After Forever Page 12

  There was silence, and it crackled with electricity.

  His eyes wavered, locked on mine as if refusing to look elsewhere, refusing to allow himself to see me, to look at my naked body. So I held his gaze. And then, as if stubbornly relinquishing a tenuous finger hold, his amber gaze flickered down to my tits, to my thighs pressed together and hiding my core. I held my head high and endured his scrutiny. Let him look. I watched his eyes for the disappointment when he saw the extra flesh at my belly, my hips, my ass, the weight I couldn't lose no matter how hard I tried. That disappointment always came. They'd undress me eagerly enough, and then once they got a good look at me, at what my clothes hid, I'd see the disappointment, the disgust or dissatisfaction, or whatever it was. And I waited for it to enter Cade's expression.

  It never did.

  "You're beautiful, Eden. You are. You have to know that."

  I shook my head. "I don't."

  "I wish I could show you."

  "Not your job. Not your problem."

  "Gotta be someone's."

  "But not yours." I let my gaze trace the contours of his torso, and finally let my eyes settle on his cock.

  God, it was a beautiful thing. Straight, thick, hard as a rock.

  I wanted it.

  He was still at war with himself. And I? I fought myself as well. Fought off the desire to wrap my hands around him. Fought the urge to go to my knees and suck him dry. I was good at that. But I wouldn't. I'd talked a good game, like I wasn't afraid to admit that I wanted him, that I wanted to feel him again, but the reality was that I was terrified. I was terrified that I'd give in to wanting him and he'd push me away, like all the others had.

  And so the silence reigned again, electric silence, just like it always was between Cade and me.

  He growled, deep in his throat, and grabbed me around the waist, fingers digging painfully into my sides as he jerked me against him, crushed his lips to mine. Demanded my tongue. I gave it to him, feeling my core ache and grow damp. His cock jutted hard between our bodies, and I slid my hand between us, grabbed him, squeezed, letting my own inner war translate into aggression the way he clearly was doing.

  His mouth ravaged mine, and his cock throbbed in my hand.

  I wondered, briefly, how this would feel with him if it was gentle, but I knew that wouldn't happen.

  He broke the kiss, backed away, panting, but I refused to let go of him, and his back was to the wall anyway. I met his eyes, daring, stubborn, and deliberately stroked his length. A challenge.

  He drew a long breath, resisted, held still, as if trying to push me away without touching me. And then he hung his head. "Fuck." He rumbled the word, the curse a vented sigh of defeat. "I'm so fucking weak."

  He bent to kiss me again, and this time his hands held my hips, and then his fingers slid between my thighs and touched me, demanding entrance. I opened my thighs and let him in, let him touch me, let him bring me to the edge, as I brought him to the edge. I kept my eyes shut, clamped my mouth shut.

  I hated being his weakness, being something he had to concede to. But I was the same, needed him even though I knew I shouldn't want him, and giving in to this was a surrender, painfully sweet.

  I refused to even breathe a sigh as he touched me. He wasn't quite there, wasn't quite finding me where I needed friction, so I put my hand on his, my fingers around his and showed him. He, in turn, wrapped his other hand around mine on his cock and showed me how to stroke him, how to make him tremble.

  I came first. But then, coming had never been my problem. I had a hair trigger, not needing much to devolve into paroxysms and whimpers. But this...it was a powerful, debilitating, clenching climax that stole the strength from my knees. My fist squeezed him and stroked him with involuntary speed as I quaked in the grip of the orgasm. Finally, I couldn't stand up under the power of it any longer, and I had to let go of him and wrap both arms around his neck, holding on for balance as tremors shook me. I panted through gritted teeth, and then I felt him lift me up, and I liked the way his hands felt on my ass, gripping tight and hard. I bit his shoulder to keep silent as he pivoted with me, and I couldn't help gasping in surprised pain as my back slammed against the wall, and then the gasp turned to shocked pleasure as he drove up into me with unapologetic violence.

  "Oh...fuck..." I hissed, resting my forehead on his shoulder blade.

  "Shit, I didn't hurt--" Cade started to say.

