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On the Road: Day Five
Despite himself, despite everything on his mind, Zan was in a good mood.
One day to go. Less than twenty-four hours, and he’d be in her arms for real.
Introducing his family to Liz hadn’t taken that long, but after a while he’d kicked them out and talked to her on his own until she woke up. They’d just talked, though, because she said she needed to think.
He did, too.
Rath was driving again, and Zan found himself studying his second-in-supposed-command with some confusion. When had it happened? How did it get to this point? He felt like he didn’t know him at all.
Liz had told him that Rath did remind her a lot of Michael, but – and she’d looked anxiously at Zan when she explained, worried he’d be upset – she thought he was pretty quick to look to Lonnie, to follow her lead. And while she thought she could get along with Ava (much to her obvious surprise), Lonnie was too hard to read. Liz was a bit uncomfortable with her, like she was never sure her mocking tone was entirely in fun. So bottom line, Liz didn’t know what to make of either of them.
Zan had just nodded thoughtfully, and really, he couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t explain it, either. But considering what their lives were like, was any of that actually bad, or suspicious? He wasn't sure it was.
Every time Rath’s hand drifted towards the power knob, Lonnie slapped it back. Her attention was all on Zan.
“So that’s her, huh? Lil’ Miss Amer’can Teen Princess?”
Zan nodded, refusing to take the bait. “Yeah. That’s her.”
Lonnie looked over to Ava. “Whattaya say? You pissed?”
Ava shrugged wryly. “Nah. It’s cool.”
“But what’d ya’ think of ‘er?” Lonnie persisted.
Zan listened intently. Liz had been kind of wary of Ava at first but they’d warmed up pretty fast, which Zan saw as a good sign.
Ava cocked her head to one side. “Cherry, an’ in more ways than one,” she said thoughtfully. “Seemed solid, considerin’ how bugged out she got wit me.”
Rath hooted at that one. He found it hilarious that, of all of them, Ava was the one that the girl seemed most freaked about. He wanted to meet this Tess chick and see for himself how bad she was.
Lonnie cuffed him on the shoulder to get his attention. “And what’d you think of ‘er?”
“I’d do ‘er,” was his immediate response.
It was all Zan could do not to reach forward and rip Rath’s head off his shoulders. But Ava grabbed his hand and shook her head, and he relaxed. She was right; it was just Rath. No point expecting anything different.
And what was with that, anyway? Zan had never felt that protective of any of the girls he fucked, not even Ava. Although Ava did have superpowers, so that was a whole different thing.
Ava. Zan had made a point of speaking with her earlier, but she didn’t know if Rath or Lonnie was up to anything. She didn’t say she didn’t think it was possible, though, and he wasn’t sure how to take that.
Now he looked at his sister. “An’ you?”
She thought about it for a second. “Long as she don’ get in my way, I’s cool wit ‘er. Good ‘nuff?”
Zan nodded, more relieved than he let show. It was more than he’d expected. Actually, it was a lot more than he expected … he looked out the window, not wanting Lonnie to see and maybe read his face and know how suspicious he was becoming.
Lonnie turned around and faced forward, finally letting Rath turn up the volume.
<>
That night she was waiting for him, but he didn’t speak right away. He
wanted to know where she stood on things now that she’d had time to think
things over.
“I think,” she said, after they’d stared at each other for some time, “that you owe me some answers.”
It was all he could do not to laugh when she pulled out a list of questions. “You’s dreamin’, ya know. All the questions’re in yer head, not on some piece o’ paper.”
Liz looked surprised, and then she laughed too. “You know, I forget. When you’re here, I know I’m dreaming, but at the same time I forget I’m dreaming. It seems so … real.”
He nodded. “Yeh. Dreamwalkin’ makes dreams seem more real, I think. Dunno why.”
She smiled happily. “Yeah, that’s what I think. The insertion of focused mental control into an environment of random thought creation probably affects how the host mind processes the –”
Zan just concentrated on how shiny her eyes got when she was happy, and how he really liked the way her mouth moved. That he understood, and that gave him lots of ideas he would be happy to explore.
