Page 16 of Trade
This can’t be real. I’m the Assistant Head of Agricultural Preservation. I gotmarried. I did everything I was supposed to do.
“Come on,” he says. His voice is gruff, but his tone isn’t impatient. It’s almost, somehow, coaxing.
I can’t run. I don’t know where I am. I can’t fight. I don’t know how. If I don’t comply, they won’t let me back inside.
The longer I stay Outside—I don’t know what will happen, but it’ll be bad, the worst thing that could possibly happen.
I don’t have a choice.
All I have to do is lie down on the jacket. That’s all. The future doesn’t have to go any further than that.
I can lie down on the jacket. It’s not a decision. I’m just playing for time.
I walk over and sit. The jacket is thick, but the ground is hard. The cold seeps through the fabric. The air is cooler than inside the bunker, but the sun is warm on my face where it finds its way through the green canopy overhead. It must be spring, if seasons still work the way they do in books.
“Lay all the way down,” he says, coming closer to stand over me. His muscles have tensed. His sharp jaw is even sharper. A vein at his temple pulses. He is so pretty, and I’m so scared, and he’s in charge, but he’s also Alan’s age, an intern’s age, and I’m extra kind to them. I take time to explain what I’m doing. I’m firm and clear and reassuring when they inevitably fuck up.
He’s not an intern. He might be as young, but he’s six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than any man I’ve ever met, and his confidence isn’t put on at all.
He does have that reticence, though, that fraction of a second before he speaks or moves that says he isn’t as familiar with what he’s doing as he acts.
I lie flat on my back and straighten my legs. Only my upper half is on the jacket. My head rests in the grass.
What am I supposed to do now?
I don’t have to wonder for long. In one smooth movement, he kneels, straddling my hips. A startled cry slips from my lips.
“You’re okay,” he says gruffly.
I freeze. I’m trapped underneath him, but he’s not putting his weight on me. The stretched-tight crotch of his pants hovers a good inch or two over my body.
I don’t know where to put my arms. They’re bent at the elbows like chicken wings, kind of hovering over my chest.
He gently takes me by my wrists and guides my arms to my sides.
He stares down at me so intently that a crease appears on the bridge of his nose. His brown eyes have gone black, his chest rising and falling as if he’s done a session on the treadmill at top speed.
He unzips my coverall until he’s blocked by his own body at my waist. The cool air hits my bare belly, my skin prickling immediately with goose bumps. My lungs hitch.
He’s breathing so heavily, that’s all I can hear, his breath and the blood pounding in my ears.
“Take your arm out,” he says, lifting my left cuff and drawing my arm out, and then repeating with the right. He lays my sleeves out on the ground like he did with his jacket. I huddle my forearms to my chest.
“No,” he murmurs, drawing my arms back to my sides again. He takes a long minute to stare at my breasts in my dingy gray cotton bra. It’s my best one. It was my mother’s, and it still has two out of three hooks left and all its eyes.
He goes to grab it by the band. He’s going to pull it off. He’ll stretch the elastic. Break it.
“No,” I rush to say, and his eyes flare, burning darker. “I’ll get it.”
I do a crunch, reaching behind my back and unclasping the hooks. I lie back down, clutching my balled fists to my chest. His gaze rises to my face. His eyes narrow. I put my arms back at my sides.
He peels my bra off. My nipples instantly pucker. My arms jerk to cover myself before I remember where he wants them.
He stares like he’s never seen breasts before. The breeze whispers across my chest, and a ray of sun warms a spot right over my heart. I’ve never felt sunshine on my bare skin before. Never felt wind. There has never been so much space above me. So much air.
No one has ever looked at me like this. His gaze travels urgently from my face to my breasts and down to my belly. I tighten my abs out of habit. With Bennett, I’m careful to put myself in the best light. He says I still look good, but the older we get, the more help nature needs.
Not that it matters how I look now. What’s wrong with me? I should be fighting. Pleading, at least.
