Chapter 33
John
“Get a move on, asshole.”
Ronald the security guard who’d laughed at Walshaw’s jokes, laughed as Seb was being beaten, was getting antsy. As he half led, half-shoved John up the hall he kept muttering under his breath the whole time about how much he was looking forward to watching him die. John had known men like him before. When an execution was imminent, they were eager. Bloodthirsty.
The urge to kick out at the other man was overwhelming but he fought it. A second guard was following them, his gun trained squarely on John’s head. His moment of attack would have to come when the session with Daniel was over. That’s when he was going to strike and in all likelihood die, on his feet, taking as many of these assholes with him as possible. When they reached Daniel’s bedroom Ronald cut his zip ties, purposely nicking his wrist with his switchblade. “Thirty minutes before I end you, stud.”
John said nothing but thought I’m gonna make you eat that fucking knife first.
Ronald stood up, opened the door and shoved him inside Daniel’s bedroom. “Put it in her ass for me,” he said, slamming the door in his face before John could respond.
Furious John kicked the wood. “Prick!”
“Fighting the good fight to the very end, huh Heathcliff?”
John had known Daniel would be here, but knowing and hearing her voice was something else. His chest seized up, puffing with the memory of her screams, the way she’d faced Elkin with such unflinching bravery. You kill me tonight as well. Bullet to the head, no fucking around. He’d loved her for saying that in such a bored voice. Loved her and wanted to fold her up like a piece of paper and tuck her away somewhere safe at the same time.
“Someone’s got to,” he managed to say to the closed door. “You traded it all in for one last screw.”
She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. The now familiar sound like a burst of birdsong, he’d always liked birds. He used to watch them with his grandmother.
“You know when I met you I was convinced you had no sense of humor?” Daniel said.
“That right?” John said, staring at the door.
“Totally, my second thought was ‘Man, I’d hate to go to a stand-up comedy night with that bastard.’”
“What was your first thought?”
“I told you. I thought that you were beautiful.”
John’s lips curved irresistibly upward. “You gotta stop calling men beautiful.”
“What are you gonna do about it, Heathcliff? Spank my arse?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never been into spanking. Seb on the other hand, lights up whenever anyone so much as taps your ass.” John braced his hands against the door and tried to keep his breathing even. Seb. Jesus Christ Seb. He’d done this, brought him here, stopped him from fulfilling his destiny of becoming a doctor. Why had he done it? Why hadn’t he let him go?
“John,” Daniel said suddenly. “What did you think when you first saw me?”
He huffed out a laugh in spite of himself. “I thought you were pure trouble in a red dress and fuck me shoes.”
Daniel laughed again. “You were pretty dead-on. What about Colt?”
Clear as day John saw his friend arm-wrestling on a picnic bench. “I thought; that’s the biggest fourteen-year-old I’ve ever seen.”
“And Seb?”
John’s chest convulsed as he recalled clear as day seeing baby-faced Seb chatting politely to one of the most long-winded assholes at Fort Bragg. “Too nice for his own fucking good.”
There was a short painful silence and John knew they were both thinking about what they’d just been forced to endure.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel whispered. “I’m so sorry about all this shit.”
John kicked the door because he needed to do something. “Not your fault, Schwartz. You know that.”
Daniel exhaled loudly. “If it’s not my fault then why won’t you look at me?”
A question, he knew he would have to answer honestly. John pressed his head against the cold door. “Remember what I said, about…knowing things?”
“Yeah?”
John hesitated, then he remembered the thirty-minute life allowance he’d been granted. What was the point in hiding now? Who cared if Elkin or anyone else thought he was batshit?
“Sometimes I look at people and I can tell they’re about to die,” he said. “And if I look at you and that happens…” I don’t know what I’ll do.
He heard Daniel lick her lips. “What…what do they look like? When you know they’re leaving?”
“Fuzzy around the edges, like their molecules are breaking off.”
