For the First Time: Twenty-One Brand New Stories of First Love (51 page)

Aphids skittered from overgrown farmland and decomposed dwellings. More insectile than human, the creatures always gave chase, the rumble of the bike and the scent of our blood calling them out of the shadows. With pincer-like hands swiping for flesh and mouthparts snapping for veins, their hard-shelled bodies blurred at inhuman speeds. Thankfully, they couldn’t run as fast as the bike.

As much as I wanted to put them out of their misery, I didn’t stop to engage them. Every time a snarl rent the air or a bulbous body emerged in my path, I opened the throttle with one thought on my mind.
Protect her.

When we reached a hamlet of abandoned shops and homes, she tightened her arm around my waist. “Hold up.” She pointed at a squatty house on the right. “Over there.”

The front door was gone, but lacy curtains still hung in the windows, an indication that a woman had once lived there. God knew what occupied the space now.

I scanned the perimeter. Most of the buildings were gutted. Some burned. Others barely standing. But nothing moved. No signs of life on the road, in the surrounding fields, or stirring the shadows within the rubble.

The tires skidded as I slowed to a stop, the pavement moist and dewy from the persistent winter weather. I shut off the engine a few feet from the doorway, and for several minutes, I waited with my hand clenched on her thigh beside mine. I held her there, listening, observing, pacing my breaths with hers.

“It’s safe.” She pushed against my grip and swung off the bike. “I don’t feel them.”

Whatever it was about her biology that made her the only woman immune to the virus had also given her an uncanny ability to sense the infected.

“Sure, but you don’t know if there are men nearby.” I unsheathed the sword and matched her pace to the house, my neck craning side to side as I strained to see in every direction at once.

There wasn’t a screed of gee left in the world. Lads were probably getting off with each other. If they saw her, they would tear each other apart to capture her, possess her, and hurt her.

“That’s what I have this for.” She tapped her fingers on the rifle and flashed me a grin.

How could her cockiness be so bloody sexy and frustrating at the same time?

I caught her wrist and yanked her behind me, taking the lead through the doorway.

The stale scent of mold hung in the small space, and the wood floor groaned beneath my boots. A flurry of dust motes scattered in the bands of daylight streaming through the broken windows. A staircase led up, and a short hallway pointed to the kitchen.

“Up.” She poked a finger against my spine. “The bedrooms.”

My scalp itched as I climbed the first step. The rotting wood gave beneath my weight, spongy enough to fall apart.

I stabbed the sword in one of the planks. It didn’t crumble, but it wanted to. Were new clothes worth risking a broken leg? We could abandon this home and try for another. Maybe the stairs wouldn’t be as banjaxed elsewhere, but there were always worse things, such as sagging roofs, feral creatures, and the vomit-inducing aroma of decomposing bodies. The wet weather and disrepair of abandonment hadn’t left a single building untouched. Every step in this godforsaken country was a fecking hazard.

I reached back and touched her waist. “Step where I step. We’ll keep to the side.”

She held the rifle against her shoulder, eyes glued to the doorway. I wasn’t sure how she’d be able to aim and walk without tripping, but she managed it brilliantly, following my footfalls, moving when I moved. Until we reached the top.

With one foot on the landing, she doubled-over and clutched her stomach, the gun dropping to her side as her face contorted in pain. “Roark. Shit.”

She felt aphids.
The sensation always gripped her in the gut, and given her sudden reaction, they were closing in fast.

I spun, reached for her arm, but she stumbled, seemingly disoriented. Her foot broke through a weak floorboard. The supports snapped, and the whole goddamned section dropped away, taking her with it.

My pulse thrashed as I dove for her, my hands slashing air, missing her by an inch. “Noooo!”

I caught my fall at the edge of the fissure and watched in horror as she plunged into the depths.

She landed one story below in a deafening explosion of dust and debris. As the clamor settled, a growl shuddered through the house. Followed by more growls, then the scrape of claws on wood. Silhouettes filled the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. Son of a pissing hell, I’d never reach her in time.

Lying on my chest, I stared down through the hole and frantically scanned her for injuries, for breath, for some indication of life. She sprawled on her back on a heap of rubble. Nothing pinned her down. I couldn’t see blood. But she wasn’t stirring.

