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Marcus sits in bed, one knee propped up with the binding of a book balancing against it. A pair of thin glasses rest on the bridge of his nose, and his fingers lift to carefully turn the page, mindful of how fragile the brittle, well-loved paper is.
He looks up in surprise as the door to their room whips open and Abby storms in. She immediately scowls at him, and god does it make him want to press kisses all along her gorgeously sculpted jawline. It’s been like this between them for almost a week, but he’s not worried. He’s a patient man, and he’s not blameless either. When you live in close proximity to someone for nearly two years in an underground bunker, with ultimately no place to escape to, tensions arise; they come and go like the seasons he was able to experience for a short time on the surface. Sometimes, one wrong word or a simple expression can set a person off and cause rifts to grow. And all things considered, they’ve been dealing with their tension in a surprisingly healthy way for the majority of their time here. But, every once in a while, the stress lingers in the thick, humid air, riddled with the smell of blood and sweat from the fighting pits and the sour damp of week-old laundry, and nothing seems to cut through it.
He watches her over the top of his book as she undresses. She’s lost weight. He supposes they both have, given the limited rations they’ve been eating for years now. But is she deliberately undressing in front of him? His eyes narrow as she slides off the last of her undergarments, discarded in her customary messy pile on the floor (that he usually picks up for her the next morning) and enters the bathroom, leaving the door wide open as she starts up the shower. She reaches in to test the water temperature, elongating her body, and just before she steps in, she glances over her shoulder at him, eyes flickering with something familiar yet indecipherable. If they hadn’t spent the last six days arguing off and on with her showing no interest in forgiveness or reconciliation, let alone the desire to be touched by him, he might have joined her. Instead, he’s struggling to interpret that look. If not an invitation, then what? A challenge, maybe? Watch me shower, Marcus, just to see what you’re missing out on. Whatever it is, it makes him shake his head and smirk faintly. She’s still the same Abby who sat across from him on the Council, eyes glorious and fiery and jaw dangerously taut, willing to counter him on every decision, no matter how trivial. He loves that about her, even if it’s downright maddening.
He reads the same passage several times, scouring over words that currently look foreign to his eyes. He purposefully doesn’t stare at her, stubborn and not wanting to give her the satisfaction, but his mind keeps drifting to her naked, wet body, pink under the steaming water, just begging to be touched, and he’s forced to begin again. It’s a vicious cycle.
He hears the water shut off, eyes darting up to watch her climb out, the end of a story he’s been eagerly awaiting since it began five minutes ago. Far more interesting than whatever tale lies in front of him, read thirteen times but barely registered by his poor, distracted mind.
Water droplets roll off her body, and she lifts a towel to pat her wet skin and wring out her hair before she emerges from the bathroom. His attention quickly returns to his book, but he’s not lying to himself. He has no idea what the last chapter was about, let alone the last page.
She clears her throat, and he slowly looks up at her over the top of the book. She’s standing there, naked, wet, and magnificent , arms crossed, brow cocked, and an utterly annoyed expression pulling at her features. She’s so hot.
“What did I do this time, breathe too loudly?” he asks, voice dripping with a tone of passive aggressiveness that he only unleashes upon occasion.
She clenches her jaw, nostrils flaring slightly.
“Why didn’t you join me?” she snaps.
He sets the book down and stares up at her with genuine bafflement.
“Join you?”
“Yeah, in the shower.”
“Honestly, Abby,” he breathes, pinching the sides of his nose before returning his gaze to her. “You could have just asked.” She’s hot, but she’s exasperating. He expects nothing less.
“I thought I made it pretty obvious,” she says with a scowl. “But I guess you were too wrapped up in your little book to notice, huh?”
He has to smile faintly at that. If she only knew...
“Look, I’m sorry,” he says, holding up both hands. “Believe me, if I had known you wanted company, I would have joined you. Now, can you please come to bed? You’re going to get cold standing there… like that.” His eyes scan her from head to toe, pants tightening a little more. The effect this woman has on his body is incredible.
She stands there watching him, and for a moment he’s scared she’s going to kick him out to find a random bunk to sleep in. Wouldn’t be the first time. But something comes over him, and judging by the look on his face, it must surprise them both.
He sits up and grabs her by the hips, roughly tugging her atop his lap. It tears a little shudder from her, and he squeezes her glutes in each hand, smirking and biting gently at her throat.
“Marcus!” she gasps, staring down at him in surprise. He prides himself on never being the one to cave first, and usually his patience pisses her off further, eventually goading her into action. Not tonight.
“Ready to forgive me?” he rasps, still massaging her glutes and breathing hot air against that one spot on her throat that always causes goosebumps to arise all over her skin.
“No,” she says curtly, before her mouth crashes into his and her tongue forces its way between his lips. He fights her a little. After all, the more he pretends to lose, the more they both win.
She growls and tangles a hand in his thick hair, pulling firmly.
The kiss gets messier and a little possessive on both ends, each of them battling for possession of the other’s mouth with tongues, lips, and teeth, until he shoves her off of his lap, onto her back, and quickly straddles her. He firmly traps her hips between his knees, forcing them tightly together, and the quiet, breathy whimper she makes in responses causes him to grin down at her, eyes wild with arousal but also full of love.
“Shut up,” she demands, but he thinks it sounds more like a whine.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it. Now turn off your damn brain and fuck me, Marcus.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
He straightens and tugs his shirt over his head, letting it land uncharacteristically on the floor. He watches as she half-sits beneath him, unbuttoning his pants and yanking down his fly. In a flurry of heat, anger, and desperation, with clashing hands and fingers fumbling from a lack of unison to any of this, they manage to get his pants down far enough that she can reach inside and free his straining cock. Her fingers around his flesh make him gasp and shudder, testing his restraint and causing him to swell even more. He twitches in her hand and he can hear his own arousal as his blood pumps loudly in his ears.