  I didn't let him finish. In the middle of his sentence, I lifted myself up, locking my heels around his ass and my arms around his neck, and then I sank down on his cock with the same violence as he'd pierced me. He groaned in equal parts pleasure and pain, and then I repeated the act, and he nearly dropped me. Only, I was impaled on him, clinging to him. He stumbled, shoving my spine against the wall, leaning on me, crushing me. I arched back, pushing hard, and he straightened his knees, found his balance, and discovered that he didn't need his hands to hold me up. His fingers pinched my nipples, cupped my tits, squeezed and kneaded, imparting painfully perfect pressure. I could take anything he had to give, and give it back. He bucked into me, and we both moaned, and then I planted my palms on his shoulder blades, lifted up, held myself aloft with just the tip of his cock inside me.

  "Look at me, goddamn it," I snarled.

  His eyes snapped open and his head pivoted up, and his eyes were fire, wide and superheated. I made sure he was looking at me, and then I let myself fall, pierced and impaled and filled, and I felt a groan rip through him, and then he was rocking into me, thrusting and pumping with fierce power. I met him stroke for stroke, sinking down onto his up-thrusts, and now I was moaning in my throat with each body-jarring fuck of his hips, my tits jouncing and bouncing, and I knew he was watched them move so I arched my back and made them bounce harder. He was groaning, growling, gasping.

  He slammed into me once more, one last time, and then I felt him go up on his toes and I was filled with his hot wet seed, felt him come and come and come, and then I was overtaken as well. My body was squeezed and wrung, my insides shivering, my muscles tremoring, and I was gasping high-pitched whimpers, the noise of my orgasm a breathless whine.

  He held me and I clung to him, both of us shaken.

  When I slid off him, the look in his eyes was haunted.

  I knew the feeling. Whenever we finally gave in, we were both possessed by something primal. It was all sheer aggression, raw hunger, mixed with threads of anger and pain and confusion.

  I could tell he needed to get away from me, and honestly, I was exhausted from the intensity spiking every moment we were together. "I'm gonna go to the gym," I said.

  He nodded, but didn't look away from me, and I didn't look away, either.

  "Eden, I--"

  "Don't. I'm sick of talking about it." I looked up at him, still quivering and sore and out of breath. "Where we go from here is up to you. I'll follow your lead."

  He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "I--" He seemed to be on the verge of starting the whole circular discussion over again, but then he shook his head in denial and started again. "I'll see you later."

  At the gym, I punished myself until I could barely walk. Of course, walking was already a little tricky, as sore as I was, but that was a kind of sore I'd never minded. I was dripping sweat and trembling all over by the time I finally left the gym, having done more reps on all the weight machines than was probably advisable. I'd even run flat out on the treadmill for almost twenty minutes, and I hated running.

  Other days, instead of all that, I'd hang the heavy bag from the hook I'd attached by hand to the ceiling in my studio space, and I'd wrap my knuckles the way the personal trainer had shown me so long ago, and I'd work the heavy bag until I couldn't move my arms or legs.

  It still didn't quiet the war of voices waging in my head, the angel on one shoulder and the demon on the other.

  Caden

  I'm so fucked up, Ever. Such a mess. There's no up anymore. I'm just tumbling through life without any up or dow
n. You were my up. You were my direction. I'm barely passing my classes, and even my art is all fucked up, dark and twisted images that make no sense. You are my light, Ever. Or you were, and now I have none.

  Do I even have hope anymore? I don't know. I used to. They're talking about the chances of emergence, organ donation. Quality of life. Quality of life for whom? You? Me? God, I don't know. I know they're talking about you, but...it should be me. I'd donate my organs. I have no chance of emerging from this. I'm in a coma, too, Ever, just like you. Only I'm walking and talking, and you're in a bed.

  I visit you every day still. Regardless of what they say, I come see you. I write you letters, just like we used to. Unlike then, I sit at your side and read them to you.

  I miss something different about you every day. Today, I miss your painting. I miss going into your studio and seeing you in that fucking shirt, the white button-down with all the paint splatters. That shirt is such a mess. But it's so you. And you're always naked underneath it, your long thin legs naked and so white. I miss how you can be so quiet, but fill any room. So gentle, so tender, but so fierce when you want to be.

