For the First Time: Twenty-One Brand New Stories of First Love (50 page)

She would argue our paths had crossed by coincidence, but I believed divine intervention had sent her to this desolate town. A town in the arse end of England that hadn’t seen the likes of a woman since the plague hit nineteen months ago. Rumor was, only ten percent of humanity remained worldwide. The rest were mutated creatures. No children or elderly survived. No women.

Except Evie.

The night I met her, she confirmed the rumors in her American accent. She would know better than most, having traveled halfway across the world, alone, and searching for answers about her mysterious survival.

I glanced at the mattress, enthralled, as she stretched her toned limbs, her arms folding beneath the pillow and pulling it against her angelic face. Waves of blonde hair fell around her dainty shoulders and ribs. A single candle cast a warm glow over her closed eyes, her breaths soft and hypnotic. Still asleep.

Beside the bed, I turned back to the prayer bench and bowed my head, my knees digging into the worn padding on the kneeler. This was the second time tonight I’d shlunked away from her body heat, tight backside, and intoxicating feminine scent. Was that what sex smelled like? Hot and drugging? Sweet and tempting?

Bloody hell, she was a persistent test of my obedience. Neither distance nor prayer had softened the steely ache between my legs. In what universe could a man resist the strength and beauty that embodied this woman?

I must’ve pissed off God. Maybe it was all those pervy thoughts I’d conjured about Sister Agnes in secondary school? Why else would He so sadistically torture me by sending the last surviving woman to my doorstep? A woman who could lure Jesus Himself into tasting the forbidden fruit.

As fierce as she was with guns and knives, maybe she didn’t need my protection from the blood-sucking monsters that haunted the crumbled foundations aboveground, but God knew I needed her. I needed human interaction, affection, a link to the benevolent life I’d lost. She was my escape from the isolation of this brutal world. Even if it meant challenging the celibacy I’d desperately held my entire life.

I focused on the crucifix that hung above the bench, mouthing the prayers I knew by rote, my fingers gliding over the rosary beads. I needed to remember she trusted me. Or rather, she trusted my black button-down cassock and white collar. In the month she’d been here, she’d spoken candidly about the dangers she’d faced on her travels, the most vicious being the men who hunted her. She feared humans far more than the snarling, infected mutations.

I promised her I would protect her from men, but who would protect her from me? My control was as fragile as the string connecting the beads in my hand. She only needed to pull, ever-so-slightly, and I would break.

My gaze wandered back to the bed, snagging on her parted lips, the sensual curve of her shoulder, and the neckline of her shirt where it slipped downward, clinging precariously to the taut peak of her nipple.

I looked away and scrubbed a hand over my face as more heat rushed south, gathering and throbbing below the waistband of my briefs. The cotton stretched so bloody tight it threatened to tear the bollix off me.

“Roark?”

Her sleepy whisper floated across my skin, caressing places no woman had ever touched. The sensation filled me with wonderment. Hunger. Guilt.

I clenched my hands and drew a calming breath. “Mm?”

She sat up and leaned against the wall, her fingers straightening the shirt to cover her chest. “Can’t sleep?”

“Nah.” I stared straight at her. At the glowing hope for mankind’s future. At the devastating threat to my vow. “Just praying, love.”

She licked her bottom lip, and I felt it like a jolt along my shaft. Jaysus fuck. Could she see my standing prick? I dropped my arm to block her view.

Her gaze followed the movement, her mouth bowing downward in an expression of regret. “Because of me again?” She scooted to the far edge of the bed. “I should go. This isn’t right.”

Same thing she said every day. Made my heart clench every bloody time.

I climbed onto the bed behind her, hooked an arm around her waist, and settled us on our sides.

She twisted in my embrace, chest to chest, blinking those bewitching golden eyes as she stared up at me. “I can feel your… Dammit, Roark.” She angled her hips away from mine and glanced across the open room. “I’m going to start sleeping on the couch.”

“The fuck you will.” I tightened my arm around her back, stalling her attempts to escape and torturing my damned self-control. “You think I didn’t get chubbed up before I met you?”

“I think…” She sighed, relenting in my hold, and touched her forehead to mine. “I think you slept in your bed without worrying about your vow.”