“Abby,” he pants and shakes his head, shifting his weight so she can move freely. They know each other so well by now that he doesn’t need to explain what he wants from her; she quickly flips onto her stomach and pushes herself up on her hands and knees, chest heaving.
It’s not always like this. They share so many things in bed, and he loves that. There’s languid, lazy mornings where they both lay there in the darkness exploring each other’s bodies with their hands and mouths, seeing what new stories and secrets they can garner from one another, and there’s passionate nights where they make love until the sheets are wet with perspiration and arousal, musk hanging in the air well after they’re done. There’s also exciting times filled with discoveries, playing games, and seeing just how far they can push each other to varying extremes. And once in a while, there’s fucking. Raw, primal, animal fucking .
Primal or not, he makes sure to reach underneath her and rub her clit, fingers testing her wetness. The slick, hot skin he’s greeted with is all the answer he needs, because she’s clearly as desperate for this as he is. He grasps himself with his free hand, aligns his swollen head with her opening, and buries his pulsing cock deep inside her until she’s completely filled, her body perfectly willing to accommodate him. They both gasp in surprised relief, but taking time to enjoy is not what either of them need right now.
He begins thrusting into her firmly, squeezing her perfect, tight ass and rubbing her clit in rough circles. Her body writhes underneath him, clenching him hard enough to make him shout as he struggles to remain in control.
“Marcus,” she chokes, voice a near-sob, and hearing his name like that makes him even harder inside of her.
The palm on her ass lifts for a brief second, colliding with her skin in a firm spank that resonates throughout the room. She cries out, and he does it again, watching as her hands grip the cold metal of the bunk until her knuckles turn white. He listens to her panting, to her whimpers, and leans forward against her back, thrusting into her hard and fast, rubbing her desperately. This isn’t a marathon, it’s the end of one, with the last six days being a prelude to this very moment. He could make this last for ages if he truly wanted to, but holding back is not a part of his agenda right now. Besides, she might actually kill him if he backed off now.
He may have succumbed to the anger initially, but it’s her body that gives in first. He knows her responses well enough by now to know she’s close, so he pounds into her glorious heat with abandon, rasping her name in a voice that he barely recognizes as human. She’s brought out something downright animalistic in him tonight.
Abby cries out his name as she comes, muffling most of the sound in her arm. He feels her contract around him and grow impossibly wet, feels her clit twitch against his fingers, and hears her breathing become broken sobs. It’s more than he can take. He grabs both of her hips with his hands and grips her strongly enough to leave finger-shaped bruises, driving into her until his vision blurs and he reaches a point of no return. With a shout, he submits to the upward climb and topples over the edge, emptying into her over and over until he’s spent. He hasn’t come this hard in ages. He’ll ache in the morning, but right now it feels so fucking good .
“Abby,” he chokes, collapsing onto her back and burying a whimper into her sweaty skin. She’s still twitching around him.
“Marcus,” she breathes, falling flush with the bed. “That was… god…”
He laughs breathlessly in agreement and trails kisses over her glistening back, nuzzling and struggling to catch his breath.
“Are you ready to forgive me now?” he asks, caressing the length of her with a single fingertip from her hip, across her ribcage, and to the underside of her breast. She shivers and he smiles.
“Yes,” she whispers, trying to roll over underneath him.
He lifts his weight off her body to let her, smiling down as he observes her flushed face and damp skin, eyes wandering over the unsteady rise and fall of her breasts with still-peaked nipples. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and he counts himself lucky. At the end of the world, even after the second Priamfaya, in this musty, enclosed, god-forsaken bunker so far removed from any sense of hope… at least he has her.
“Good,” he finally answers, staying over her but shifting his weight to his elbow so he can reach down to caress her hair away from her sweaty brow. “I love you, Abby.”
She smiles. It’s a tender smile, perhaps too tender for what they just shared following a week of contempt, but he adores it nonetheless. He smiles warmly down at her and presses his lips to hers.
He thinks, as he rolls onto his back and draws a blanket up over them, that they’re going to be okay. The bunker has its fair share of darkness, but it’s peaceful moments like this that shed a bit of light around them and make everything far more bearable.
“Marcus?” she asks after a few moments, and he feels her sit. She pulls his book out from under her back and chuckles, handing it to him. He takes it, fingers squeezing the now damp, worn cover, and kisses her knuckles, gently depositing it on the nightstand. So much for taking good care of the few books they have left. Having sex on top of them is probably not what the old authors of Earth intended. He lies back down and gathers her into his arms once again, deciding he’s going to keep her there until the morning.
“What were we even fighting about?” he murmurs against her hair.
She gives the sweetest little giggle and shakes her head, kissing his chest. It makes him feel warm from the inside out.
“I don’t know. You did something annoying, probably.”
“Probably,” he concedes with a mock graveness, kissing her hair and chuckling. “I always do, don’t I?” He’s not being passive aggressive this time.
“You drive me crazy, but I love you,” she says, peering up at him with smiling eyes. “You know that, right?”
He nods and teases her ribcage gently with one callused finger. She shivers and beams up at him, stroking his chest. They stay like this until she falls asleep in his arms, and Marcus thinks he might be the luckiest man alive. His suspicions are confirmed when, several hours later, she slides on top of him and wakes him up with a quiet demand for more.
Again, he doesn’t need to be asked twice.