How in God's name was he supposed to be around her after that?! It was perhaps the most sinful cock tease he had ever received, although, he was sure she felt just as miffed as he was. The sexual tension now radiating between them was so painfully acute, he was half-tempted to just strip her and be done with it. Anything to bust the awkward cloud suffocating over them.
To hell with it all.
A drawer from a cash register gave off a loud ring after he slammed it shut. Well, if there was one good thing to come of it, her damn bodyguard seemed to completely shunt his existence off the radar. Charon habitually rubbed at his jaw, wincing. The merc mentally grinned. Good to know he wasn't the only one to get fucked up.
After finding odds and ends of assorted things, they continued on through the procession of stores.
"La Fleur," Evelyn read the faded words with a distinct accent. "Either a boutique, or a florist; probably nothing good inside." Regardless of her statement, she bent under the broken archway to enter.
Cross inhaled on the cigarette he had lit, shaking his shoulders and looking around the room. He felt Charon ghost behind him in the shadows. "You speak French?"
"Do you?" she inquisitively redirected at him, opening a drawer that held no contents.
"Nem." He grinned at her, puffing a large O ring through the air. "Csak Angol és Magyar."
She paused and her face screwed up in concentration. "That's...Hungarian. Are you Hungarian?"
"Half," he admitted. "My father was." His finger swiped a film of dirt off a surface, their easy conversation fishing that intimate moment they had shared. "Don't know many people who could deduce that correctly."
She shrugged. "An educated guess."
"Yeah, damn educated," he muttered, eyeing a hint of skin as she stretched on the balls of her feet for a high shelf. "What other languages do ya know?"
Charon had come to her side, easily grabbing at the box her fingertips were scraping for. He set it down for her on the table; the dust that billowed made her sneeze.
"Sarcasm," she replied. That earned a snort.
The lid was lifted off, and her eyes widened. A small book was pulled from the depths of the carton, and she gently overturned it in her hands. The ferryman was peering over her shoulder at the cover with minor interest.
Cross couldn't make out the words from his position. "Find Moses's Bible?"
She flipped the pages open, ignoring his quip. "It's The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald...I haven't read it since I was a child."
The name rang a bell somewhere in the rotted jumble of his brain, but he didn't care much for it. "Educated," he reaffirmed, smashing the butt end of his cigarette against the counter. "Let's go check out that warehouse."
"Hey."
Evelyn, what have I told you, time and time again? I do not think even Aristotle had as much of a fuss with Alexander. You are no great king of Macedonia, but you can at least pretend to have the responsibilities of one...which, I say ironically, is perhaps your greatest attribute, and your worst downfall; your imagination.
"Hey."
I do not want to do this anymore! I-
"Jesus, wake up!" The authoritative rasp broke her from her thoughts, making her startle backward. "See a goddamn spaceship or somethin'?"
She huffed peevishly at the ghoul for harassing her private thoughts. The soft texture of her hair she had been caressing between her lips fell. "What?"
"I said, would you mind openin' this damn door?" Cross repeated irritably. "Handle's locked." After a moment, he added, "Want a crowbar for this one, too?"
Charon grumbled something under his breath, shoving the other ghoul away to take hold of the knob himself. With a forcible turn, he broke the lock and put his shoulder into the wedge of the frame, bearing all of his weight into it. The door shuddered before lurching open. Ignoring them both, he stepped inside.
"And what exactly are you good for?" Evelyn rudely asked the merc, moving to follow her companion.
Cross cracked his neck to peer at the doorway, void of any hulking death sentences. With a quick sidestep, he intercepted her route.
"Been meanin' to show you," he answered suggestively.
Those stonewashed hazel eyes were boring into her, and she flushed hotly from the intense hunger they emanated.
They cannot touch you; they will kneel in the dust before your tower, but you must not answer their calls. Keep hidden away, my Evelyn. Do not let down your hair.
His massive gray hand came to her neck, the fingertips tracing around and nestling into the base of her braid. With a strong pull, he tilted her head slightly back to expose her throat. He eyed her like a hunter with wounded prey- hungry.
For a man that wants is a man that tries. He will chant his song until you have memorized the words, but they are poison. It is his anagram for a slow death. Do not listen; scream, and curdle his blood with your harpy cries.
"Just make sure the hound is chained somewhere this time," he muttered, reluctantly bringing his extremity back to his side.
She let out the breath she had been subconsciously holding as he turned around.
My hair is shorn; he scaled the walls on his own.
The Vault-Tec warehouse ended up being a bust.
"Seriously, I found emails from disgruntled employees and their complaints about the plumbing in the bathroom! One terminal had a log in it that was just an old Pre-War video game," Evelyn ranted after they had gathered inside the manager's office. "This place used to be a fucking supply chain. A supply chain, and yet nothing for Pip-Boy's! Just-just vault suits and fucking pens!"
