Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

Most alarming were his eyes. They would be called blue, Cass supposed, but the pigment was so pale that they looked almost like clouds. Unlike the Beaters, though, they were centered with large black irises. They were fringed by thick black lashes and would have been too pretty for a man if they weren’t so frighteningly intense.

The other thing that Cass noticed about Dor was how close his shave was. Shaving in Aftertime had become an inexact science; even disposable blades were used over and over, sharpened by hand, imperfectly. A lot of men had adopted a technique of holding the blade away from their faces so as not to cut themselves and invite infection, so they were never free of stubble. She herself, only the day before, had cut herself with the dubious razor included in the tub of supplies Smoke had rented for their use, but Dor stood before her, glowering, his wide, firm jaw perfectly smooth with only the faintest shadow of beard.

His forehead, however, was crossed with a scar that stood out against the smooth planes of the rest of his face. It started at the hairline and cut across one eyebrow, ending at the top of his right cheekbone. A relatively recent wound, a couple of months old at most, still angry and raised. Maybe he’d gotten it fighting the Rebuilders, but as Cass stared into his cold eyes it seemed far more likely that Dor was a man who only looked out for himself.

“What do you want?” he growled, his strange eyes flickering.

“I have a message from Sammi.”

“So I’m told. How do I know you’re not lying?”

Cass blinked. “Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. Why would you? What are you selling?”

“I’m not selling anything.”

His laugh was abrupt and contained not a bit of mirth. “Don’t kid yourself. Everyone’s selling something. Some people are just more honest about it. But I’ll tell you what, you don’t look much like a Girl Scout to me, know what I’m saying?”

Cass felt her skin grow hot as Dor’s gaze traveled down her body; he didn’t bother to mask his admiration.

“Look, do you want to hear the message or not?”

“I really doubt that-”

“She said to tell you she hasn’t missed a night.”

The change that came over Dor was complete and instant. He froze, but not before his entire body seemed to release its coiled, hostile energy and his crazy eyes lost their hardness. After a moment he lifted a hand to the back of his neck and left it there, a gesture of defeat as much as uncertainty.

“I don’t know what that means,” Cass added. “She just said to tell you she never forgets, and that she won’t miss until she sees you again.”

Dor stared at her for an uncomfortably long time, but Cass kept her shoulders squared, her chin lifted and stared back. It was the least she could do for Sammi.

Finally Dor dropped the hand from his neck and opened the door to the trailer. Cass thought he was going to leave her standing outside alone, but at the last second he turned.

“I think you’d better come inside.”

IT TOOK A MOMENT FOR CASS’S EYES TO ADJUST to the dim interior of the trailer. It was orderly and clean, but jammed with shelves, a desk, several office chairs, and an object that astonished Cass more than anything she’d seen yet: an enormous flat-panel monitor with an open spreadsheet.

She hadn’t seen a computer in use since the Siege.

And there was Smoke, sitting in a straight-back chair across from the desk, long legs splayed out in front of him, arms folded across his chest. His eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise, a slow smile warming his face.

“You know each other?” Dor said, not so much sitting as crashing into his desk chair.

“This is the woman I’m traveling with, the one I told you about.”

“Then we’ve got a problem,” Dor said. “One of you isn’t telling the truth.”

“Nice hair,” Smoke remarked, ignoring him.

Cass felt herself blush as she sat in the remaining chair, her knees brushing against Smoke’s, and even that small contact rocked her in the hollow depths where sensation and desire twined together.

How was it possible that she could feel this way, as she prepared for her trip into the Convent, as she faced yet another round of unknown dangers? How could there be room for anything in her mind besides Ruthie, who was her waking thought and her evening prayer? And yet her body longed to touch Smoke again, and to touch him completely. She imagined sliding down onto the floor, onto her knees; she wanted to bury her face against his hard-muscled stomach, wanted him to run his hands over her shorn hair, to trace the outlines of her ears, to slip his fingers into her mouth. And then she wanted him to pull her up onto his lap, and she wanted to kiss him hard. The one taboo she could never break, she could never risk it, never take the chance that the disease lived in her saliva, that it waited and burned within her, longing for a host-none of that mattered as she thought about what it would be like. She wanted to taste his lips and tease them open with her tongue and she wanted him to meet her kiss with his own, demanding, unyielding, his hands in her hair, pressing her to him as he-

“We have a problem here,” Dor repeated.

“Why would you say that?” Smoke said, though his gaze remained on Cass.

“You told me you came from Sacramento.” Dor addressed Smoke, and while his tone was calm, there was a threat below the surface. Cass noticed that his scar looked even worse in the glow from the monitor. “She says she’s talked to my daughter. My daughter’s in Silva.”

Smoke shrugged. “So what? You’re an entrepreneur. In these times, I’m sure that comes with risks. You have to…hedge your bets, right? So I said Sacramento…it’s a small detail, unimportant to any business we might do. Where I come from doesn’t matter. As you said yourself, anything I have to sell will be checked and authenticated before goods change hands.”

Smoke had lied, then. Why? The answer came to her as he touched the small of her back, leaving his hand there, weighty and warm. A comforting touch.

He was protecting his own. The people of the school, they were his people. He’d said it himself: they were all he had. And while they had been strangers to him not long ago, if it made sense to defend anything at all Aftertime, he would defend them.

“Let’s just say it goes to character.” Dor focused his unwavering gaze on Cass. “Tell me what you know about Sammi. All of it.”

So she did, leaving out the details of her own arrival at the school. She told him that Sammi and her mother were healthy and had plenty to eat, that the school was well-guarded and stocked. She described the courtyard with its communal meals, the kids in the sunny room where Sammi and her friends led games and activities. She told him how Sammi had asked her to pass along her message, but didn’t add that she recognized the hunger in Sammi’s eyes for an absent father, the hurt and confusion. These things she kept to herself, because she knew how fiercely she guarded her own pain-and she would not betray Sammi that way.

Especially because Dor did not react while she talked. He listened dispassionately, jaw set, strange eyes heavy-lidded and inscrutable. When she was done, he nodded, once, and turned his attention to the keyboard in front of him. He tapped at a couple of keys.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Well, what are you going to do?” Cass asked.

“Do?”

“About Sammi.”

“You said she’s doing well-as well as can be expected, under the circumstances, anyway.”

“Yes, but she wants to see you,” Cass said.

“What good would that do? The best way I can help her is by staying away.”