The Last Marine Page 12

  Pushing away from her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He turned, scanning the landscape as he waited for his body to catch up to the change in mood. “Why don’t you go bathe? I’ll stay here. Give you some privacy.”

  She didn’t say a word, but he sensed her gather her clothes and leave.

  Griffin let his head fall back and took a deep breath. He pictured his high school math teacher. His grandmother’s best friend. His obese, balding, male neighbor who lived across the street from his family when he was a kid. The old man had some kind of sinus issue and there always seemed to be boogers in his mustache.

  Nothing worked. His dick, it seemed, wasn’t keen on giving up the idea of release.

  He glanced back toward the pond; Prudence was nowhere in sight. Her clothes were gone—well, everything but her panties. She’d dropped those near the end of the path to the pond. She must’ve slipped into the water by now. He could sit in the deepest part and the water only came midway up his chest in the shallow pond. On Prudence, the water must come all the way to her neck, but the red-tinged liquid was clear—he’d have a full view of her willowy frame and small, pert breasts.

  Christ. His erection was going nowhere with thoughts like that.

  He unbuttoned his pants, folded up his shirt to get it out of the way, and leaned back against a boulder. Closing his eyes, he took his dick in hand and imagined Prudence sprawled out before him like a feast. He recalled the heady scent of her musk, her nipples, a shade darker than her lips and those soft, brunette curls between her thighs. In his mind’s eye, he imagined her saying the words he needed to hear: “Please, Griff, take me now.”

  Chapter 15

  She couldn’t find her panties.

  Prudence held Griffin’s shirt in front of her and snuck back toward camp, hoping she’d dropped them somewhere this side of the bushes. Just her luck, they were two feet inside the clearing. Great. Where was Griffin? She poked her head around the foliage and froze, her breath catching.

  He stood with his legs braced apart, leaning back against a large rock. He had his shirt folded up, revealing tightly packed abs and a thin dusting of blond hair leading from below his navel down to meet his pubic hair. He’d lowered his pants enough to release his cock and stroked himself off.

  She shifted, squeezing her legs together to squelch the tingle there. Goddess bless him, he was a beautiful male. Not pretty. Beautiful. She loved the way his muscles bunched and flexed as his hand rode his length. She’d never done that for a man, never circled her fingers around a cock and stroked, petted. She watched closely, trying to learn what he liked, wondering what he might feel like in her hand.

  Or her mouth. Would she lick him like he’d done to her, or suck him into her mouth? He was much bigger than the Parnell brothers, but not even the thick width of him doused her smoldering desire.

  His head rested back on the rock, eyes closed, lips parted. His breathing grew erratic. Who did he imagine? Someone back home? Maybe an old lover or a famous model? A woman with the large breasts and lush curves popular in society? He picked up the pace, his hand a blur of motion, stroking, twisting, and rubbing over his thick, dark head. His low groan reached across the campsite and hardened her nipples. Thick jets of cum spurted from his cock and his knees seemed to go a little weak. “Ah, Christ, Angel.”

  Prudence’s eyes widened. Did he imagine her? Or did he give all women that nickname? Reluctantly, she hurried away from her position and went back into the cool water. She’d finished bathing, but she needed a little time before she tried to look him in the eye. If she did so now, she’d blush over the memory and he’d know she’d been watching. She splashed some water over her cheeks, but it didn’t expel her blush, nor the other heat coursing through her nether region. Glancing back toward the campsite, she slipped her hand under the water and between her legs. Her folds were slick with desire and as soon as she slipped a finger between, a jolt of pleasure arced through her.

  Never had that happened before; it was like he’d flipped some hidden switch inside her, making such things possible.

  Maybe if she could make herself climax on her own, she wouldn’t be so afraid to try sex with Griffin. She couldn’t imagine how it might help. Sex was painful, nothing like the slick glide of a tongue, or the soft stroke of fingers. Sex hurt and she couldn’t fathom how any woman could find climax amid such agony. Besides, her one time with Alfred had left her sore and aching with sharp pains between her legs for days and Griffin was much bigger. She couldn’t imagine the pain he might cause.

  She trailed two fingers along her cleft, circling the bud above her opening. Something dark and hollow seemed to open up inside her belly, sending out shockwaves of shivers. Experimenting, she circled the little nub, pressed her fingers to it, and scraped her nail across the little bump. And the whole while she imagined those tight muscles of Griffin’s and those penetrating green eyes staring into hers.

  She opened her eyes and stopped still. There, not four feet from the edge of the pond stood the strangest creature she’d ever seen. Its barrel-shaped body stood on four thin legs, and an undersized, graceful head sat atop a stout neck and the thing’s deep blue fur had thick black stripes.

  Food.

  She didn’t know what it was, some kind of mammal, but it looked a heck of a lot more appetizing than the last creature they’d eaten. And she had nothing to kill it with. Her stomach rumbled as she shifted her weight to her knees.

  The creature lifted its head.

  It would bolt if she tried to move. “Griffin,” she whispered, hoping he could hear her. “Griff.” She had to repeat herself half a dozen times before she saw him. She lifted her hand in a staying gesture and pointed to the creature.