“Evie? Evie, fuck, are you okay?” I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. My shout came out strained and choked. “Evie! Talk to me!”

She answered with a cough, but it didn’t loosen the fist inside my chest. Not with the rifle tossed out of her reach. Too soon, the aphids would be on her, and all it took was one bite. A strike of their mouthparts, and she would become one of them.

“Evie!” I roared. “Get your arse up! Your gun’s at your nine o’clock.”

The stairs creaked with the approach of aphids. Five…six of the vicious buggers ascended quickly, their bulging egg-like eyes locked on me, and their mutated bodies quivering with hunger. Another dozen infiltrated the lower level, headed for Evie.

“Evie, they’re coming!” I jumped up, careful of my footing, and double-fisted the sword.

The staircase splintered beneath taloned feet. A couple aphids staggered, screeching as their spiny legs broke through the rot. The others kept coming, strings of drivel clinging to their elongated mandibles.

Adrenaline heated my veins as I raised the sword, severed the head of the closest beast, and lurched forward to hew down the next. It turned its head. Our eyes locked, and its wide body sprung. I angled the sword and caught it in the chest, the sharp end punching clean through and out its back. But it wasn’t dead. The head, the brain, whatever that disgusting lump was above the shoulders was the only way to kill it.

Yanking hard, my muscles protested as I freed the blade and cleaved through its neck. The head rolled off, and the body thudded at my feet.

The remaining four pulled themselves from the fractured stairs and flung toward me with rabid snarls and chomping jowls. But my focus was on the hole in the floor and the din of fast-moving creatures scurrying through the house.

“Evie!” I deflected an oncoming claw with my forearm, rammed my shoulder into the chest of another, and with a stab of the sword, I pierced the head of the fella on the stairs. “Evie, I’m coming!”

My jaw clamped to the point of pain, but when the sound of her grunting hit my ears, it felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. Were they biting her? Was she moving? My back was to the hole, the sword arcing around me. I swung with savage strikes, fueled with rage and urgency. Blood splattered my face, and bodies dropped. As the final head thumped down the stairs, several more aphids climbed their way up.

I whirled back toward the cavity in the floor. Twelve feet down, Evie sat against a tipped over refrigerator, flinging knives from the sheathes on her arms as three aphids blurred around her. They growled, and she hissed back, baring her teeth, chest heaving, and her daggers flying with remarkable accuracy.

My God, she was so gloriously ferocious it was arresting. But she wasn’t standing, which meant she was injured.

I tossed the sword through the hole and leapt. My feet collided with the uneven pile of wood, and my legs gave out against the impact. I muscled through the jarring pain, scrambling for the sword. When my hand bumped the hilt, I jumped up and cut through the aphids surrounding her. The last one in the room dropped with a thump, and I leaned against the sword, fighting to fill my lungs.

She flashed me a grateful smile, but her mouth pulled tight at the corners.

I rushed toward her, my gaze sweeping over her denim-clad legs. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll live.” Her hand grappled to collect the knife from the dead aphid beside her. “Behind you!”

I turned, let the sword fly in a wide sweep, decapitating another head. The hallway was our way to the front door, but it was crammed wall to wall with creatures. More were falling through the gap in the ceiling. I pivoted in a circle and spotted a back door.

Evie collected her knives and climbed to her feet, favoring her ankle and tripping over the carnage of timber and death. I snagged her rifle from the rubbish and grabbed her waist. She didn’t fight me as I lifted her pint-sized body and tossed her over my shoulder.

“Hang on tight, love.” I barreled through the back door and legged it to the corner of the house before the aphids flooded in from the front yard.

Squaring my shoulders, I sucked in a calming breath.

God, give me strength.

I clamped a hand over the backs of her thighs and sprinted through the horde, slicing and hacking a path to the bike. Gore clung to my skin. Bodies tumbled in my wake, and finally, I breached an opening and spun free of the fight.

Dropping Evie onto the bike, I kept the sword out and wheeling side to side, warding off jaws and talons within arm’s reach. A low burn built in my shoulder from hefting the weight of the steel, and my lungs wheezed for air. There must’ve been twenty or thirty encircling us. How the hell would we make it out?