“I slept alone. I had
no one
. A fate worse than temptation.”

“Maybe.”

She grazed her lips across my cheek, and I savored the connection, let it shiver down my spine. She didn’t linger, straining against my arm until I released her. Her reluctance had everything to do with my vow. She wanted this, wanted
us
. She’d made that painfully clear in the way she stared at my body and slumped her shoulders whenever I rejected her. She didn’t want to be the woman who made me hate myself for foregoing my faith.

Sliding off the mattress, she backed away and tugged the hem of the shirt around her bare thighs. “I’m going to the surface today.”

Another thing she said every day.

“No.” I threw my legs over the side of the bed, ready to tackle her if she attempted to run.

We’d only left the bunker once since she’d arrived. Solar panels on the homes above provided minimal electricity and hot water underground. Food storage would last another few weeks. All of it was here when I’d stumbled upon the dodgy place. Though not too dodgy compared to the desolation gnawing away the brick and mortar of every town I’d passed since leaving Northern Ireland a year ago.

“I need more clothes.” She dug through the hangers and looked at me over her shoulder. “Everything I brought here is too small.”

“We can tailor the trousers we have.”

When I’d found her, she was as thin as a streak of piss. She’d eaten well under my care, her curves filling out and her creamy skin flushed with health. She was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t find the strength to withdraw my greedy gaze from the round rise of her arse. I knew it was wrong, looking at her the way I did. Thinking about her small frame writhing beneath the demand of my desire. Imagining how the clasp of her body would suck me in. I’d gone thirty-two years without stroking myself, but after living with her for a month, it was all I could do to keep my hands out of my scunders.

God, please tell me what to do with this woman. Give me a sign, a token of strength, something to show me how to proceed.

Pivoting toward me, she anchored her fists on her hips, and her gaze lowered, narrowed on my groin.

Hard and pulsing and tenting my briefs, I couldn’t hide it. “My thoughts are harmless, love. Doesn’t violate my vow.”

“Well, it should. Ugh. You don’t get it.” She swung back to the hangers and pulled out a ratty pair of jeans. “The way you look at me, your sexy as hell accent, and dammit, you never wear a shirt…” She stared at the ceiling. “What kind of priest has an eight-pack?” She dropped her head, letting it fall against her hand. “I can’t do this. You’re a fucking tease.”

And she was a temptress. She didn’t even have to try. With each shift of her hips, shared glance, and breathy sigh, the leash on my vow slipped that much further from my grasp.

“We’ve been cooped up too long.” She looked around the open room, her gaze tracing the concrete worktop that lined the far wall, the plaid couch sprawled in the center, the bathroom door, the prayer bench, and paused on the bed. “Neither of us have had privacy for weeks. We’re on top of each other. If we don’t get out of here for a while, we’re going to be on top, under, and
in
each other.”

Blunt and so very fecking probable, her words found me, gripped me, and made me impossibly harder.

God, now would be a really good time to answer my prayers. Is she here as a test of my devotion to you? You have my heart on the altar. But I am only human, and she’s my ultimate weakness. Please God, help me see if I’m taking liberties with her that you don’t approve of.

“I need answers.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “There might be people out there who know things. Survivors like us. Please, Roark.”

It was doubtful. People were dying, and the few who lived would more likely hurt her than give her answers. On the slim chance she found a good man who could explain why she survived when no other women did, then what? Would he offer her the one thing I couldn’t?

She wasn’t just a stunning woman. She was a potently sexual one. I saw it in her eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking. Felt it in the clench of her thighs when we lay beneath the blankets. Heard it in her muffled moans when she touched herself behind the bathroom door. She wanted sex, and she was stuck with a priest.

But she didn’t need to beg me to take her to the surface. She wasn’t a prisoner. Hell, I’d give her my life if she asked. Still, my insecurity in losing her demanded something in return.

I stood, approached her back, and circled my arms around her tiny waist, careful not to let my erection brush against her. “I’ll take you outside today, but I want a promise.”

She turned to face me, her expression open, waiting.

“I want a kiss.” What was I doing?

Do unto others what you want them to do to you.
I doubted this was the Lord’s intention. But with her body so close and her breath catching in her throat, nothing could’ve stopped me from cupping her beautiful face and leaning in. “It’s just a kiss.”