  When he didn’t do anything, she turned to see what he was doing.

  He stared back.

  “Food.” She pointed again.

  His gaze wrested to the side and he withdrew his gun. He crept closer to the creature, but his attention kept straying back to Prudence.

  What was he doing? “Kill it.”

  Griffin leaned to the side, aimed around a tree and fired once. The creature dropped to the ground.

  Prudence jumped up with a whoop. “You did it. You got him. We’re having meat tonight!”

  Griffin continued to stare at her and he didn’t appear happy at all.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I—” He motioned back to the clearing, then motioned to her. “And now—”

  Prudence glanced down, in all the excitement, she’d forgotten she was naked. She squatted in the water.

  “I can still see.” He growled. “You are killing me. You know that, right?”

  He tromped back toward their camp, leaving Prudence to wonder what his problem was.

  *****

  Their trek the next day seemed easier with full bellies. They were leaving the desert behind. Today, dark-blue grass and small stands of trees dotted the sand. The watering holes became more frequent, as did shade. They could see the edge of a forest in the distance that reached up into the jagged mountains.

  Griffin had hardly looked at her the night before and today he’d been uncharacteristically quiet. She’d glance at her companion occasionally, a little unsettled by his comfort with silence. She wanted to understand him better—what drove him on this suicidal mission he’d set for himself. She understood the frustration of seeing everything you knew and loved change. She understood his unhappiness with the Parnells’ twisted vision of utopia, but they were free from all of that now. Why couldn’t he let it go?

  As the sun started to fall in the sky, he motioned toward a thick growth of trees. “We’ll camp there. Looks like there’s water.” He shielded his eyes from the sun. “Might reach the base of the mountains tomorrow.”

  “The spaceport is beyond the mountains.”

  “Good. I’ll want a nice, long look at the place.”

  “What is your plan? Do you even have one?”

  He shrugged. �
�I have an outline of one. Find my brother, commandeer a ship, and return to Earth. Hopefully with enough people to start a rebellion.”

  “That’s an outline?” Sounded more like a movie tagline to her.

  “A rough one, yeah. Look, in case you didn’t realize, all information on Asteria’s spaceport is top secret. It’s not like I could pull out my Saph-link and look up the floor plan for the spaceport here or determine how many soldiers are stationed on Asteria.”

  Silence fell between them, not a comfortable one like before, but a quiet born of tension. She didn’t want to insult him; she’d come to like him. She worried about him. “So you are planning to take some time to observe how things work at the spaceport?”

  “Well, yeah.” His tone was rife with sarcasm.

  “And your brother, you know where he is?”

  They’d reached the stand of trees he’d indicated and he held a low-hanging branch out of her way so she could step through. “Look, I know I might not find him. I guess my hope is that the majority of the people sent to Asteria will stay together—safety in numbers. It’s logical.” He scanned the area while he spoke, looking for wildlife or people. He always remained watchful. “The more people who live in the same area, the more experts there will be to provide services to the rest of the population. These people are used to living in a network of other people, my assumption is that they will gravitate toward continuing that way of life here, too.” He pointed off to their left. “Water’s that way. We’ll camp over there.”

  She followed him through shrubs and trees. “I caught a glimpse of a report on Asteria last year. There are two main settlements about a day’s travel from the spaceport and several smaller settlements dotted around them. I doubt much has changed since then; they haven’t sent as many people in the last year.” He offered her his hand and helped her over a small outcropping of rocks. “What’s he like?”

  “Who?”

  “You’re brother. You haven’t even told me his name.”

  He set his bag down near the edge of the water and stretched. “Lucan. He’s different.”

  “How so?”

  Griffin lifted his hand, running his palm over face and head. “I don’t know.” He sat down, leaning back against a tree. “He was always the smart one. Got good grades. Could remember everything he read, everything he saw.”

  She sat next to him. “He had a photographic memory?”

  “Yeah. My parents would take us on vacation and I always took pictures of everything, everyone we met. But not Lucan. We’d get back home and a month later I’d walk into his room and he’d have pencil sketches and chalk drawings all over his walls.” He shook his head. “Exact replicas of the places we went. People we saw.”

  She smiled. Griffin didn’t sound resentful of his brother’s gift, more like awed. “Did he go into the military like you?”

  “Nah. Lucan’s a little . . . . Well, let’s say I got to play big brother quite a bit. I guess the flipside of all the amazing things he could do was that he got picked on a lot.” He shrugged. “He outgrew it. Once he was in his teens, he’d work out with me whenever I came home on leave and got big enough that no one dared mess with him anymore, but he didn’t have the stomach for fighting. Guess I wouldn’t either if I had perfect recall of every man I killed in the name of corps and country.”

  This was as close as he’d come to talking about his service. Maybe it was rude to ask, but the military seemed to be such an integral part of his life and she wanted to know him. “Do you regret it?”

  “What? The military?”

  She nodded.