She plopped into a chair and rotated around, angrily clicking a ballpoint she had filched.
"Well, we tried. Give yourself that much." Cross was perusing through a desk, his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. "Too bad you can't hack into the supervisor's; bet it had some intel."
The clicking ceased. "Guess we're both bad at something."
A grumbling of words angrily vented from Charon as he exhaled and arched his back in a stretch.
"C'mon, big guy. Tell me how you really feel," Evelyn goaded. The ferryman grated his jaw, deliberately.
Cross blew out an extended stream of smoke, filling a drawer before closing it shut. He flicked the ashes to the side. His mind was wandering on its own, again, and he was thinking back to the taste of her mouth.
"Can we talk?" He suddenly pivoted to her, hitching a thumb over his shoulder to her towering stalker. "Alone."
Evelyn bit her lower lip and then nodded. Her eyes met Charon's. "We'll meet you outside."
The ghoul hesitated in proceeding; his knuckles cracked loudly as he formed his hands into fists. "I shall await your return," he said dully, turning on his heel to leave.
After Charon's heavy footfalls receded away, the bounty hunter scratched the back of his head and squinted down at her. She was blushing madly and refused to meet his eyes. Neither of them uttered a word. Cross cleared his throat and dragged on his bad habit, watching her take a seat on the edge of a table and busily distracting herself by undoing her braid.
"So," he rasped.
"So," she repeated, her attention enraptured by her handiwork.
The air was so stifling between them, he was sure it could be bottled and sold. He exhaled the hit, and then tossed the remainder of his smoke to the ground. Fuck it, why am I gettin' so worked up over this? If this goes on any longer, we'll both go crazy.
She eyed him as he walked up to her, followed the movements of his hands as they came up to unfasten her jacket, those rough fingers undressing her with practiced ease. A shiver ran down her spine as he gently traced the sides of her shoulders- her jacket fell to the table. Her shirt was hitched up and came over her head to be discarded to the floor. With one hand, Cross reached around and unclasped the strap, her bra joining the growing pile.
The merc abruptly paused and stared down at her so voraciously that she felt her face flare up like a furnace. He then gave a hint of a wolfish grin and kissed her, his hefty hands catching fire and licking at the tinder of her skin as he unveiled piece by piece of her. Boots, socks, the buckle of her pants, he sucked on her lower lip and gave a heavy grunt after she nipped him. He shimmied her jeans and underwear straight to the floor and went about wasting no time on his own. His leather jacket met with the entanglement on the ground; his pants soon bundled around his ankles. Quite suddenly, he felt her palms dig into his chest to stop. Their lips came apart with an audible smack; their heavy breathing awash over the other.
"Wait, u-um-" she stuttered slightly, her bottom lip tinged red from his abuse. His cock was in full view for her now- heavily scarred, and as absent of color as the rest of him seemed to be. A jagged spear, the tip directed to take a stab at her with a drooling ooze at its peak. It was bigger than she had expected, and for a brief second, she wondered if it would hurt.
He was taken back for a moment, and a thought occurred to him. "Is this...are you-?"
She shook her head, her wild mane of hair bouncing around her shoulders. "No-no. It's just...been some time. Take it slow, for a bit?" If not, it most definitely would.
He nodded, mentally unsure if he could, honestly. His dissatisfaction from earlier was gnawing at him to get the job done, to sink himself so far deep down between her milky thighs and reap nothing but that wet heat inside, but he didn't want to ruin her affair, either. If it went well enough between them this round, then he may be able to explore her more thoroughly in the future. There was a loud thud as his knees hit the deck, and she squeaked as he roughly pulled her forward to bury his head inside, brushing past the dark curly hairs on her groin and snaking his large tongue out for that first taste.
"Oh-uhm-" she began to whimper, but when the first few strokes lapped up and his arms curled around her thighs, she felt her nerves melt. It would appear she was about to experience whether the other stories of the famed bounty hunter were true. "God- right there," she gasped.
He reached up to rub a hardened nipple with his thumb, pinching and tugging and then engulfing her entire breast with a dominating squeeze. Mine. The moan he received, high and sugary and much too fucking good to eat at once, only fueled his incessant, immediate need for her. It took a lot of willpower to not simply have his way with her so forcibly. Her hands came down to grip his shoulders rather painfully after he sucked on her clit, and he removed himself to cup her chin to look down at him.
"Don't break me, okay?" he breathily joked, kissing her clit before inserting a thick finger inside her cunt.
He sucked on that sweet little bundle of ecstatic nerves as he slowly fingered her, joining a second one as she lustfully whimpered, "Fuck me."
