Hollow Men (16 page)

I went to the other vehicle, up on lifts. “Rear axle’s bent. No go.”

He put his hand on me, and I didn’t think. I turned my body and pressed against him and sighed. I didn’t cry. But I sighed for a very long time. As if maybe I was deflating.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Let’s sit and just chill out for a few minutes. Catch our breath. Think.”

“Fine.” I stomped to the door to the small store and pushed through.

Evan was right on my heels. “What are you doing?”

“If we’re going to regroup, I need candy,” I said.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a sugar junkie?” he asked, watching me raid the meager candy rack. Half of it was probably stale.

“There are worse things to be addicted to,” I informed him.

“Like what?”

“Crack,” I snorted. I grabbed a bar of taffy that was probably made the year I was born and tore it open. After checking the ingredient list for any questionable animal material. Anything that came from an infected cow could get you. “Heroin. Cigarettes. Hookahs.”

“Hookahs are a means to smoke, they’re not what you smoke.”

“Fine, smarty pants. The
stuff
you smoke through hookahs.”

“Which is usually flavored tobacco.” He grinned at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Evan…a pregnant pirate woman stole our bus, all our shit and took off leaving us by the road with three bags and two bicycles. Let me have my candy.”

He nodded. “I have an addiction,” he said, leaning against the counter. The store was dim because most of the large windows were boarded over. Like the one we’d seen that told just to turn back.

“What’s that?” I asked. I figured he’d say kimchi noodles or something.

He stepped close to me, dragged a finger down the middle of me, over my still jumping chest, over my belly so it fluttered. “You.”

“Now?” I whispered as he leaned in to kiss me. “You want to fuck
now?”

“We’re having a rough day,” he said, insinuating his fingers into the waistband of my cargo pants. “Who knows how it could end. Me…I want to go out with a bang.”

God damn him. He had a point.

“We don’t have time for this, Evan,” I whispered. I didn’t believe myself. I didn’t sound very convincing. The fact that my body arched up to meet his seeking touch didn’t help my argument. “We’ve already been ambushed once here.”

“A single hollow is not an ambush.” He leaned against me, pinning me to the counter and pressing his big, hard body flush to mine.

“Attacked.”

“Whatever.” The word was a puff of air. Hardly any inflection at all. “If you’re worried, we can secure,” he said, gruffly. He went and shut the connecting door to the bay, locked it. We’d slogged all of our gear into the store with us, so it was within sight. He checked the front door for me, pointed to the boarded up front window. Then he proceeded to move a shelving unit that was nearly bare but still held a few small bottles of motor oil in front of the gaping shattered window. Behind the counter was a small bathroom—he cleared it. Then a back door that must have been for deliveries. He jiggled the lock.

“Aren’t you afraid we’re getting addicted to dangerous sex?” I asked.

Did it matter?

“No.” He cocked his head and looked at me. Then he was close again, gripping my hips roughly, kissing me just as rough. “We are addicted to it. I’m not
afraid
we are.” He chuckled. “And I have a question…” Evan dragged his mouth down my throat, over my collarbone, pinched my nipple through my sweater.

“What? What’s the question?” My hand had found its way to the front of his jeans. I cupped him. I squeezed him. I felt his cock respond to my eager touch. He moaned, his lips brushing my cheek.

“Is that a bad thing?” His hands had slipped up beneath my sweater. The warmth of him bled into my chilled skin, and I shivered briefly.

I stared up at him. Beautiful eyes studying me. His heart beat was wild under my hand when I touched his chest. “No,” I admitted.

He just stayed that way then. Staring. Holding me. He almost seemed to vibrate with unused energy. With want and need and life. He felt like life, that was it, I realized. He felt alive.

I grabbed his head a bit too rough and didn’t care. I hauled him in to kiss him—really fucking kiss him—even as he laughed at my ham-handed assault.

“Kiss me,” I said, mashing my lips to his.

Evan’s hands cupped my face. We stayed that way for a few beats then he cradled my head and deepened the kiss, his other hand straying along the flat of my belly to slip beneath my bra and stroke my nipple. “I am kissing you.”