“ … Anyway, I wanted to know why you haven’t contacted Max and the others before now, if you knew about them?”
He shook his head to clear it, realizing he’d missed more than he meant to. “Uh, we knew they existed. We din’ know where they was, and there was nevah a reason to find out.”
“So why come now?”
Zan grinned. The girl was smart, he figured that much out, but sometimes she was a tad slow on the uptake. Unless she just wanted him to spell it out for her?
“You.”
Her mouth hung open for a second, and then she blinked and shook her head quickly, like she’d gotten off track. But she was blushing as she asked her next question.
“Can you tell the others much about where you – um, your past selves – came from? What it’s like, what you were made for, that kind of thing?”
He shrugged, serious now. “I dunno. When we get there, we’ll sit wit yer group an’ figure it all out.”
She nodded. “Good enough.” Again, he got the feeling she didn’t want to hear all about that stuff anyways. “Except … are you … do you think … ” Suddenly shy, her gaze fell and she started fidgeting.
“What?” Finally he just moved in close, close enough to lift up her chin so she was looking him in the eyes. “Whattaya wanna know, sweets?”
“Are you … going back? How long … how long do you think you’re going to be with m– I mean, in Roswell?”
He took the opportunity to work his hands into her hair, wanting to feel it as they talked. And he didn’t move away. “’Less there’s anythin’ you wanna tell me, I was thinkin’ ‘bout hangin’ roun’ for a long, long time. That a problem, Liz?”
He didn’t miss the way her breath hitched when he said her name like that, like a promise. And it was.
“No,” she whispered, and he felt the warmth of her breath on his skin. “Not at all.”
“Think it’ll be a problem fer Max?” he asked, never raising his voice, just voicing his curiosity, nothing more.
A tiny smile played around her mouth. “Does it matter?”
He shook his head. “Not to me. But ta you? I think it does.”
Liz looked solemn. “Maybe. I won’t say I’m completely over him. I’m not. He saved my life, you know. You don’t get over something like that so fast. Can you live with that?”
He ran a finger over her lips, tracing their outline. “Fer a while, I kin wait. Not f’rever,” he told her honestly. “But fer a while.”
“And – the other stuff? You know I – ” Unaccountably, she blushed, and couldn’t meet his gaze as she spoke.
He pulled both hands up to her face, cupping it, making her look up again. “You’s cherry. I know.”
“Cherry?”
“Dis,” he said, freeing one hand to drift downwards, to stroke the side of her breast, “is all in yer dreams, I get it.”
“I – I want to, Zan, for real, but – I don’t think I’m ready.” And now she held her breath, waiting for his response. “Can you – are you okay with that?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I kin wait. Not f’rever, but I kin wait. It ain’t like we don’ got options,” he breathed, lowering his face as she turned hers upwards.
“Options,” she said, a little blankly, and she grew still. “Zan, I know we’ve grown up in different ways, and I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re a lot more experienced than I am, but, um, I – I won’t sh-share you.” She said the last in a rush, but he could tell she meant it. No getting any on the side.
He looked very serious as he stroked her hair and nodded. “Deal. ‘Sides,” he added, suddenly looking mischievous, “that ain’t what I meant.”
“You mean our dreams?” She relaxed then, smiling and letting her tongue peek out from between her lips. “You have a point there.”
“I don’ know ‘bout a point, but I got sumthin,” he teased, and bent all the way to meet her. He froze when something out of the corner of his eye moved.
“Whoa! Please stop!” Zan turned to see Lonnie watching them, looking freaked. Except, he’d never seen Lonnie look like that in her life. Her dupe?
Liz had jumped when Isabel stepped forward. Zan could feel her heart beating incredibly fast against his chest. “Isabel! How long have you been there?”