He didn't need to be told twice. The ghoul was on his feet and had his hands wrapped around her hips, the tip of his cock getting sucked inside her cunt before he had a chance to take a breath. "Holy fuck," he growled as he slowly pushed himself further, the mind-numbing squeeze of her pussy nearly rolling his eyes out of his skull.
She widened her legs around him, grabbing at one of his hands to suck on his fingers. He felt his breathing stutter at the distraction of his careful rhythm, and then he lost all sense of self as he pounded her into the rickety table, the squeaking and grating of metal against metal drowning the labored grunts and breathy wisps, his mouth engulfing her throat to suck her skin dry.
"God, yes, that's so fucking good," she whispered as she kissed the inside of his palm, their eyes locked on the other when he pulled back. "Keep fucking me."
A much more than agreeable request, but he was so pent up from his previous excitement that day that the moment his legs began to shake and the coil in his groin tightened, he knew it was over. Damnit.
"Fuck," he rasped thickly, giving a few more jerky, stuttered pumps. "Goddamnit."
He couldn't force himself to slow, though. The building pressure was too intense; his fingers created indents in her smooth skin as he bottomed himself out in her while he blew his load as far as he could go. The sheer number of stars that filled his head was enough to temporarily blind him, and he held onto her as he rode out the euphoric wave that pulsated down to his toes. When the high had finally settled, he gently released her, shivering as he withdrew, and glimpsed down at her coy visage.
Well, damn. That was embarrassing, to say the least. It was the quickest fuck he had ever experienced, even if it was one of the best. The final, gratifying release after a few days of chasing (and an extremely bothersome tease) was the most work he ever had to put into a woman. As enjoyable as it had been for him, though, he always made sure his ladies were taken care of first; it was only good bedside manners. So here he was, the woman he wanted most finally at his fingertips, and his performance was anything but deliverable. For the first time, he was at a loss for words. Instead, he stroked her leg with his fingertips, carefully regarding her expression at him.
She teasingly smiled. "I was just getting started."
He narrowed his eyes as his ego took the blow. "Payback; for that night you cracked me."
She threw her head back and laughed, her tits bouncing along for the ride. "I'm actually surprised you can move so well after that- it's only been a few days."
"I'm still sore," he confessed.
Fuck. It really had been only a few days ago. Whatever initial anger he held for her, however, had long dissipated at this point. Damn women and the witchy charm they held over him. This dame nearly killed him, and here he was with his literal dick in his hand for her. He would never learn.
"That was fun." She scooted away from him and assessed the visible drip of semen dribbling down her thighs. "I have to clean up, so, kick rocks. Shoo shoo."
The merc wiped himself with a rag from his pocket, handing it out for her to take. "Just like that, huh?"
She grimaced at the offering but took it regardless between the tips of her fingers. She was soon clasping her bra back together and tossing her wavy hair over one shoulder, and he wanted nothing more than to memorize her image in his brain for the rest of his damned eternal life. Why on earth she would choose someone like him to be so intimate with, he had no idea. And truthfully, he didn't really want to ask. He was afraid she may not have an answer.
The mood between them was...different.
Relaxed, Charon concluded. A little over twenty minutes had passed since he was delegated to wait outside for his employer's return. When Evelyn had stepped through the door and into the late afternoon sunshine, she had met his eyes briefly and then quickly looked down to her feet. The merc followed along behind her, and he was...close, as though they were adrift along at sea, and she was his anchor. He was brushing against her in a way that made Charon wary.
His first thought was to react with violence (assaulting the ghoul and filling him with lead was usually his go-to strategy), but before he could relay his thoughts into action, he thought back to their scuffle just hours ago and halted himself. There was no direct threat to his employer, and he did not wish to make her upset again due to his illogical behavior. Besides, upon observing her reaction to the bounty hunter's proximity to herself, she did not seem to mind. She almost appeared...content.
He grumbled at himself. Whatever conversation occurred between them had apparently put her in a lighter mood. Happy Evelyn was much preferable to violent, snippy Evelyn, and the relationship the two were beginning to form was ultimately none of his business...but if the merc were to undergo unfortunate circumstances and succumb to death, well, it would be of no great loss.
So, there's this guy I used to be friends with-I mean, he was kind of a punk, back when we were kids. But I think he needs help, and I told him it would be okay to travel with us, you know? Anyways, wait until you meet him; his name is Butch. Just, go easy on him. He gets worked up pretty quick-
"You good, big guy?" His eyes had to refocus on the face directly below him, and she was frowning. "You kind of zoned out there, for a sec."
Charon snorted and uncrossed his arms. "Yes. Shall we continue?"
"Suppose." She twirled around, grabbing at the straps of her pack. "Where to?"
Cross adjusted his jacket. "Ain't much between here and Hark's Regional Park. Suggest we continue for as long as we can."
A nod was given, and they set off.