“A quickie. That’s it.” I was bargaining with no one but myself. I knew that. But I needed to say it aloud. “Just because our egos are bruised. And we’ve killed people…things today. Because it’s just been a craptacular fucking day,” I finished.

My clothes were a nuisance, but so were his. We tugged and pulled and stripped until I was bare from the waist down and so was he. My jacket flung aside, my sweater hiked up to my neck, my bra pulled down. I was too on edge, too wired and tired to get utterly naked.

Fast, rough, desperate—that was what I needed.

I leaned heavily against the counter. The lip of it bit into my lower back. Evan grabbed my right leg, hauled it up high by his hips and effectively spread me. His fingers dipped between my legs, found my wetness, painted my clit with it. “You are definitely turned on,” he informed me, a small smirk on his face.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I growled. There was no heat in my retort. Just a gasping kind of need. I arched my hips to drive my body down onto his thrusting fingers.

He had me opened up, spread wide, and he was touching me. Watching every flickering dance of his fingers on my body. “You have washed your hands right?” I snapped.

Honestly, I didn’t care. Not right then. Not really. But some part of me needed not to fall backwards into my pleasure. I needed to remain alert. On guard. I needed to keep control.

He shook his head and sighed. “Oh, Eleanor. You do know how to kill a mood.” He didn’t mean it because he found my nipple with his mouth, bit it, licked it until it stood up in a tight pink pucker.

“Well?” I demanded. My belly fluttered from the sensation of his teeth on my breast. The rough suck he delivered to my other nipple. It tugged me from throat to cunt, an indefinable sensation that simply felt like desire to me.

“Purell. A few minutes ago. When you were dicking around with your boots. I let it dry thoroughly because I knew I’d get an interrogation. But yes, my hands are clean. Are yours?” But then he ground his lips against mine, his tongue intruding into my mouth, until I sighed, opened wide—kissed him back.

“Thank you.”

“Shut up, Eleanor.”

I nodded and almost laughed. Instead, I simply settled for a smile. But then I found his cock and squeezed him hard. He groaned into my mouth, grabbed my waist and pulled me flush to him. Trapping my hand between us and grinding his cock to the split of my pussy lips.

“Evan.” I didn’t know what was supposed to come after that. Hopefully me. I simply wanted him in me. I wanted to be full of him, so that there was no room for worry or fear or regret. I wanted to focus on nothing but him. Us together.

“Hush.” He pulled back from me, lifted my leg again and slid the tip of his cock along my drenched slit. He teased me until I groaned, and he teased me some more.

“Please,” I said.

I rarely begged—anyone for anything. But that one word sounded like begging to me.

“Oh, you know how to get me, sweet Eleanor.” He slipped into me. Slowly. One inch at a time, stretching me as he went, watching me with his dark eyes the whole time. I felt as if I were a butterfly pinned to a board, but in the best possible way. At his mercy, under his spell…scariest of all—safe in his hands.

I grabbed his hips and tried to pull him closer to me. Deeper into me. “Fuck me,” I half snarled. The feeling of safety had really thrown me. I’d felt flickers of it before now, but it was becoming clearer every time we were together. A clarified sense of stability. The sense of not being alone.

A catch blossomed in my throat and threatened to choke me. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I held on tight to his perfect hard ass and moved with him to take him in. Every driving plunge jarred me. The faded, chipped countertop bit into my butt adding sparkles and flares of pain to my pleasure. He thrust harder, and that shock of his pubic bone to my clitoris set me off. I shivered against him, coming with a long low moan.

“Sweetheart,” he groaned.

He moved from me, and I felt the absence of his body from mine. I reached for him, but saw him glancing around.

“What?”

He finally settled on his leather jacket, dropping it on the counter leather side down, fabric lining up. “Up,” he growled, and hoisted me up before I could react. My ass hit the counter, and he stepped in fast between my spread thighs.

My height and angle now allowed him to bury his face between my breasts, licking my skin as if the salt of my sweat was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

I spread my legs further, let my head fall back. “This is supposed to be a quickie,” I said. My heart thundered in my chest, my ears, my cunt.

“I know, I know. But, Eleanor, when we get to Vermont…” His words drifted off as he grabbed my bottom to steady me. He thrust in hard and deep, and my whole body seemed to sigh with the goodness of it.

