her limbs. Her body was so sensitized to what they’d been doing that the sheets and then the comforters they placed over her literally shocked her body back into arousal mode, and she knew if she hadn’t felt so sensually dazed at the aftereffects of what had just happened, she’d be begging them for more.
She needed rest. Then she could ask for more. Lots more.
Liz curled against the first available hard, hot body and tucked her pillow closer beneath her neck. She slept.
Chapter Eight
Liz knew she was dreaming about the day the Catastrophe hit. Knew she didn’t want to relive it, but as always, she was powerless to stop it. Helpless to stop the sadness that enveloped her at losing all of her patients. She struggled to push away the dark emotions. Tried to wake herself up, but she couldn’t. Everything played out like a puzzle. Pieces here and there, jumbled, confused. And as always, she knew they would sort themselves out, and that horrible day everyone called the Catastrophe would play out.
After the Catastrophe, she’d mourned all her patients, going so far as to bordering on clinical depression. She dare not think about the old days and her dependency on electricity, restaurants, and frozen dinners. Or her dependency on a car.
Gosh, of everything she missed, she missed her car the most. But her car hadn’t worked, just like all the rest of the cars Durango and she had tried to start. Durango had used his mechanic skills for months trying to get a vehicle going. Nothing worked.
Even vehicles that hadn’t been running the day the solar flares hit didn’t start. Durango had never been able to figure out why. No one had.
He’d tried to fix other modes of transportation that hadn’t started either. He’d tried everything. Tractors, all- terrain vehicles, motor boats. Nothing worked. Not even a spark.
She didn’t know the ins and outs of how the Catastrophe had played out, but the prevalent theory she’d heard was it had something to do with solar flares attacking people with certain types of genes. Those people had, according to witnesses, simply disintegrated after a flash of light had been seen in the sky. They’d turned into fireballs, self-combusting and ending up piles of ash wherever they’d been at the time the flares had erupted.
The flares had fried electrical grids, radio towers, satellites, some of which had fallen from the skies. Even airplanes had fallen out of the skies. Trains had crashed. Boats devoid of people had floated aimlessly in lakes and oceans.
She still remembered the day when their lives had changed. Durango and she had been having a magnificent bout of mid-afternoon sex. Their shades had been drawn, the room was pleasantly dark, and their central air conditioner had been pleasantly humming away, pumping out cool air that bathed their perspiration-soaked bodies. She’d been orgasming when she’d felt unusually hot for a second. Had vaguely noticed the central air stopping as she cried out her release.
After her orgasm, Durango had cradled her in his arms, and they’d lain quietly in bed, their breaths quick in the after-sex glow. It wasn’t until maybe an hour or so later that Durango mentioned the central air wasn’t working. She had forgotten about it after drifting off to sleep. She’d protested when he’d climbed out of bed, but he’d noted that it would start getting warm in here if he didn’t get it started again.
He’d played around with the buttons for a couple of seconds before frowning. “Huh, not working. The digital here is blank. Ever had a problem with your central air before?” Durango asked as he sat back down on the bed and gazed at her. Even in the dimness of the room she could see the love shining in his eyes for her, and it melted her insides knowing this guy with the nice bulging muscles was all hers. She had the engagement ring to prove it.
He gazed at the clock on his side of the bed. “The digital clock isn’t working either. Power must be out.”
“Probably because everyone and their mother has cranked up their air cons, too. Or maybe we were just so hot that we fried the electricity?” she joked and laughed and realized it was getting stuffy in the room.
“Maybe we should let some air in?” She looked to the window.
He nodded in agreement. “Just a couple of minutes though. All that humidity is just gonna come in and ruin the remaining coolness.”
She watched Durango get up and stroll across the room toward the window. His big cock was already at half-mast, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before he wanted more sex. The man was killing her gently with all this sex.
Every weekend, it seemed, they spent in bed fucking each other’s brains out. And every night too after they came from work and then sometimes in the mornings before they showered and took off for work, they had sex. In the shower. On the kitchen table. Even on the dryer.
He was a highly sexual man, and until meeting him, she hadn’t realized how sexual she was either.
“I have to take a leak first,” he said and did an about-face and headed into the adjoining bathroom. A couple of minutes later she heard the toilet flush and noticed it sounded funny as if there wasn’t enough water pressure or something. Great.
“Toilet’s fucked, and so is the water. Meaning we don’t have any. Must be one hell of a power failure.”
Oh crap. She snuggled beneath the sheets and watched as he strolled to the window and lifted the shade. Sunshine washed into the room, the brightness hurting her eyes.
“What the fuck?” Durango said as he looked out the window. Something in his voice, maybe fear, or surprise, or both, sent creepy shivers of dread up her spine.
“Come here, Doc. Take a look at this.”
She joined him, grabbing a sheet from the bed and covering herself. Gazing out the upstairs bedroom window, Liz could still feel how hard and fast the disbelief had shifted through her like an evil snake.
Everything looked the same, but it looked different, too. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but the sky seemed to have changed to a deeper blue, and the air was breezy and cold. But just this morning she’d listened to the weather forecast, and they’d been predicting hot, humid, and hazy weather for at least another week with no relief in sight beyond that.
She hugged the sheet tighter around her and shivered at the cold onslaught. “Obviously the weather guys fucked up again,” she complained.
“Forget the weather, what the fuck is going on down on the street?”
Liz’s gaze dropped to the street which, usually teeming with people strolling toward the park down the road, was totally empty. Not only that, she noticed a couple of cars parked precariously on people’s lawns. One car was even parked in front of their neighbor’s house on the lawn directly across the street from them. The car had climbed the curb and come to rest in Carol’s flower bed and snapped their treasured Austrian pine tree right in half.
“Carol’s gonna be pissed,” Liz commented.
“I’m gonna call Bill and see what happened.”
Durango lifted the receiver and slammed it down. He grinned at her, obviously trying to play it cool, and her heart flip flopped all over the place. Such a sexy smile. She wanted to tell him to screw the phones and get back to fucking her, but he was already reaching for his jeans on the floor.
“No dial tone. Good thing we have cell phones.”
She glanced back outside and noticed a ribbon of black smoke around a mile to the north. The airport was up that way. In the distance she noticed a couple more spirals of dark smoke. Weird.
“Something’s on fire out there. And it’s way too quiet, too. Where are all the people?”
“My cell phone is totally dead. So is yours,” Durango said as he joined her at the window and peered out.
“Yeah, looks like something is on fire in a few places. I want you to stay here while I go over to Bob and Carol’s. Better check on what’s going on with that car running up their tree, too. Maybe they know what’s happened.”
“Something’s not right,” she whispered as icy shivers began crawling up her spine again.
A frown dropped onto his face again, and she silently willed him to smile. He didn’t.
“It’s okay. Just stay here, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Truth was, she’d kind of gotten the creeps and preferred to stay here where it felt…
