Page 28 of Trade
Oh, yeah. How would he know? I have no idea what his life has been. Brutal, I’d imagine, if what we were taught was true, but things are clearly not what we were told. Dalton is strong and healthy. His face is hard, but he carries himself with assurance. He sure hasn’t been made into a monster by a pitiless hellscape like the Outsiders in the stories the older kids told at slumber parties.
“Did you go to school?” I ask. My curiosity is rising fast and furious.
“I’m a scrounger,” he says like it answers the question.
“What’s that?”
“It’s what I do. I scavenge for shit. Fuel. Machinery. Weapons.”
“So you didn’t go to school?”
“My father was a scrounger. I’m a scrounger.”
“But there are schools on the Outside?”
“I guess at the Mill. The kids don’t work there, if that’s what you mean.”
For every answer, I have a hundred more questions. I open my mouth to ask, but Dalton is walking ahead. He reaches into the tree and breaks off a pink blossom. “Here,” he says, coming back to offer it to me. “For your pocket.”
When I take it, our fingertips graze, and my questions fizzle away. He’s staring at me again with that expression in his eyes, the longing that’s so raw it’s almost anger. He wants to touch me again, and he’s not trying to hide it at all. His cock tents his pants, and his gaze has settled on my lips.
“I’m sixteen years older than you,” I murmur, quiet because he’s standing so close and the woods around us have grown so still.
“Yeah,” he says.
“You don’t know me at all.”
He shrugs. “I guess.”
“You don’t really want me. You just don’t have any other choices.”
“You don’t know shit,” he says, dropping his backpack and hauling me up so he can devour my mouth.
He’s holding me too tight. He presses his lips too hard on mine, mashing them against my teeth. I don’t think he’s kissed before.
He wants inside my mouth, so he grips my chin and coaxes it open. I brace myself for too much tongue, but instead, he licks, tasting, tentative but curious. He doesn’t want to dominate; he wants to experiment. My surprise melts into a warm buzz.
My feet dangle inches above the ground. His forearm digs into my back as he holds me up and against his chest. I’ve got no leverage.
I slap-tap his shoulder. “Down,” I mumble into his mouth.
He immediately lowers us both to our knees as he explores my mouth with his tongue, his hand cradling my head. He doesn’t let go or ease up for a second.
My skin flushes, nerves waking up as he discovers one thing after another—sucking on my top lip, nibbling, tugging my swollen bottom lip in between his teeth, twining our tongues. He’s fascinated, captivated, and hungry, so hungry. He’s famished, and it’s intoxicating to me.
It was so, so easy for Bennett to drop me, for Neil and the others who’ve known me my whole life to banish me from my home, for the bunker to shove me out. But Dalton holds me like nothing could take me away from him, and I know it can’t be real, but it feels like he’s returning a piece of me that they stripped away, and I clutch it like a lifeline.
I push on his chest, and he falls to his back, tipping me over so I’m sprawled on top of him, breathless and brainless.
“Hold up,” he pants, unbuckling his belt and unstrapping his knives in record time.
I resettle myself, straddling him, and he lets out a moan of pure torment. My lips curve. I’ve become two people—the old Gloria, Mrs. Smith, Assistant Head of Agricultural Preservation, and this goddess, this smiling woman whose world’s been shattered, but who cares? The most beautiful man in existence is lying perfectly still underneath her like he’s afraid if he even blinks, she’ll get up and leave.
He gazes up at me, dark eyes blazing, panting, desperate.
This is power. I’ve never felt anything like it before.
I arch my back, letting my hips tilt until his hardness presses exactly where I want. He grits his perfect white teeth. I grind slowly, stoking the swirling, achy, needy pulse throbbing in my pussy.