“Huh.” He could hear her turning the idea around in her head like a Rubik’s Cube. “You know it’s a shame I never got to introduce you to my friend Mikey. I think you two would have a lot to talk about.”
John pictured her introducing him to her friends in a bar like they were some newly minted couple. “I don’t think your friends would like me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, you’re lovely. And very sexy. Plus, I have weird friends.”
He smiled. “Nice girl like you?”
“I think you mean ‘infuriating socialist with emotional problems but also big tits.’”
John’s grin grew wider. “And a great ass.”
“Another compliment.” Daniel sighed dreamily. “I fucking knew you liked me Blackwood.”
Suddenly John’s head and blood and guts were full of so much affection he felt like it was going to come out of his ears. He couldn’t turn around, he just couldn’t. Even if he wasn’t here once this half hour was over she had to be. A world without her in it just didn’t make sense.
“You know,” Daniel said. “Aside from not being able to go outside, living here is the most fun I’ve ever had. You guys are like, well, I’m not going to say like brothers to me because I’ve had sex with nearly all of you…”
“Cousins?” John suggested.
“I think we can do better than that,” Daniel said.
John laughed against the door. “Why are you trying to cheer me up when we’re both about to die?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel’s voice was sad. “Don’t you like it?”
“No. You’d have made a good soldier.”
Daniel snorted. “No one has ever, in any context, said or thought that about me.”
“I guess that makes sense. You are a soldier though, in your own way.”
There was a rustle of sheets, like Daniel was tucking her knees into her chest. “John, I know there’s a chance you could turn around and see bits of me curling up and blowing away like when Voldemort died at the end of HP seven but I would really like to say goodbye to you.”
John raised his head off the door, then let it bump against the wood again. “Schwartz, if I look at you and see that I can’t protect you…” He broke off, unable to find words to flesh out how that would feel.
“John? Please?” There was a slight tremble in Daniel’s voice. “Please?”
It felt like he didn’t have a choice. He turned slowly, half convinced that the minute he spotted her she would vanish like a mermaid in one of those old sea tales, like the occasional blue flashes in her resolutely gray eyes.
Instead what he saw made his mouth fall open. “Daniel…”
“Shit.” She clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Am I dying? Am I doing the thing?”
She rubbed herself vigorously as though trying to press wayward molecules back into her skin.
“No,” John said. “You’re…You’re…”
He’d been expecting the prelude to death but the girl who sat in front of him was glowing from the inside out, as though someone had turned up a dimmer switch inside her chest. She was brighter than a fireworks display, brighter than New York at night. She wasn’t going to die. She was the most living thing he’d ever seen. “You’re beautiful.”
Daniel looked as shocked as if he’d said ‘hey, go fuck yourself.’ “What!?”
“You…” John said, moving toward the bed as though supercharged magnets were pulling his legs. “Look. Fucking. Beautiful.”
Daniel’s expression changed, she beamed at him, as happy as he’d ever seen her. Happier. “So come kiss me already, Heathcliff.”
People talked about living in the present. As soon as John slid into Daniel’s embrace he knew he’d never done it before. Everything melted away. If someone asked his name he would have brushed the question off. None of it mattered. She was here. They were together. He cupped her cheeks and kissed her, every muscle in his body focused. They’d done far more intimate things but this outstripped all of them. She was so close; she was so fucking warm. He’d forgotten what it was like to have a girl’s skin pressed against his own, to feel her attraction pouring out of her and into him. Or maybe he’d never known it in the first place.
He planted quick reckless kisses on Daniel’s neck and shoulders, suckled briefly at her collarbones and nipples. Whatever he could get. Whatever he could touch. Their make-out session quickly reached a logical conclusion, the two of them rubbing up against each other fast enough to start a wildfire.
Daniel dragged her hands across his scalp. “I want you, John.”
As always her use of his real name had the same effect as a hand on his cock. “Say that again.”
“I want you, John.”
