Synthesis - The Past Ch. 01

Forward - This is the first chapter of an erotic horror novel that I've written. Currently looking for feedback. If there's interest I will post more chapters.

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Chapter 1

"So, what now?"

Lori waited pensively on the edge of the bed for Richard's response. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short, words lost even to himself. After all the bravado and tough-guy talk, now he decides to keep quiet. A few more seconds forced Lori to break the strained silence.

"Really? You've no idea at all?"

His pause released with a deep, weary sigh. "Now -- right now -- I need to drink this--" He tipped a glass towards her, took a swig. "Cheers."

"That's not helpful."

"Maybe not to you," he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, settled himself. "I'm finding it most therapeutic."

It irritated how relaxed he was in that chair. It concerned her how he looked to be taking everything in his stride. The arrogance didn't at all sit well with her. He had no right to it. He wasn't the one with a handle on things, with the full weight bearing down on him. It was only thanks to her that they'd gotten away with their lives.

"I can hear you pouting over there," he said, cocky and brash.

Lori huffed. "Be serious for a moment, would you."

"Oh, I am being serious. I need to think, and for that I need to clear my mind." He swirled the ice in his glass, two cubes, then lifted it to his lips for another sip, like some condescending lord of the manor cosied up in his drawing room. This was no manor they were in, nor was Richard the lordly sort, a fact he'd made abundantly clear in their short time together.

Lori's glower continued to burn a hole into him.

"I'm sorry," he said, still stretched back, "I really don't know what you want me to say. This is all new to me." Richard opened his eyes and sat up straight, spoke candidly, "Look, I get it, I do. You want this to be done with. God knows I do too. And you want to be rid of me. Can't say I blame you. You don't trust me. Why should you?"

A massive fucking understatement.

Without remorse, without feeling, he reminded her: "It was only yesterday I tried to kill you."

The ping of the bullet chipping concrete still rang clear in her mind; the sunlight glare reflecting off of his scope in the distance, a blinding blot on her vision reminding her how close to death she'd skirted.

"Well, thanks again for not going through with it," Lori fired back, sardonic as she could muster. "You're a real hero."

"I'm wasn't trying to be heroic."

"And I wasn't really suggesting that you were."

Creases formed at the corners of his mouth. Smug. His chin and jaw were covered in a day's worth of coarse, sandpaper-like stubble, dark like his wavy, scruffy hair, which was a little too grown out for Lori's liking, though it didn't come without a certain rugged appeal.

He topped off his glass from the half-drained bottle on the table beside his chair.

"And here we are, together, hiding out in a mouldy old motel room." A sip of his drink increased to a glug. He grew tired, cranky. Cracks were beginning to show in the cavalier approach he'd sported since they'd met. Under his breath he muttered, "Fuck knows why. I must be crazy."

Lori knew why. God, did she ever. There were things about the world that most people never had the misfortune to discover. She'd known for a long time, since she were a little girl. Perhaps even longer than that, in some awful way, a knowledge primordial and ancient. Richard was only just beginning to come to terms with it, the exposure a sickening wake up call.

She told him, with no lack of impatience, "We're here -- together in this shit-pit, roach-hole excuse for a motel -- because you felt ... it."

"Yeah." Another sigh from Richard, deeper, wearier than before. He stared into the amber drink, where he'd find no answers to the questions he wanted to ask. "Yeah, I felt it alright."

And because of that, Lori harboured pity for him.

Silence, inhabited up high by the slow whirling of a ceiling fan.

"I suppose I can at least be thankful we're of the same mind," Lori said.

"I guess." A solemn air came across him, almost a fear. Lori could see it because she'd been in that same place he was now. A lonely place, cruel. Richard had felt the presence of the great enemy, and like Lori he'd judged it as altogether terrible and cursed. Nobody else had ever appeared to her with the same drive to fight as her own. She might have finally found someone she could call an ally, albeit one uneasy and not wholly comfortable with the lot they'd drawn.

"Then we have to stick together until it's over." If it's ever over. "You said it yourself: you need me."

"But you don't need me. That's right, isn't it?"