Isabel looked torn, like she wanted to run but also determined to stand her ground. Flushing a little in embarrassment, she admitted, “For a while.” She faced Zan head on. “I wanted to see if you were real.”
Zan raised an eyebrow at Liz. She shrugged. “If you’d let me finish my list, you’d know. I told her about you today. It didn’t seem right not to tell at least one of them you were coming.”
“Why din’tcha tell Max?” He didn’t really care, but he was kind of curious.
“Don’t worry about that,” Isabel said. “I’ll tell him. I just wanted to check out Liz’s story first.” She had the grace to look apologetically at Liz. “It did sound pretty crazy, and after what happened with Nich –” She stopped herself there, glancing at Zan, obviously unwilling to say much more about that.
Liz nodded. “Yeah, I know. Why did you think I didn’t go to Max?”
“Aside from the obvious?”
Zan interrupted, getting antsy. “We kin talk ‘bout all dat stuff tomorrah.”
Isabel studied him and then Liz’s pleading eyes. “Okay,” she said, against her better judgment, her tone promising that she wasn’t letting this go that easily. “We’ll meet … properly … tomorrow, th–”
She wasn’t entirely finished when Zan made her fade away.
Liz giggled, but she looked guilty. “She’s going to be angry that you did that,” she told him.
“I don’ wanna waste any of our time here,” he said unrepentantly, running his hands up her bare arms, feeling her shiver.
“Me either,” she breathed, and finally he kissed her. Feverishly they tore at each other’s clothes, desperate to make contact, until Zan pulled back.
“Zan?”
“Can’t wait,” he panted, and waved his hand, dissolving their clothes.
Her eyes lit up. “Can you do that for real, or just in here?” Her hands began wandering across his chest, and she leaned forward to tease his nipples with her tongue.
“Unnnn,” he answered, and she threw back her head to laugh.
“Was that a yes or a no?”
He leaned down, tasting her neck everywhere he could reach. Pausing at her ear, he promised, “You just gonna hafta find out.”
She shivered in delight and suddenly, without warning, pushed him backwards onto what felt like a mattress. “You know, you took advantage of me,” she accused suddenly, standing over him. “You should’ve told me who you were before we had sex. Well, dream sex. You know what I mean.”
Zan’s eyes widened in surprise at her sudden aggression and looked around. He hadn’t even noticed they were in her bedroom again, and he wasn’t expecting to find himself in her bed. Not that he was complaining, but he could tell that she really was angry, and hoped she was in a forgiving mood. “Ya, I was a bad, bad boy,” he drawled. “Ya gonna punish me?”
“And soon? You better believe it,” she vowed, and then blushed, as if unable to believe she’d said that.
Suddenly, ducking her head in a deceptively shy gesture, Liz fell to her knees so that he could only see her peeking over the bed. He went to sit up, willing to join her on the floor if that’s where she wanted to do it, but she wrinkled her nose and shook her head, and he took the hint, falling back so he was spread out on her bed.
She ducked out of sight for a moment but then he saw her hands snake over the foot of the bed, palms down, stretching out. He watched, mesmerized, as she rose slowly, slinkily, keeping as close to the mattress as she could until he could see her entire upper body rise above him … and it looked like she was climbing up onto the bed right between his legs.
Liz smiled to see evidence that her little game was getting to him, but somehow she tore her eyes away from his obvious arousal to meet his gaze and keep it as she worked her way completely onto the bed and closer to him.
She studied him, curiously, from this new angle. She didn’t say anything or touch him, though, and it was all he could do not to close his legs around her, roll and pin her to the mattress. It would be so easy, and he could even see it, but somehow he managed to stay still. This was his punishment, after all, although he’d long decided that being bad had its perks.
“Hi, Zan,” she whispered, and he shuddered as he felt her warm breath caress him. “You know,” she said conversationally, crawling forward a bit until her hands were braced on the mattress on either side of his hips, “there’s a lot we don’t know about each other.”