  “No. Yes.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He released a long sigh. “It’s one thing to kill those who are trying to kill you, or infringing on others’ rights, or who are euthanizing their people. There was a lot of that going on during my first tour. Everybody seemed to be fighting everybody. For land. Religion. Wealth. Power. But then Alfred came on stage and everything changed. I just didn’t realize it yet. None of us did. I kept following orders, doing what needed to be done, not knowing I’d changed sides.” He let out a string of curses. “I was working for the oppressors, corralling people into spaceports and taking out compounds. The people would beg and cry and I was deaf to their pleas. I worked for the United States of America, damn it. We protected the weak and defenseless. They wouldn’t have sent me for any other reason than protecting rights and freedom.”

  His voice broke and he quit talking. She’d never considered how the U.N. had communicated their takeover. Everything had been peaceful. One by one, countries had handed over the reins. She’d always assumed those countries communicated the change to their soldiers, but now she wondered.

  He plucked a long blade of blue grass and twirled it between his fingers. “The U.N. started coming ’round more often, looking for volunteers to become Blue Helmets. No one at my base was interested. Then the government placed a hold on all leaves those last two years and blacked out all communication to home—said the situation abroad was urgent. But see, they were sending us after more and more families. They were asking us to cart away pregnant women, the elderly, the sick. And when I started asking questions, my CO told me to mind my place.”

  “But you didn’t.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “You’re not the type.”

  He refused to look at her and for a terrible moment she thought she’d guessed wrong. Then, he shrugged. “Every day I’d take my Saph-link out of scanning range from our base. Sit up in the hills and try to figure out what the fuck was going on. All the news reports talked about the governments giving up power to the U.N. in order to stop the fighting. The thing was, I was stationed in Africa. There was no fighting. There weren’t many people left to fight. We were shipping them off by the thousands, being told it was a humanitarian evacuation.” He snorted. “Supposedly the water had been poisoned, causing those who drank it to fall into dementia and insanity. We were to kill anyone who resisted on sight. It was weird. I mean right up until the orders came down we were all drinking the damned water. Nothing was wrong with us.”

  She couldn’t imagine being so far from home with nothing to depend on but a faceless voice passing down orders.

  “Jesus, there was this school—boarding school or orphanage.” He shook his head. “I’m not even sure what—but the place was filled with kids and nuns. They didn’t want to come with us. Kept telling us there was nothing wrong with the water, that they’d all been drinking it.”

  “Oh, no.”

  He sniffed, blinking his eyes as he looked away. “They seemed fine to me. All of them appeared hale and hearty.”

  She didn’t want to hear this. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I do.” Anger flashed across his face, making her want to scoot away, but she held her ground.

  “I want you to understand. See, my CO wanted to follow orders. He was there supervising another unit and I had my unit. We’re all crammed tight into this little schoolhouse and the discussion got heated. There were kids crying. The nuns were weeping, begging for mercy. My CO called me a traitor, threatened courts martial to me and anyone who sided with me. And when he gave the order to fire—”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “Griffin—”

  “When he gave the order to fire, I shot him.”

  She stared back. That hadn’t been what she’d expected to hear. She didn’t understand why he was so upset. He did what he needed to do to save the innocent.

  “All hell broke loose. My unit opened fire on his unit right there in the fucking schoolroom.” His gaze bored into hers. “I killed my own men, Angel. Men I’d known and fought alongside for years. I killed them all right in front of those kids. And that night, I knew someone would be coming for me. I knew word had gotten out. But when I left to search the ’Net for information that night, I had no idea they’d frag the entire base.”

  Goddess help him. He was carrying so much guilt and most of it didn’t even seem to be his. “That wasn’t
your fault. You have to know that. The bomb runs didn’t have anything to do with you. They were losing control. Alfred sent the order to disband the bases. I suspect Randolph twisted the order to destroy the bases.” Somehow, she’d never understood how, the Parnells’ had managed to keep the bombings from the media. Very few knew. Military families had been exiled long before the order had gone out.

  “Why didn’t you do anything?” He got to his feet. “I mean I’m trying to understand, but you had access. You could’ve leaked information. You could’ve done something.”

  “You think I didn’t try?” She got to her feet, refusing to let him tower over her. “Why don’t you tell me, Griffin, what lengths would the Parnells go to, to protect their dream?”

  “Any and all.” He looked away.

  “Yes. The only time they didn’t have me under surveillance was in my room and even then, I’m not so sure I had any privacy. I tried to sneak out documents. I tried to transmit documents. I tried anonymously tipping off the media. The information never got where I intended it to go and I always got caught. You know what Randolph does to anyone who goes against the Parnells. He was fanatical in his loyalty to Alfred.”

  “All right.” He reached out to take her hand in his.

  She snatched her hand away. “I watched guards die. Servants, too. Anyone who tried to help me became a target. I got to where I wouldn’t talk to anyone in private and kept to the most mundane of conversations in public. Yes, I may have smiled in those pictures you’re always throwing in my face, but I smiled because I knew someone would get hurt if I didn’t. Maybe me. Maybe whoever drove the limo that day. Maybe the cook who served us dinner. I had no way of knowing. So I smiled.”

  “Enough.”

  “No.” She frowned. Who was he to say when she’d said enough? “I’ll decide when it’s enough. You wanted me to understand, well, you’re going to, too.”

  He walked right up into her personal space, crowding her back. “I get it. You don’t have to keep on.”