She didn't know. Maybe not. Not in the same way he needed her.

He leant forward, elbows rested on knees and his glass cradled in both hands. "Why did you wait for me this morning, huh? You could've just left without me. You could've left me to be taken by that ... thing."

Why?

It felt like the beginnings of an interrogation.

Why had been on Lori's mind since they'd made the getaway as the building burned behind them. Smoke and gasoline still lingered on her clothes. It was only now, when confronted by Richard, she was able to see the reason and admit to herself.

Because she had no one else to turn to. Because she'd never met anyone else who'd help her.

She looked at him, his eyes grey and questioning but possessive of a warmth, a heart buried under calloused layers of self-assurance.

Because you're sort of handsome, she thought, and I've caught the way you look at me ...

Her cheeks reddened. Her hands fidgeted in her lap. Eye contact broke. The room became at once uncomfortable.

Now was Richard's turn to break the silence. He pressed the question to her again with a gentler tone, less accusingly. Lori bit her lip. She tried to summon her next words, although it wasn't so much the words she looked for but rather the courage to say them.

"I can't fight them alone." A half of the truth.

"And I'll do whatever I can to help, though I'm not sure what use I can be. What I do know is that we have to destroy them. Or rather you have to destroy them."

Male-brain thinking! Kill them all and be done with it. A caveman answers all his problems with his mighty club! If only it were that simple.

"And then? After they're all gone?"

A non-committal shrug. "Then, we say goodbye. I'm getting out of here, as far away as I can. Might head overseas. Got some friends in London, people I can trust."

"Oh? So you don't trust me, either?"

"Trust you? I've got no reason to. I might need you -- for now -- but trust you? C'mon! I don't know you."

"Even after I waited for you this morning? You know I didn't have to." She angered. He'd said that he needed her: that was more than she'd ever been told by anyone else, but the lack of trust hurt. "I could have taken that fuckin' car and--"

"--but you didn't, did you. You waited for me, Lori." For a third time he asked: "Why wait?" His voice almost pleaded for honesty.

Then it hit her, realisation coming to seize her from chaos, there on his face. In his soft, grey eyes. She could see him fawning. Yes, that was it! He wanted to taste her. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair. He wanted to lay down naked next to her and make all the shit from the past day disappear. It scared her that she wanted him to want those things.

"This could be over in a month, or maybe tomorrow, I just don't know. And then ... that's it." Her voice quavered with regret for a future unknown.

Richard might be the only other person in the world that felt the same way she did, certainly the only one she'd met. The only one who knew the threat she'd know her whole life, and in that knowing she'd been so utterly alone. Until now. Now that she'd found him she was loath to let him go and return to that loneliness.

She gave him the answer she wanted to withhold. "Then you'll be gone. And we won't ever see each other again."

He must've seen the longing in her. How could he not? It radiated from her. Unmistakable. Unavoidable. They watched each other, neither sure if a move would -- or even should -- be made.

Is this love?

Lust and infatuation often did a fine job of masquerading as such. Emotions were further obfuscated by what they'd been through together: a shared ordeal that had united them in hatred for the enemy and seeded an unfulfilled desire for each other, a connection impossibly forged in the cloud of what she knew to be called the Experience.

The atmosphere intensified. Composure abandoned. Lori's eyes were drawn to Richard's pants. She clutched at herself. Richard began to swell. They were perhaps five feet apart but she could swear she heard his heart beating for her, ushering blood to where it was needed most.

Richard pushed himself to his feet, ending the stalemate, coming for her body.

"No," Lori said firmly, held out her hand to stay his advance. He fell back into his chair, dejection rife in his eyes, confusion marked on his brow.

"Have I misread something?" he asked.

No, he hadn't, but Lori was to dictate how they'd proceed. She gave a temptress smile, rubbed a hand along her hip. "Stay there for me."

He stared into her, and she back into him, and in their stares there formed an understanding. She'd be in control just as she had been the day before when terror came for them.