“What? What?” I demanded as he rocked into me and I strained up to meet his body.

“I’m going to lay you out on a bed—a proper bed—and fuck you for hours.” His voice was rough, his breathing harsh.

My pussy clenched tight around him, the tension inside me increasing the friction. I was close, so close and I could tell by his body language that so was he.

“Hours?” I gasped. I touched him—everywhere, anywhere—my hands roaming his stubbled jaw, his strong neck, the flexed plane of his chest. I skated my fingers over his belly and felt the muscles twitch and dance from the stimulation. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I tightened my inner muscles on him and heard the air leave his lungs.

“Fucking hours,” he growled. “Babe—”

Evan came, his body flexing restlessly under mine as he emptied. His final thrust nudged my clit just so, and I came a split second later, his big arms wrapped around me as I shook. Laughing. Smiling.

A rustle and a thump at the window. We both turned to see the shelving unit shudder. Then a whaling, whimpering cry.

“Jesus,” I hissed and we were struggling to get dressed, find our weapons. Get back into a killing mindset.

Another sound came by the door. There was more than one.

“Hollows,” I snarled.

“Hurry.” Evan looked stricken. Not from them, but because we’d been in danger. Caught up in ourselves and so terribly compromised.

I leveled a shaking finger at him. “No more!” I snapped. “No more losing focus until we’re safe.”

He looked hurt, angry, frustrated, but finally he just nodded. “Fine. No more losing focus until we’re safe. But El—”

“Yeah?” I wasn’t really paying attention. I shoved my foot into my boot.

“Then all bets are off, you hear me? I just found you again, and I am so ever-loving sick of this running bullshit.”

I glanced up, surprised. “I hear you,” I said. I meant it, too.

Chapter Eighteen

We did a sweep. While we’d gotten reacquainted with each other carnally, several hollows had come out of the woods.

“They must be truly hungry,” Evan said. “They don’t usually come out and hunt during the day unless drawn by something big—like freeway noise. Dusk and beyond, sure. Sometimes a loner will come out in the daytime. We killed some and now…more.”

“I guess the people who didn’t leave this town were already infected.” I peeked out the peephole on the back door. The fish-eyes lens told me the back was clear. I saw a gravel lot and a sloping hill behind the store. It was opposite from the side we’d come in. “So far we look clear back here,” I told him.

“Well, we’re not clear up here. So I say we take the backdoor and haul ass to whatever lays beyond.”

“A field, it looks like. A big fucking field, but you never can tell through these damn security holes. I swear they give me migraines.”

I pulled back, rubbed my eye. We loaded our overstuffed duffels back on our backs, and I hefted my new killing tool—my mechanic’s wrench.

I cracked the back door and stuck my head out. On the left side was a very thick band of hedges. Probably why the hollows hadn’t come around. People were lazy and stupid once infected. Whatever the straightest route to food was that’s the way they went. Picking through a thicket wasn’t easy. But eventually they’d come around the opposite side by the garage bay.

“Let’s go,” Evan hissed in my ear.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to a distant oddly manmade hump in the natural landscape.

“No idea, but seriously, El, the one is getting close to getting in that window. If I kill it, I’m afraid it will draw more. Maybe they have radar. Maybe they travel in flocks now as if they’re birds.” He laughed when he said it, but we both sort of paused for a second.

Group dynamic. Hunting in packs. Was it possible? Wouldn’t they just eat each other? I had no idea.

“Let’s go, then. Got something handy?”

“Knife and gun. You?”

I waved the wrench. “And my gun. Tucked in my belt.”

He gave me a kiss on the back of the neck, and my eyes drifted shut for just a heartbeat. I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to try to find a safe place to hunker down or hotwire a vehicle to get on the road. I just fucking wanted to take a shower, crawl into a bed, wrap myself around Evan and stay that way for weeks.

No time for that but the brief and fleeting fantasy was nice.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

I flung the door wide but stopped it short of banging against the wall. We checked, double checked, then took off fast for the hillside. When we came down the slope from the garage’s back lot, I figured it out. “Drainage pipe!” I said, huffing and puffing.