The sudden boom of her rifle ricocheted in my chest. She leaned over the bike seat, braced on her elbows, firing off brass and clearing a route for escape.

Aphids poured from the house and sprinted across the lawn. I straddled the bike and handed the sword back to her, which she sheathed in my scabbard as I fired the engine and sped off.

The swarm tailed us for miles, but eventually fell behind as the bike whined at top speeds.

The wind blinded me, whipping my hair in my eyes and chilling the sweat on my face. Evie gripped my chin-length dreadlocks, fisting the tangle at the back of my head. Her brow rested against my spine, and for the first time since we’d left the bunker, I let myself smile. I wouldn’t have walked out of the house without her, even if it meant dying at her side. I didn’t know what God thought of that, but I held Him responsible for sending her to me. If I didn’t belong with her, I didn’t belong anywhere.

We didn’t stop until we reached the garage and didn’t speak until we were safely in the underground sewer system. I cradled her against my chest, my boots slogging through the ankle-deep water. Icy drips fell from the ceiling, echoing from one end of the tunnel to the other. Murky shadows made it difficult to see, but I knew the way, having sloshed through these pipes countless times over the past year.

I’d checked her ankle before we left the garage. It was swollen, painful to the touch, but she didn’t think it was broken.

She curled her fingers around my shoulder, and her gentle breaths on my neck chased away the tension in my muscles. “Guess I’ll be borrowing your clothes.”

I tipped my chin down, disappointed I couldn’t see her gorgeous face in the dark. “What’s mine is yours.”

“Not
everything
.”

No, not my body. At least, not in an intimate way.

I felt her shadowed gaze on my face, and I bet it looked a whole lot like a glare. “I want to give you that, too.”

She blew out a breath and tightened her arms around me. “I know. God, Roark.
Knowing
you want to give me that makes the absence of it even more painful.” She dropped her head on my chest. “I sound ungrateful. You’ve already given me so much. Thank you for saving me. Again.”

My stomach clenched, every cell in my body aching to save her in a different way. To save her for myself. She had no idea how close I was to making her mine.

*     *     *

Like the gasps
of a dying man, the weeks slipped by, each one counted, cherished, and needful. Holed up in the bunker, we tried to keep ourselves busy. I taught Evie how to swing a sword, and she taught me Jiu-Jitsu. The techniques were useful for self-defense, but ground wrestling with her was a blessed misery. With her toned body grinding against mine, flexing and panting in a tangle of limbs, how could I not think about fucking her all the damned time?

We’d attempted another excursion to the surface and managed to collect a few books from a nearby library. She’d wanted research on the biology of aphids. But the errand had ended as sorry and stressful as the last, and I’d been forced to kill two human men who tried to hurt her. I’d be happy if we never left the bunker again.

I prepared all her meals, looked forward to it, to hearing the soft moans of pleasure that escaped her lips as she chewed. It made me want things, but I limited myself to touching, something I did more than I should have. We’d become so comfortable with one another, sharing every second together, modesty fell away. In its place emerged an intimacy I’d never experienced with another person.

I’d always been friendly with the ladies. A little innocent affection went a long way in a celibate life. But there was nothing saintly about my relationship with Evie. Every brush of my fingers, lingering look, and word I spoke vibrated with yearning. The kind of intense, demanding need I’d never allowed myself to entertain. I fought it. Bloody
hell
, I fought it. Tried to smother it with exercise, prayer, and guilt. But my feelings overpowered my intentions.

Like now.

I lay in bed, awake again, both of us nude from the waist up, as my gaze followed the slope of her back from inches away. The natural perfume of her skin infiltrated my inhales, and the seductive lines of her body burned into my eyes. She was all I saw, smelled, and thought about. Every moment with her was heaven.

And hell.

Her breaths whispered through the room, soft, steady. I loved to caress her while she slept. It didn’t ease the guilt, but it spared me the accusations I so often found in her eyes.

Dragging my lips across her shoulder, I tried to keep my whiskers from scratching her satiny flesh. She slept nude most nights since she didn’t own many clothes. The body contact kept us warm beneath the blankets, and I tried to be respectful and not stare at the parts of her I couldn’t touch. At least, not while she was looking.