. . . harder.
The endpoint she had reached refused to come to him, any orgasm stalling along its path toward him, the sensations getting just to the tipping point of release . . . but then going no further, like there was a barricade. Or a security checkpoint with an armed guard was more like it.
Sweat beaded his forehead, and he brushed the sting out of his eyes. Concentrating on where his arousal was and what it was doing and who to, he demanded that he get caught up again in the moment. Otherwise, he worried, she would find insult in what he could not control.
He tried another position, a different rhythm. He squeezed his eyes tight. He opened them to stare at her.
Eventually, he stopped, bracing an arm to hold himself off her. He was panting from exertion, not passion, as he tried to catch his breath.
“It’s okay,” she said as she ran a smoothing hand over the hot, steaming plane of his back. “Just let yourself go.”
Closing his eyes, he gave it another shot, sure that this time would be different. This time, he’d be normal and do the normal thing, and then afterward they would hold each other and probably have two or three more sessions before the sun went down and they got back to reality. Teeth gritted, hips swinging, he bore down on his lower body like that would take care of the problem. Like he could force the orgasm out of himself, a cure for coital constipation.
All of the trying just seemed to be scaring off his goal.
No. Go.
Duran popped open his lids, ready to scream from frustration. He couldn’t keep this up forever; he was going to hurt her and end up with a dislocated lower spine.
Maybe he’d just fake it. Except she’d know and that seemed even worse—
The solution presented itself as his eyes swung around and landed on an object that had fallen out of her pants.
As he reached for the trigger to his collar, he grabbed onto it like the lifesaver it was.
“Help me,” he said. Begged was more like it.
Ahmare was confused—and then horrified as he put the black box into her palm.
“What? No, I’m not going to—”
Before she could argue, he pressed the button himself—
The electrical charge that went through him was so powerful and sudden, he bit the inside of his mouth, tasting blood as his body went rigid from the shock. But goddamn it, the pain that lit up his skeleton, traveling down his spine and branching all the way to his fingers and toes, opened the door for his release. Like a crowd rushing a field, his orgasm exploded out of him, his erection kicking inside of Ahmare.
Losing himself in the sensations of pleasure and pain, he was blown apart even as he stayed whole, his brain incapable of processing anything other than what he had forced out of himself.
When he finally stilled, his head dropping to her shoulder, his breath sawing out of his open, bleeding mouth, he knew, without a doubt . . . that he had made the wrong call.
Ahmare was frozen under him, horrified.
The means had not been justified by the end, however huge the orgasm had been, and he sensed her withdrawal from him even as she lay beneath his tired, twitching body.
He didn’t blame her.
18
WHEN NIGHTFALL FINALLY CAME, unhurried but on time, Ahmare was dressed and ready to go, standing in front of the way out, her weapons holstered around her body, her hair yanked back in a rubber band, her boots laced up and prepared to cover ground.
Behind her, on the far side of the partition that hid the toilet, Duran was emptying his bladder, something she had just done.
Odd, to feel like she was intruding on a private moment of his given that she couldn’t see around the partition, and hello—they’d had sex.
She closed her eyes and tried not to think of how it had ended. How they had awkwardly separated their bodies and then lain together on the cold, hard floor, the fit that had seemed so perfect, so seamless, now marked with knees and ribs, elbows and chins.
Are you okay?
Yes, are you?
She couldn’t remember who had asked and who had answered. But she recalled returning to her bunk and him going back to his place on the floor across the way, their clothes hastily pulled on, Wite-Out to take care of a blunder at the typewriter.
Which blunder, though? Not the sex. She had no regrets there.
Are you okay?
Yes, are you?
Who had asked that first? Maybe it had been at the same time, and as for answers, were they both lying? She had been—she hadn’t been okay and wasn’t now—but the last thing she wanted was for him to feel compelled to take care of her.
As it was oh so very clear he was the one who needed to be looked after.