He gulped. The sight of her tits so close to his cock was really doing something to him. He’d never seen her like this, so – so teasing, and so aggressive. His hips rose despite his iron control, but she moved back slightly and he stilled immediately. “Izzat so?” he asked, sounding strained.
Liz nodded solemnly. “Uh huh. I mean,” she said as she bent down so her face was right over his erection and he could see her little ass waving in the air, “you seem to have a good idea about what I’d like, but I don’t know what you like.”
She dipped down and licked him, almost delicately, and he made some strangled noise in his throat. “Do you like this, Zan?”
His eyes unfocused for a moment when she took him into her mouth, and all he could do was nod. She couldn’t take that much in, and she was obviously new at it, but her mouth was warm and wet and her tongue soothing. “Yeah,” he said faintly. “I like that.”
Bolder now, Liz reached down and began exploring his erection and the area around it up close for the first time. “It’s amazing,” she said reverently.
Despite himself, he blushed, to his immediate and abject mortification. He didn’t even know he could blush.
“I meant the human body,” she told him teasingly, obviously tickled at the thought of leaving him tongue-tied. “It’s amazing what it can do, and what can be done to it.”
Recovering immediately, he smirked and made a show of checking out what he could see of her from his position. “I’ll say.”
Laughing, Liz pulled herself upwards, making sure the tip of his cock rubbed between her breasts and then dragged along her belly. When she was close enough, she met his lips in a deep, wet kiss, all the while grinding her body against his.
Unable to take it anymore, Zan reached around her, anchoring her to him, as close as possible.
“What do you want?” Liz whispered, and he knew she meant it, that she wanted to know.
“Ride me,” he said, seeing no reason to beat around the bush – so to speak.
“What exactly do I do?” she asked, and he grinned to himself. She was being so practical about the whole thing, and he decided that he liked being the one to show her.
“Like what you did in the school, only more …” He was at a loss for the words to explain, and after thinking for a moment Zan used his hands to position her hips over his. Careful not to laugh – because she was craning her neck, trying to see for herself exactly what he was doing – he pressed her hand between them, showing her how they fit together. She nodded as the tip of him slid into her, and then sat up, using gravity to pull her downward, to get him in completely.
She smiled expectantly, knowing there had to be more to it.
“Now, move,” he told her. “Up ‘n down’s good, whatever.” Gritting his teeth, trying desperately not to come then and there, Zan waited until she seemed comfortable and then made little thrusts upward until she got the idea and, like he asked, began to ride him, a look of concentration on her face that would have made him laugh if he could catch enough breath.
“R’lax, w-will ya?” he panted, as his hands roamed from breast to hip. “Ya make ‘t look too much like work. ‘Sposed to be f-fun.”
She leaned back then, exploring the feel of him being inside her at different angles, and his entire body shuddered when the ends of her hair tickled the tops of his thighs. He grinned, though, to have part of a fantasy come true like that.
Soon she leaned forward, stretching luxuriously as his hands moved around to her back, liking the feel of her body pressing along his. Neither of them spoke; they just enjoyed the movement of their bodies against each other, every now and then exchanging a few heated kisses as Liz established a rhythm they both liked. It was like in the schoolhouse, only this time she was moving more, squeezing harder, creating more friction, and it almost hurt, it felt so damn good.
Lowering her head, she whispered with her lips right next to his ear, making him shiver. “Not work, practice. I want to make sure I get this right when we do it for real.”
That did it; the words, the tone, the way she fit his body like a glove, was too much for him, and it pushed him into heady, hazy, overload. He didn’t actually remember finishing, but he didn’t care. The pleasure was all-enveloping, and he just gave over to it, blissfully forgetting how to think, to breath, to do anything but feel for a short eternity.
As he came down from the high, he gradually became of her watching him, and he managed to turn, to meet her proud smile.
His scattered wits tried to pull together something approaching coherent thought. One thing occurred to him, at least, and he couldn’t decide to laugh or be pissed that he didn’t already know.
“Did – did you?”