  I'd give anything, anything in the whole fucking world to be able to just sit and talk to you, just once. I'd pillage the whole earth if it meant talking to you. I'd fucking raze cities to the ground if it'd bring you back. I'd sell everything I own. I'd go homeless. I'd starve. Just to have you look at me one time with your green eyes. Just to hear your quiet voice. You have such a musical voice.

  I never understood how much I loved you. I didn't. You know how we talked about our love, how it was this thing that was EVERYTHING to us? It was everything to me, Ever, every last goddamned motherfucking thing, and it's gone. You're gone. And I needed it even more than I knew then, when I had you.

  Will you know me if you wake up? Will you love me?

  For you, Ever,

  Caden

  My hand shook uncontrollably, clutching the letter, and I felt the paper crumple in my fist. "Shit," I mumbled. I straightened the letter, smoothed it against the silver metal of the railing on her bed, folded it, tucked it into the envelope. Put it with the others. Too many letters.

  I closed my eyes and breathed, focused on keeping it together.

  I failed.

  Falling forward, I felt her frail cold hand against my forehead. "Goddamn it, Ever," I whispered. "If you're there, if you're in there, show me. Move your finger. Something. Show me you're there, so I can hold on. I'm losing it, baby. I'm losing it."

  I lifted my head to watch her, looking for any sign, a twitch, a blip on the machines, a finger wiggling, an eye moving beneath the lid.

  "Please, baby. Please." I was cracking. "I can't do this without you. I can't...keep going. You have to...you have to wake up, baby."

  I didn't deserve to call her that. I didn't deserve her anymore.

  Everything I was, everything I knew, it was all breaking apart. I'd tried to draw Ever the other day, and instead, I'd drawn a horrific, distorted Noh mask, white as bloodless flesh, with Ever's brilliant eyes coruscating green but somehow sightless and menacing, fine black strands of hair flying about like storm-whipped tendrils of purest darkness.

  I wasn't sleeping. I'd dream, and wake up. A dozen times a night I'd dream I was with Ever, in bed with my Ever, and then it would all twist as dreams do and it'd be a lifeless husk I was clutching.

  Once, the corpse in my bed was Eden.

  Once, it was a two-faced nightmare creature, reaching for me with pale hands and talon fingernails painted blood red, or red with blood, and it was my blood. I'd looked down and saw jagged claw marks ripping open my chest, and there had been no heart beating in my ribcage, and one face was Ever's and that one was weeping great hot jade tears that drained her eyes of color, and the other face was Eden's, and she was grinning with filed cannibal teeth and laughing and cackling. The body, the two-faced creature's body had been a chimera, part Ever's body, part Eden's. I'd known the difference. The creature's breasts had been Ever's; I'd known it as an immutable truth, I'd been able to recognize them, recognize their shape and their size, and I'd known each dimple on the areolae. Its hips and legs had been Eden's, and between its legs it had been Eden as well, and I'd known that with just as much surety, and in the dream I'd shut tight my eyes but had still seen, still been forced to see the creature I'd wrought with my sins.

  I'd woken screaming, alone in my bed, and I hadn't gone back to sleep that night, nor the next night. I'd doze off in class, exhausted, and I'd dream then as well. I'd jerk awake or be prodded by a classmate. I'd doze off at home, on the couch in front of the TV, which I watched listlessly.

  I'd always known in the back of my head that Grams and Gramps were there, but there was nothing they could do. They couldn't wake up Ever. I didn't need money. They couldn't come and stay with me, and I couldn't move there to live with them. But...they were there. A fallback, if I ever hit absolute rock-bottom and had nowhere else to go. But until then, I was alone.

  I spent Christmas Day alone. I spent New Year's alone. I didn't dare catch so much as a whiff of Eden, because I knew I had no place, no right, no control.

  I ached. I dreamed of Eden. Sometimes they were normal dreams, strange conversations and aggressive sex. Other times, they were nightmares in which I'd be with Eden and Ever would be crucified to the wall, awake and watching and unable to look away.

  When I woke from those dreams, I'd be weeping, and I'd be unable to stop for hours, more tears than I'd ever cried in my life, even as a baby, surely. And I'd be unable to sleep again after that. I'd draw and let the images take over. I'd draw my dreams, and those pieces were things I wished I could burn but didn't dare because they were evidence of my torture, witness to my ongoing penance.