Tentatively, Richard reached his hand down behind his belt. A telling blink and parted lips confirmed to Lori that he touched himself, that his fingers made contact and quickened arousal. The thought of him getting hard over her made her giddy. She lay back on the bed, looked up to the ceiling and the fan that spun like her racing mind. The air cooled her rosy face, but not her craving. She closed her eyes. This is insane, she told herself, I don't know this man any more than he knows me. But we were there, together, at the same time in the same place, and together we felt the Experience come to us as one.

Over the thrumming of the fan she heard the jangling of a buckle and the soft whip-lash of leather unfurling. The scrape of a zipper unfastening. She craned her neck to see. Richard held his glass of whiskey in one hand and himself in the other. He used only the ends of his fingers, slowly. The shaft was firm; the head engorged. No surprise a man with Richard's insolence would be so unashamed, so forthcoming with his body.

Lori stretched out her legs and crossed them, pointing her toes toward the man who not so long ago pointed a gun towards her. She shuddered. In spite of that fact, he wasn't the danger, not anymore.

Her heart beat faster. It was all so ... inappropriate. Strangers in a tryst after the nightmare of the Experience. They should be praying, not playing. But fuck! It felt good! Warmth moved through her body as she pressed her thighs together. Sexual desire and the Experience went hand in hand. Before, she'd only had herself with which to sate that impulse, and that is how it would begin now.

She crossed her legs tighter, trying to keep the heat in place for fear it might spread too soon.

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Richard had ached to find out what was underneath Lori's clothes the precise moment he pulled the trigger and let the barrel drift wide of its target, struck dumb by her allure from a distance of a hundred and fifty yards. Maybe that was why he missed; the reason he reneged on a contract for the first time in his career.

That moment of discovery fast approached.

Another sip of whiskey went down, easing nerves. Why so on edge, though? He'd done this dance before, in many motels with many women over many years. This one though ... Ahh! Lori had something about her. Was it her body, her voice? Or was it something more? An intangible quality he could neither see nor feel, something born of the Experience, as she called it, when it had descended and enveloped them. Was that the difference here?

After it had infiltrated him, seized him like a shot of adrenaline and muffled his perception of sight and sound, it terrified. A world new and obscene where the rules of the universe no longer mattered came into reality and at the centre an enigmatic entity without comprehension of life and light rose from the darkness. In opposition it had also given him a tie to this woman, one younger than him, kinder than him, and he saw her laying intimate before him.

She brought him back into the room, into the now. He allowed himself to drown in Lori: mint green eyes, verdant and mesmeric that watched him in fascination as he toyed; a sultry figure that moved with magnetic poise; tits that craved his unerring adoration. Why anyone would want such a sublime creature dead he couldn't comprehend. His place wasn't to ask. Only to kill.

And in that, he'd failed.

He stroked himself with a feather touch, paused for respite when he felt himself becoming too eager. Lori raised up her knees, placed her feet flat on off-white sheets that had received the blessings of a thousand one night stands. Pressed together, she playfully swayed her legs, making him wait for what he desperately wanted to see.

She's teasing me.

He ate with his eyes. The crushed velvet of her dress looked luxuriant. The skin beneath would be more-so: sensuous and supple. Lori then gave away a bit of herself. She peeled down the top of her dress to expose a breast and its perfect nipple. A gentle pinch given and it stiffened. Richard watched hypnotised while she squirmed, as the tingle met with the heat between her legs, twin pleasures flushing throughout her body. She breathed out, likely surrendering to sensation, and parted her legs. The sight shook Richard. Stockings and suspenders clung to her thighs, black against milk skin, stunning in contrast. With one hand lingering on her breast, she slid the other down along the centre of her body, gliding across her stomach, pausing over the shroud of her knickers, hovering above.

A lump rose in Richard's throat. He rolled his thumb over his tip, wishing for her tongue, for her cunt. She toyed with the black lace of her panties. He took cock in palm, held it still in anticipation of what was to come. Lori's fingers wriggled their way under the fabric, made a few strong rotations, then sank in. She exhaled. Richard responded with a long, smooth pull on himself, rearing with a hard throb as he reached the base.

For a time they watched each other. Richard dare not disobey Lori's order to stay, as much as he wanted to crawl to her, to feel her take him inside, to fuck.

