The Resurrected Compendium Read Free

and Abbie rocked herself on his lap until he gave her what she’d been craving. A moan. It slipped from his lips on a breath in between kisses, and it made her laugh a little. Then he laughed, and in another moment the two of them were giggling and guffawing even as he rolled her onto her back and slid between her legs with that long, lean body.  
    That’s when he touched her. All over. Big hands slid up her legs, undid her jeans and peeled them down her thighs and past her ankles. The buttons of her shirt and the shirt itself. In her bra and panties, Abbie tensed as she always did, hands wanting to cover the scars but forcing herself not to.  
    She had to own the consequences.
    Cal ran a fingertip along the longest scar, the ugliest one. The others had faded into silver marks no more intrusive than the stretch marks from pregnancy, visible only in certain light. But the one that curved from over her right breast and along her ribs, down to her abdomen, was cross-hatched from the stitches. The surgeon who’d saved her life hadn’t cared much for making things pretty, and she’d chosen never to have plastic surgery to fix it.
    Most men asked her what had happened. Cal didn’t. He bent to press his mouth to the slope of her breasts, then over the soft cotton of her bra, down her ribs. His lips traced the scar, and his touch should’ve tickled but as always she felt nothing except the heat of his touch and that just barely.  
    Abbie closed her eyes when he got to the end of it. Her hands fisted in the comforter. When he pulled her panties off, her mouth opened but nothing came out but a hiss of breath. Not even the “yes” she was thinking managed to escape.
    Then, nothing.
    She opened her eyes to look down at him studying her. Those nice eyes with that hard gaze. Noticing things. What had he noticed about her?
    Whatever it was, he didn’t say anything about it. He sat back and unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it before moving over her again to kiss her. Together they worked at the button and zipper on his jeans, the dark boxers underneath. Mouths working, hands roaming, at last they were both naked and he was touching her in all the places she wanted him to. Needed him to.
    Abbie never faked her pleasure, and few of the men she’d been with ever even noticed if she wasn’t getting off. Probably hadn’t cared. There was no faking it this time. Cal moved in every right way.
    He was looking in her eyes when she came. Abbie almost always looked away at the moment she broke, but this time she was looking into his eyes too. He shuddered and murmured something that could’ve been endearment or curse as he came too.
    When he rolled off onto the pillow next to her, one long arm thrown up behind his head, Cal let out a sigh. Then a chuckle. Abbie rolled to face him, a hand tucked under her cheek. Their legs tangled. Sweat cooled. She rubbed her toes along his calf.
    Cal looked at her. “How long are you staying here?”
    She had no timeline. No place to be. She could go wherever and whenever she wanted, at least until the money ran out. But that meant she could also stay the same way.
    “I was going to leave tomorrow,” she said after a couple seconds’ thought. “But…I don’t have to.”
    She thought perhaps she’d misjudged him. Maybe she shouldn’t have made herself an offering. Then he   turned toward her and brushed the hair away from her face without saying anything, and she didn’t worry about that any more.

2

    They slept.
    Abbie dreamed, as she often did, in full color and stereo surround sound. At first her dreamscape was a jumbled mess of faces and places she hadn’t seen for a long time. And then, as in the way of dreams, it all changed.
    She was on a train. Going fast. Too fast. She looked out her window at the scenery passing outside, trees and farms and small towns lit up in the night. The train clattered on the rails, too high above everything to be a real train, she knew that even in