  I'd drop to the floor and do pushups until I couldn't lift my face from the carpet, and then I'd roll over and do sit-ups until I was about to vomit, and then I'd stand up and do squats until I collapsed, dripping sweat. I made myself eat, but food was ash in my mouth, tasteless.

  Every day, I was tormented by the need to see Eden. To get a fix. I refused, refused, refused.

  This went on for nearly a month, and by the end of January I was hallucinating while awake, living on coffee and protein bars and vitamin supplements and fast food. I'd gained more than ten pounds of muscle in my arms and chest, because instead of sleeping and risking the dreams, I'd do pushups, wide-stance to work my pecs, make a triangle with my fingers directly beneath my chest to work my triceps. Crunches, squats, lunges, wall-squats, every at-home exercise I could think of. I'd eventually sleep, and after a few hours the dreams would come and I'd be desperate to wake up, and when I did, I'd wake more tired than ever.

  Finally, I could take it no longer.

  between sin and suicide

  Can you come over? I sent the text.

  It was two in the morning and I'd had a nightmare, spent the last hour working myself into exhaustion, sweating and trembling and unable to do one more pushup. Yet still I was pacing the living room, near tears from exhaustion, nightmare images flashing through my head. I ached from the need to find release. As many nightmares as I had, I suffered equally from wet dreams of Eden, of Ever. Once, horribly, of both of them at once.

  I'd vomited after that dream and drunk myself into a stupor, missing an entire day of classes and work.

  But the wet dreams continued, just like the nightmares, and I could never ejaculate in the dreams, and I'd wake up hard, on the verge of coming, but unable to finish it, unable to bring myself to touch myself. So I ached, exhausted, weak, seeing Ever in every face, Eden in others.

  Sure. B right there, she texted back after ten minutes.

  She rapped softly on my door twenty minutes later, and I let her in. Wearing a torn gray Champion sweatshirt and red knee-length spandex, hair in a sloppy braid, dirty white cross-trainers, she looked like she wasn't in any better shape than I was. She stank of sweat, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, exhausted. I shut the door behind her, went
to the fridge, and got her a Gatorade. She took it, uncapped it, drank greedily.

  Lowering the bottle, she eyed me as she wiped a wrist across her mouth. "You look like shit."

  "Feel worse."

  "So you call me?" She sounded resentful.

  I drank from my own bottle, wiped sweat off my forehead. "I tried not to. For as long as I could."

  "And now?"

  "I'm not sleeping. I have nightmares."

  She laughed bitterly. "Me, too." Her eyes roved over my shirtless torso. "Looks like you're coping the same way I am. You've put on muscle."

  "So have you." She had, too. Her legs, encased in skin-tight red, were pillars of defined muscle, and even under the baggy sweatshirt I could see that she'd been working out as hard as I had been.

  She just snorted. "Yeah, right. I've been pigging out as often as I go the gym. I ate half a pizza by myself yesterday. Then ice cream. Pie today. Lots and lots of booze. It's a miracle I don't need a forklift for my ass." She sidled past me to throw away her bottle, and my eyes were drawn to the ass that she claimed required a forklift.

  "Your ass looks pretty tight to me." Might as well admit it.

  She'd been in the act of drinking the last drop of Gatorade when I spoke, and she froze, then slowly and deliberately dropped the bottle into the trash can. "Now we come to it." She turned around. "You think my ass is tight?"

  I shrugged. "Yeah."

  "And that's why you texted me, right?" She glared at me, her hair coming loose from the braid.

  I frowned. "I thought we weren't going to pretend?"

  She took an angry step toward me. "But that doesn't mean you can avoid me for a month and then text me at two in the morning like I'm a cheap piece-of-ass booty call!"

  "Jesus, Eden. That's not why I asked you to come over. I just needed--"

  "Yeah, you needed. I know what you needed. That is why you texted me."

  I turned away from her, tempted to put my fist through a wall. Instead, I whirled back, pointing at her with an accusatory finger. "Yeah, well, you're here, aren't you?"

  Her eyes filled with tears. "Yeah. I am. I'm here. I knew what you wanted, and I still came running. So you might as well get on with it." She ripped her sweatshirt off, revealing a sports bra that matched her pants, red and tight.