He smiled and remorsefully detached a hand from her ass to check his watch. “Sixteen minutes.”
“Plenty of time.”
John gave a strangled chuckle. “I don’t think it’ll be my best work.”
“So? It’ll be a capsule experience.” Daniel stroked along his cargo pants, a slow deliberate drag that made his whole body tense. “A tasting plate of your sexual prowess. C’mon, please?”
His body made the decision for him, unzipping his pants he yanked them down along with his briefs. Daniel kicked off her underwear and they scrambled against one another, rapidly trying to configure their bodies. John rubbed the head of himself against her, groaning at her heat and slickness, everything hardening to the point of discomfort. “Fuck, condoms.”
“I think you mean fuck the condoms.”
“But—”
She gripped his face. “Heathcliff, there has never been a more appropriate time to have unprotected sex.”
“Good point.” But he couldn’t help but glance up at the cameras. Fuck off and stop watching. I need this to be just the two of us.
Daniel touched his jaw. “You okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just…” He pressed his forehead to hers. “If we do this…It’ll be our first time.”
Daniel kissed him with such tenderness it hurt. He knew she was trying to remind him that it might be their last time too. “Can you close your eyes and just trust me? Feel me?”
It was the same thing she’d said when she went down on him. “I can try.”
He reached down and tugged the blankets up over his shoulder so that they were almost entirely covered, then he closed his eyes and imagined they were alone, surrounded by solid walls. He listened to her breathing, pressed his lips against her skin and sank downwards groaning at the inexpressible heat between them. “Jesus that feels…”
“Yes.” Daniel’s fingernails dug down almost as deep as when she’d roused from her laughing fit, biting into his skin. “God, John, Yes.”
Her pussy was suckling at him like a living thing, roiling and clenching, bare and wet and warm. Within seconds he was barely holding onto his load. “Fuck, how did Colt and Seb ever take their cocks out of you?”
“They tried not to,” she panted, her hips bucking up to meet him. “Do you want me to talk to you? About them?”
“No.” John could feel his kinks hovering but they couldn’t touch him here, in this warm sweet place where all that mattered was him and Daniel together. He pressed her hands above her head and drove deeper. “I want you to come.”
And after several frantic minutes, their bodies growing slipperier with sweat, she did. She came with agonizing slowness, her body shuddering, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her pussy clenched down so hard John almost blacked out. He had to fight to keep himself inside her and was half scared he’d hurt her with the force of his thrusts. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Daniel scraped her teeth across his shoulder then brought her mouth to his ear. “¿Estás listo, mi amor?”
John’s spine went stiff, his impending climax the only thing keeping his hips moving. Had she just told him to be ready? He buried his face in her hair. “¿Para qué?”
Daniel shook her head. “Can I turn over?”
Heart thudding John nodded. What the hell was going to do? He was so close to busting he could barely think. The seconds it took for her to turn over and present him with her gorgeous ass were torture. “Please, John, I feel so empty…”
He fumbled with his cock pressing it back between her thighs and drove himself home, thrilling anew at the feel of her pussy wrapped around him. More than a decade he’d gone without it and the exhibition he felt now made him think it was almost worth it. Although maybe it was her. “Fuck, Daniel, I’m there. I’m gonna come in you.”
“Do it,” she said, raising her ass higher. “Make me feel it.”
“Fuck.” John’s hips slammed hard against Daniel’s flesh as he finally let go.
Coming when you were that wound up was like rising from a fifty-foot free-dive. John’s lungs burned, his body strained as his whole brain narrowed down into one thought; come, come, come. A dark tunnel had appeared behind his eyes, fixed on the light in front of him. Come, come, come, and as he did, as he finally broke to the surface bucking wildly into Daniel, the bedside lamp flicked off.
“Daniel?” John moaned, his head swimming, his cock still pumping out seed. “What the—”
“Ha llegado el momento. Prepárate, mi amor.”
Then everything went black.