Eve: Drink Of Me (F&L Story #2)

Eve: Part 16

Part 16

May 24, 2010.  Tuesday.  10:30 p.m.

He wasn't sure how he got back to Maisy's cabin.  Only that Eve unlocked the door and stepped aside to let him in, worry lines etching deep into her forehead.  The hour was late, but his brain would not release the correct amount of melatonin to make him sleep away memories of the whole latter half of the evening.  Clint was rather surprised with his control.  After seeing the reason – the real reason, and one that had nothing to do with Eve driving that night – littering the ground next to the seventeen-year-old boy, he didn't loose it.  He kept his anger and pain inside.

Robby Henson.  The police told him the name of the boy.  Officer Mitchell, the first policemen on the scene, knew Robby's father, a local veterinarian.  The boy had been celebrating his graduation from high school a few days early, and now he would never get the chance to properly wear his cap and gown.   Green eyes, brown hair, played basketball, editor of the school newspaper, accepted to the University of Oklahoma on a journalism scholarship.  All facts about a person he didn't know.

Clint made it to the middle of the great room before breaking down.  His knees hit the floor, and his arms braced to hold him up.  He can't do this.  He can't keep watching people die, and not be able to anesthetize his mind to the memories, the pain, the guilt that he couldn't save them, that he failed.  Four years was a long time to relive this kind of horror with a clear mind.  Four years was too long. 

He remembered seeing a bottle of vodka in the freezer.  He pushed to his feet, but Eve – how did he forget she was there with him? – reached his destination before him.

“No, Clint,” she whispered, “don't...please, don't have a drink.”  She secured her palm to his chest, and pleading with him with tears in her eyes. 

“Eve,” he moaned, leaning into her warmth and calming presence, “I need you...talk to me, Eve...make me forget...please.”  Her good arm went around him, and he fell into her embrace, dragging her to the floor with him.  She scattered butterfly kisses across his face while he gripped her waist and hips painfully.  “I will, Clint,” she murmured against his temple.  “I'll make you forget.  Tell me what you need, and I'll do it.”

I need you to love me, he almost said, but he modified his request at the last second and just said, “I need you,” pressing his forehead into her neck.  “I just need you, Eve.  Whenever you're with me, I need only you.”

“Oh, Clint,” she sighed protectively, “then take me...let me intoxicate you...drink from me, Clint...”  And he did.  His lips slanted over hers in a smothering, drinking kiss that started at her mouth and ended at her toes.  He tried to be gentle around her hurt shoulder and take extra care loving the red, raw scrapes on her cheek and palms, but the desperation consumed him.  He shed pieces of her clothing as he came to them, and soon, she lay beautifully breathless and unadorned on the tiled floor, and all he could do was look at her.

As he made his way up her legs, planting soft kisses and trails of desperate caresses, he wondered how he had ever survived sobriety without her.  He'd personally witnessed the death of seventeen people in his lifetime, beginning with his mother and sister and presently ending with Robby, and Clint's heart almost stopped right along with the boy's at the thought of Eve possibly dying tonight.

Earlier that afternoon, he looked at her and knew he was falling in love with her.  But the idea refused to cement inside his brain until he almost lost her.  Now, all he could think about was the fact that he was too selfish and addicted to her to give her up.  If love was the product of his infatuation with Eve, then so be it.