Page 26 of Tower
“If they’re going to believe you’re a stud, then we need to get this bed going. Come over and help me.”
He’s chuckling and shaking his head some more, but he stands up and walks over, taking his place on the bed when I scoot over. Together, we get the bed shaking at a strong, steady rhythm, slamming the headboard back against the wall.
Anyone still hanging downstairs is definitely going to hear it.
On cue, some muffled hooting and hollering sounds from below.
We go on for a while. Then I start screaming out in fake ecstasy, “Yes! Yes! Yes, Boss, yes!”
Levi chokes on a laugh.
Inspired more by his laughter than by any desire to create a show for the gang, I keep up the loud refrain on and off for a few minutes.
Levi is still laughing, progressively more helplessly, until he’s trying to tuck his head enough to muffle the sounds in his shoulder.
When it feels like it’s gone on long enough, I yell at the top of my voice, “Yes! Yes! You’re the boss! You’re the boss!”
Levi totally loses it.
I never dreamed I’d ever see him so uncontrolled outside of sex. He’s shaking helplessly and can’t even focus enough to keep up his part of the rocking.
It doesn’t matter.
We’ve sustained it long enough to prove our point.
It might have been a tasteless pretense—it definitely was—but I made Levi laugh in a way I doubt he’s laughed since Impact.
I have zero regrets.
8
“You’re in a good mood today,”Carlotta says as I help position her feet correctly for a standing forward bend.
I am in a good mood. I woke up that way, and it’s only brightened as the early-morning yoga session has passed.
A month after I first started on my own, I now have between seven and nine people joining me regularly. Becca and Jen always attend, and Carlotta does whenever she’s not posted to a morning guard shift. Hawk still keeps watch for trouble or potential gawkers from his lawn chair, and he knows all the arm stretches and joins in often with consistent good humor. Then there are a handful of men and women who sometimes get up in time to participate. Sick sometimes participates too, which I don’t like, so I’m relieved he went with the others on the scavenging trip.
This morning there are actually ten of us because Jen convinced Dep, who stayed here to run things in Levi’s absence, to give it a try.
“Are you going to tell me why?” Carlotta asks in a teasing voice. Her hair is plaited into two braids that she pulled back in a single ponytail, and it flips when she rises from the bend.
“No reason.” I guide everyone in another bend, blowing out a slow exhale as I do.
Carlotta hasn’t dropped the subject. When we return to Mountain Pose, she slants me a look. “So it has nothing to do with your man coming home today?”
I blush. I really wish I didn’t do that so easily since it contradicts my cool, controlled expression.
Carlotta laughs. “We’ll all be glad when the guys are back.”
She doesn’t have a man and doesn’t appear to want one, but base has felt weirdly empty for the past three days since so many of them left on a scavenging trip in the hopes of replenishing our stock of supplies from the old world. “Hopefully everyone gets back safe.”
I’ve been trying not to worry unduly, but I’ve hated Levi being gone so long. It’s the longest he’s been away in the two months I’ve been here, and I’ve been fighting against random visions of the group running into trouble, of Levi getting shot, getting killed.
It terrifies me. Upsets me far more than I would have expected.
I want him home. Not only because I’m worried about his safety but because I’ve missed him to a ridiculous extent. It’s not like he’s a warm, chatty person or like we’ve ever been joined at the hip. He’s gone for hours nearly every day. But we usually have breakfast and dinner together.
And we still have sex most nights, unless he’s particularly tired or I’m in the few days around ovulation. He doesn’t even mind fucking me during my period, so we don’t skip then unless my cramps are bad.