When she finally beckoned, "Fucking come here," her command barely more than a whisper, Richard was almost afraid to approach. He gulped down the last of his drink, ice-cubes diminished in the now watery alcohol, then rose from his chair and went to the foot of the bed. He fixated on Lori's masturbation -- hidden though it was behind lace and fingers -- while he performed his own. She awed as he stood over her, assuredly rubbing along his length. The visual was no longer enough for him. He needed to see more then an exposed breast and the rummaging of her fingers. He reached down and pulled her knickers aside, saw her self-penetration in glorious detail. Slowly, she slipped her fingers out, slick, showing she was pink, wet, and wanting.

He knelt on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on her thigh, felt the smooth silk of her stocking, and used his purchase on her to pull himself in closer. Her hand grasped for his penis, a bead of moisture gracing the end, and fondled. The touch of a woman -- this woman -- had magic to it. It felt like he belonged in her hands, in her soul. He wanted to go in, leant closer, brushed his flesh against hers.

"No," she said, holding him back from entering. "Let's keep going like this."

The fuck was denied. Lori held the reins and Richard obeyed. It was a stark contradiction for him: his women usually bent to his will. Lori would not.

She returned her attention to her pussy with both hands; one probing inside as the other caressed. Richard hastened his strokes. Sweat developed on his brow. He wanted to grab her by the hips, thrust himself into her with animal force, to fill her the way he'd done to other women, yet he couldn't bring himself to go against her rule. Those others that he'd had, they were conquests. Lori, as she lay on the bed, her fingers penetrating deeper as she became wetter, was no simple trophy.

As he jerked over her he realised that she was his future.

#

The malt of whiskey fell from Richard's breath as he loomed over her, fiery and earthy -- the smell of machismo. He was capable, that much was obvious; seasoned, certainly. Above all, he did her bidding. Lori's senses rallied at the realisation of her power.

She added another finger to herself, bore down greater pressure on her clitoris. Half an hour earlier she wouldn't have imagined he'd be subservient, that he'd acquiesce to her demands. There he was, the man who'd played it tough, uncaring, the hard-man hitman, and now she had him in her palm. It strengthened.

Hips rocked up to meet her hands. Richard held his cock above her, drawing back and forth with his right hand as the left inched towards her vagina, never daring to touch. She removed her fingers from inside and wrapped them around his dick, sharing her wetness for a brief few seconds, then went back in with renewed purpose as the urge to come overrode her want to prolong. Muscles clenched; body tensed. Her vagina pursed, drawing in her trembling fingers and tightening around them. She froze, her breath held, then she uncoiled.

Richard's turn neared. Her hand moved from between her legs to between his, nestling the weight of his balls in her palm, massaging them, coaxing them to give up their come. Breathless moans encouraged him to beat tighter, faster, bringing him closer to joining her.

"Please," her lips moved, but sound held back. Her eyes begged of him.

That's it. Faster. Tighter.

"Come on me ..."

"Fuck." Richard pounded himself. As he neared he slowed the pace, putting greater and greater emphasis on his upstroke.

"Please, come on me ..."

Slower, softer, until it welled inside him. His teeth gritted.

"Come all over me ..."

Softer, slower, until his blessed release. His back arched and bucked with each burst, lavishing Lori's hands and pussy with all he had, welcome and warm. A single jet broke rank and landed on her bare breast, splashing her nipple. Lori gasped and giggled, then circled her areola with a sticky, doused finger, massaged it into her skin. Richard squeezed the last drop free, slid from the bed, and tucked himself in. Lori pulled the top of her dress up and the bottom down, soaking up the bit of him he'd emptied over her body. He backed away, went immediately for another drink, eye contact broken.

Again she stared at the ceiling fan and wallowed in its whir as her pulse returned to normal.

"So, what now?"

This time she asked the question of herself.

"I should go back to my room."

"No." There was a firmness to his voice. "Stay here. Get some sleep. I'll keep watch."

"Keep watch for what?"

In a post-orgasmic dream where she could see stars in the heavens, she'd forgotten what had brought them here, and why they'd stopped at the motel to begin with.