A kiss that would prove she felt this connection between us, that she needed me as much as I needed her, that she would fight her way back to me if something happened outside the safety of our bunker.

Her eyes closed, and her long lashes fringed the arches of her cheekbones. “Stop baiting me to do something you’re not allowed to do.”

I’d kissed her only once before, claiming we could show each other affection without making it about shagging. Because we were lonely. Because we no longer had family and friends to hold or care for. But I certainly hadn’t kissed her the way I’d kissed my ma. Given the thoughts in my head and the ache in my cacks, I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than rub our mouths together.

Her eyes fluttered open. “I’ll ruin you, Roark.”

I’d never wanted to be ruined so thoroughly in my life, but I would wait for God to give me some direction, to help me find my way around, through, or inside this woman. “Put some faith in my control.”

God forgive me, someone needed to.

When her lips separated and her little pink tongue darted out to wet the corner, I moved past wanting and dangerously skirted the edge of forcing. “Give me your mouth.”

“Roark—”

“Now. Don’t make me take it.”

Her eyes dilated. “I don’t know—”

“Stop talking and nod your head.”

“Will it stop with just a kiss?” Her lips flattened into a line of hopeful hesitancy.

“I’ll stop.” God help me, I would have to. “Tell me
yes
, love.”

Her hands fisted at her sides, her eyes darting away and returning to mine. “Yes.” A whisper.

I slammed my mouth against hers, and she opened beneath my urgency. A heady submission, one that gripped me where I needed her most. I tried to keep it chaste and unassuming, but the moment our tongues touched, I angled her head and reached deep, licking and stretching my jaw until all I could feel was her breaths on my face and her supple flesh sliding beneath my lips.

She pressed her hands against my shoulders, and I braced for her to push away. Instead, her fingernails dug in, her mouth moving faster, mashing harder, needy and trembling. She was a burst of flavors, honeyed, dulcet, feminine, coating my tongue with the unmistakable taste of temptation.

I pulled her against me, savoring the hard bullets of her nipples against my chest, soaking in her sensual affection until it scalded me from the inside out. I kept my hands on her lower back, fighting the instinct to slip beneath her shirt and grip the backs of her bare thighs. Feck me, she was so tiny, only a fraction of my size. Even if I could take this further, I’d break her in half trying.

She broke the kiss and stepped back, cheeks flushed and lips swollen. “That was…” She touched her mouth. “Priests aren’t supposed to kiss like that.”

“Priests aren’t supposed to kill either.” Yet I’d slaughtered my way through the U.K., decapitating men and monsters in self-defense. “The world has changed.”

She glanced at the corridor, where the door to the outside world waited. “Ready to find out how much?”

*     *     *

I led Evie
through the sewer pipes that connected the bunker to the surface. Then I put her on the back of my Harley Davidson and drove her through the decayed leftovers of South East England in search for clothes and survivors.

Not much had changed since the last time we ventured out. The buildings that once comprised the local parishes and villages were as inhabitable as the sarsen stones that dotted the rolling hilly moorland. Thatch roofs sank into the gaping husks of homes, foundations collapsed into gravel, and timber frames were scorched to ash. It was like the wreck of the Hesperus out here.

And the structures that had been sturdy enough to survive a year and a half of pillage and neglect were infected with man-sized pests. The kind of pests that had once been human.

When the plague first hit, news reporters called them aphids. The moniker stuck. Though, a cockroach reference would’ve been more fitting. Dirty, double-jointed, smelly-cunt cockroaches.

Sitting snug against my back on the bike, Evie clutched a rifle against her side. A fur cloak enveloped most of her, but her arm trembled around my waist. The December chill could freeze off a brass monkey, and my trench coat and cassock did nothing to quell the speeding wind from biting into my bones.

I’d been motoring for over an hour, fairly tipping it along the barren roads, my gaze alert and gloved hands clenched on the handlebars. I hated the way the drone of the engine announced our approach. Nothing I could do about it as I zipped around fields and tors, yawing in and out of narrow alleyways between deteriorating buildings. As loud as the bike was, no one stepped out of their hidey-holes to greet us. At least, no one human.