Page 54 of Retrograde

Why the hell does she keep saying that? Why would she ever think her beautiful body couldn’t do something so natural? Who the fuck was it that made her doubt herself like that?

A different, unbidden kind of rage twists inside of me. I’m going crazy. I need to get my thoughts under control.

“Did you want this to happen?” I let go of her hair in favour of grabbing the bars on each side of her face, trapping her. “Did you want me to make you come? A man who hates you and everything you represent?”

She winces at my words, stunned. “No. I didn’t,” she admits.

“So your body betrayed you?” I press on.

“Yes.”

“Not nice, huh? Betrayal?” I taunt her. “Now you fucking know what that feels like.”

She blushes violently, and I’m expecting her to lash out, to yell at me what an asshole I am. I’m hoping she might even cry. But her look hardens instead, and her lips stretch in an unfazed smirk.

“Fuck you.” She rolls her eyes at me.

I think neither of us wants her defiance to have the effect it has on me. She wants me angry, and I want to be angry at her. But instead, I can’t decide whether I’d rather kiss her or spank her before doing what I just did again. But she can never know that. She must never know how close she’s come to making me question everything.

“You will,” I assure her, straightening to my full, menacing height. “Just give it time, Hotshot.”

I don’t wait around to watch her face fall. I head for the exit, stepping over her discarded trousers, not letting myself question what made me decide to let her keep her clothes.

21

ARON

The sky is overcast, the day is windy, and the whole fucking op is chaos. Men keep rushing there and back over the bridge. No one seems clear on where the boxes with explosives and fuses are, and no one seems too clear on what they should be doing. Even time seems warped—sluggish minutes that somehow add up to hours gone by way too fast, without us accomplishing much.

Nothing is as it should be. If this whole mission goes tits up, it will be my fucking fault. In the past, this kind of operation would have consumed me completely, demanding my full attention days in advance. Instead, here I am, the day of, and all I can think of is getting back to the girl in my cell, haunted by the memory of her breaking in my hands.

I have a bad fucking feeling about this. Everything rides on today. And yet here I am, unable to focus on anything but the memory of Riley’s moans and the way her body melted into mine for support when she came undone.

I need to snap out of it. I must concentrate. But I can’t stop my thoughts from straying.

The day has already dawned. We’re running late, taking too much time. Fuck.

Attila keeps marching back and forth, barking incoherent orders, but he’s no use when it comes to delegating work.

I slip a harness on and, grabbing some wires and explosives from the crates, rappel over the stone railing and start looping cables around the bridge construction. I traverse across the bridge length and then back to the other side, checking on the men’s progress.

I hook the trigger to the apparatus, and we’re finally done.

Still, we’re cutting it close. The sun is nowhere to be seen, hidden behind all the clouds. But it’s gotten hot and muggy, which tells me we’re approaching midday.

There must be something dead trapped in the riffles below, the vapourised stench assaulting us in the rising heat.

We hide ourselves and our empty crates behind overgrown shrubs by what used to be a road but is now mostly a pile of tarmac rubble. And we wait, insects circling us, attracted by the collective scent of our sweat.

Moisture is collecting in my eyebrows and rolling down my back in rivulets. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. Anytime I let myself drift off into that cosy state between sleep and wakefulness, I’m back in Riley’s cave, my hands wrapped around her body, triumph flooding my bloodstream until her orgasm feels like the biggest victory of my life ... This is demented. I’m fucking addicted, obsessed, my thoughts more persistent than the damn mosquitoes feasting on my blood.

This has to stop before I become completely consumed by it.

We hear them before we see them, and we feel them before we hear them. At first, their approach is nothing but an imperceptible shake of the ground beneath us, nothing but faint vibrations in the air.

Then the mechanical screech and rumble of the tanks, the roar of motors.

A town lies in ruin on the opposite bank. At first, it’s like the destroyed buildings have come to life, walking forward like decrepit giants.