The question hung in the air until Liz grinned unabashedly. “Let’s just say it was good for me,” she said, and he didn’t know how to read that but she seemed happy enough so he didn’t push it.
They just lied there for some time. He was spent but he didn’t want to go to sleep here, in her dream, because it might be gone when he woke up. So he tried to think of something else to do instead.
“Liz?”
“Hmm?”
“Talk ta me.”
“About?”
“Whatevah. Whattaya do wit yer life?”
She told him about school, and he was impressed with how smart she was and curious about what his life would’ve been like if he’d gone to school. She told him about working in her parents’ restaurant, and he realized that that crazy outfit she’d worn that one dream might really be real, and he couldn’t wait to go see her at work. Or better yet, after work.
She told him about her best friends Maria and Alex and Kyle, who she used to date but was just friends with now, and he wanted to meet them.
She told him about her parents, who would hate him at first so he’d have to be patient with them, and Zan wondered if she had any idea what she was asking of him, or for that matter, any idea what it meant that he was going to try, because then maybe she could explain it to him. He sure as hell couldn’t.
He was thinking about all of this when she nudged him, and he knew he’d missed something. “Yeah?”
“Tell me about you.”
He shrugged. There wasn’t much to tell. “We lay low. ‘Void people.”
“But what do you do?”
“Whattaya mean?”
“For fun, for work, for something to do, fill in time. What do you do every day?”
He shrugged again. “Eat. Sleep. Fuck. Practice our powers. Keep ‘n eye on da streets, make sure no one’s askin’ questions, that sorta shit.”
She didn’t say anything.
“What?” He tried to read her closed off expression, but couldn’t. “Liz?”
“Is that what you’re going to do here?” She sounded like it didn’t matter, but he didn’t need Ava to hit him over the head to know that it did.
“Yeah. Why?”
Liz took a moment to answer, and when she did he could tell she was putting some serious thought into it. “Everyone here does something else, Zan. Aside from the look, you’d get a lot of attention if you didn’t do something else.”
“And?” he goaded, knowing there was more. Her expression said there was lots more.
“And you’re going to get bored and you’re going to leave.”
He blinked. She sounded awfully defensive and possessive when she said that, and perversely, he liked it. “Don’ stress it. We’ll find me sumthin’ else. I kin take up a hobby or sumthin’.” He felt like an idiot saying the last part, but it worked; she was smiling again.
“A hobby? Like ... needlepoint?”
“Hell no. Needlepoint’s fer wusses. It’s knittin’ or nuthin’.”
She stared at him for a second and then just started laughing, probably a little more than the joke deserved, but things were getting too serious and it was a relief.
He smirked and waited for her to calm down a little.
Finally she hiccupped and wiped her damp eyes. “Okay, I’ll back off for now. But … well, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is an opportunity to try doing different stuff. You should start thinking about what you want to do with yourself while you’re here, while you have the chance.”
“Sure. You willin’ ta do th’ same?”
She cocked her head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“’S your turf, yeah. But you gonna meet me halfway?”
Liz propped herself up on her elbows and considered what he was saying. “How do you mean? Sex? We already discussed –”
“Yeah,” he interrupted, “but I mean th’ othah stuff. You don’ wanna do it, we gotta find som othah stuff we both wanna do.”
“Like knitting?” She sighed and collapsed back onto the bed. “If I must. Man,” she pouted, “that’s what I get for dating a tough guy. What’s next, holding hands in public? Old ladies will faint in the street.”
He grinned and, wanting to feel her against him again, pulled her over to him. He wasn’t feeling tired anymore.
She kissed him, long and hard, and let him roll over so he was on top this time.
Liz bit her lip as he parted her thighs to find his place between them, clearly ready for another round.
“You’re going to be a really bad influence on me, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
She sighed happily. “I’m glad.” And then she couldn’t say anything else, because just breathing seemed to take all her concentration.
He leaned down for another kiss, and there was no more talking that night.
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