave him alone, I plan to stick by his side tonight, take him to my cabin, and give him as much attention and honest affection as he’ll allow. Putting a smile on Brawn’s scowling face is my mission, and I have all night to accomplish it.
Brawn
Cora just won’t take a hint.I know I have to sleep in her cabin tonight—in her bed, according to Jud—but I’m not interested in her the way the others are. I mean Iam.I’m not fucking gay. I like women. But not tiny, fragile women. Because of my size, there can never be anything physical between me and Cora. I’ve been trying to send her that message. I haven’t encouraged her in any way. But she just won’t quit sticking by my side and being all nice and attentive.
She cleared my plate when I was done eating and is now squished into a corner of the couch near the fireplace, pinned between the arm and my left knee. I’d move over to give her more room, but the couch is only so big. Most furniture wasn’t built for a guy like me to fit comfortably on. Cora can’t be comfortable, either, but oh-fucking-well. It was her choice to stick with me like glue.
It’s a chilly night, but not chilly enough for a fire, so Doc lit the usual candles and oil lamps in the fireplace. The guys and I shoot the shit, like normal after dinner. Doc, Scrap, and even Rev include Cora in the conversation, but I don’t acknowledge her. It’s hard. She’s funny and smart and, even though she doesn’t curse like a sailor, like everyone else here, she holds her own. She can take a joke, and she can dish ’em out, too. But mostly, she just sits there quietly listening, laughing her musical laugh and smelling like heaven.
Like she did this morning up in the dorm, when I jacked off with her no more than a few feet from me. Yeah, I knew she was there. Pretended not to notice her, but she was impossible to miss, especially to someone with the honed senses of a hunter. I smelled her shampoo, and I heard the little gasps she tried to stifle. Not to mention, I saw her plain as day when I came in for a shower after my morning workout.
Sweaty and pumped with adrenaline, I came up the stairs to clean up, and there she was, curled in Jud’s blankets like a little kitten. I watched her for a while, listened to her soft snores, imagined petting her, lying down beside her, turning those snores to happy purrs. Jacked myself in the shower with an angry fist because none of those things can ever happen. Even though she’s probably immune to my Gift, I’m still too big and too strong for her. If I climbed on top of her to fuck her, I’d squish her. My dick would stretch her to the point of pain. And if I put a baby in her, God forbid, it would mean her death. I learned that lesson well when I lost my Melissa.
My wife was six feet tall and healthy—a pro volleyball player in the prime of her life. She was strong and fit. She could take my rough fucking. More than take it. She loved it. Reveled in being held down and plowed the way I like to give it best. And I loved her. Man, did I fucking love her. And Charity. Our child.
Having my baby killed Melissa, and not a year later, the Virus kissed Charity. Charity was with my parents in Bosier while I served a term in the state pen for beating the shit out of a guy in a barfight. I didn’t even get to see my daughter before she died. Didn’t get to see my parents before they died. Thought I was going to die, myself, but fate wasn’t so kind to me.
Looks like I’ll have to wait to be reunited with my family in heaven. For now, the Working, as Rev calls it, has a job for me to do. All of us have jobs to do. We might not know the details yet, but we’re here for a reason. I have to trust that, or I’ll lose my ever-loving mind.
But maybe I should stop trusting in what Rev says. He promised our Heart would come and that she’d be what we all needed. He promised she’d heal us, and we’d heal her. Rev seemed sure she’d be ashe,and he had us all looking forward to having a woman to take refuge in. I let myself imagine her. I let myself look forward to holding her and taking her to bed and sharing her with the others—except for Grim. I couldn’t help feeling awful for the man whose Gift was even worse than mine.
But I should have felt awful for myself. Because our heart turned out to be a petite, wounded girl barely out of her teens and fragile as a butterfly. She’ll never be able to take my cock. Never be able to deliver a baby I put inside her. She might be immune to our Gifts—even fucking Grim’s!—but she’s not immune to the constraints of her anatomy. We won’t fit together, and even if we could, if I got her pregnant, that would be it for her.
We can’t afford to lose her on the delivery table. We need her to have children for us. The whole world needs her to have children. As many as she can. Which means I need to keep my too-large, too-strong hands off her.
When the chit-chat dies down, I follow her to her cabin. Now that we’re alone, I psych myself up to tell her I can’t be with her in that way, but she speaks first.
“I owe you an apology, Brawn.” She’s lighting an oil lamp with a match, and I’m checking out the cabin. I haven’t been in here in a long time, and it’s different than it was. It’s clean and organized. It no longer smells of dust and disuse. It’s a good place for her to escape from all the friggin’ testosterone on this mountain.
The couch is ratty and sagging, like the ones in the common room. I sit on it, anyway, taking up almost the whole three-seater with my spread legs.
Cora perches her dainty frame on a mismatched armchair. “I know you hate me, so I might as well come clean and seal the deal.”
