The Murdered World 30

“I'm sorry, Em,” Christina said once he was gone.

“What are you sorry about? That Angel didn't buy stronger chain?”

“What we did… Jesus, after what you've been through…”

“I haven't been through anything, thanks to him.” Emma rubbed her temples. “I never should've gone along with you.”

Christina’s eyes narrowed incrementally. “Me? I was doing it for you. To protect you.”

“If you really wanted to stop him from hurting us, you should've gone through with it. Imagine how grateful he'd be right now if we'd finished him off.”

Christina planted her hands on her hips and dug them in until she felt bone. “So that's it? You want to be his sex slave for the next month and a half?”

“How many years were you and Angel married?” Emma snapped, the thought too sharp not to cut someone with.

Red lipstick gaped open to pink mouth. “Low fucking blow.”

“If you regret last night, fine. All I regret is that we knocked him out before…”

Christina's lips went from parted to hanging open. “You enjoyed that?”

Emma scoffed, her expression of disbelief mirroring her sister’s. “You're pretending you didn't?”

“I barely know the man, of course I wouldn't…”

“What's to know about him?” Emma asked, crossing her arms, allowing herself a closed-lip smile as she remembered the size of him, the power of him.

“He's a murderer.”

Emma’s arms tightened around herself almost protectively. “If he kills people like your husband…”

Christina felt a string of drool at the corner of her mouth and realized she was still letting her jaw hang open. With a smart snap, she closed it up only long enough for her lips to snarl: “You have no fucking sense, you know that?”

Emma’s biceps whitened where her fingers dug into them. “You just had to piss off the one man who isn't radioactive right now. Had to make sure he was peeved with both of us, because if he wasn't, he and I…”

Christina scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. Emma’s eyes darted at her fist as it crossed her face and went down.

“You really think I care about that right now?” Christina demanded.

“What else is there to care about? Right now?”

***

Frank took a bottle from the liquor cabinet. He laid in bed and drank until everything seemed reasonable. Then he kept drinking.

He’d felt the same way in the Marines that he had as the Punisher. He was a sheepdog. He killed the wolves to protect the sheep. No matter how cold or cruel he might appear to the rest of the world, he knew vengeance was not what motivated him. He sought to protect all those who might end up as his family had. Every criminal he killed was an innocent spared their ravages.

But what good was it now? Every potential victim he might’ve saved may well be dead now. Every criminal wiped out with them. There was no longer a better world he was making with his crusade. All that was left for him was a wasteland.

He looked at the bottle in his hand, half full of beautiful golden whiskey. He swirled it around and became sure it was half full.

There were lights in it. He thought he should slow down, save the lights to show to Christina, to Emma, and so he just smelled the booze. The scent went into him and made him feel inflated, like he’d been leaking air all along. He’d just needed someone to blow him.

Frank laughed.

He had never thought of himself as anything but a realist, but now he saw how that optimistic view of his mission had held true import to him. Without it… what was there? Only the ache of loss? What was there to him but suffering?

And could he withstand that suffering without a purpose to balance it out?

He forgot why he’d stopped drinking. He started again. The liquid gold exploded inside him. It gilded all of his insides. He felt the molten heat in his balls, stretching into his cock, making it hard. That reminded him.

The only purpose he could think of… the only people who needed him… were Emma and Christina. He could protect them, from themselves as well as the outside world. But how much would they come to rely on him? And how would he feel, after they’d needed him for six weeks? Would he need to be needed?

He hoped that there was a world outside for them to go back to. A broken, bloody world maybe, but one where they could find peace from a better source than him.

But already, Frank felt himself harboring a second, secret hope. That there was nothing else. That they’d be his forever. And that he’d be theirs…

He’d drunk too much: slug after slug after slug. It was impossible to keep his thoughts straight. He couldn’t seize on the truth of what he was pondering, if there even was one. He had to get control. He belched. He hoped he wouldn’t vomit.

Things went slow, stagnant, then seemed very fast. How many hours had he spent lying here, hoping for sleep and not getting it? How many drinks would it take to quiet all the things that were loud, no, insistent (they whispered) in him? Did dearly departed Angel even own that much wine? The drink was supposed to put him to sleep; at least put his demons to sleep. The bottle was almost gone…

It’d been a long time since he’d needed anyone. He thought of Lucy. The violent, biological kind of need that had crested in him only at the run-up to orgasm. It was a petty kind of need, maybe, but she’d enjoyed sating it for him. And now she was dead. One more failure of his protection. He’d tried to keep her safe by leaving her behind and she’d only ended up lost in nuclear fire.

What did it mean? What did any of it mean? Millions, maybe billions, living their lives until they ended in hellfire. And him, who only wanted life as a condition of being operational, surviving out of some godforsaken mix of luck and skill. Time after time he tested that combination for himself. Now even an atomic explosion had been found wanting.

Sick joke, Frank thought. Sick, sick joke.

He wondered if he’d rest better if he’d stayed with Emma, right before he finally lost consciousness and entered such a dark, deep sleep it was like the dream world had been scorched, same as the real one.

***

After Frank left, Christina stayed at the girls’ bunkroom. She looked in on Emma, careful to keep the door shut enough not to let in much light, but her thoughts were on Frank. How much he’d wanted her body when she’d shown it to him. What he might do about that want if Emma weren’t there to compel him to censor himself.

When Emma began to snore, she forced herself back to her senses. There was no need to pander anymore to Emma’s fragility; the girl had enjoyed being the center of attention long enough. Now it was her turn. And, like Emma, she would have to take what she want. Even if she didn’t know what that was—at least she knew she couldn’t let Emma have it.

Bad enough to be a widow at her age; imagine not having a man while her little sister was in a relationship. Christina wouldn’t hear of it. She thought of what Frank had said, about one bunkroom being for him the boy and this one being for the two girls. It was charmingly sophomoric. He was a big dog, but he was a puppy too.

She would have to do the work. He probably wasn’t even asleep yet, the poor dear. Christina would take care of that. They both would sleep once they’d put all this nervous energy where it clearly wanted to go.

Impulsively, Christina set off for Frank’s bedroom. Her breasts bounded heavily inside her top and she felt a tingle in her untouched pussy, a lewd alchemy between its bareness and the flutter of her skirt and the open air all around her. There was none of the calming security of a pair of panties; she felt wanton.

Not whorish, not shameful… how she’d felt like she’d be prostituting herself if she initiated things with Angel, or at least, when she’d tried and failed, been dismissed, told she needed to lose weight, dress sluttier, demean herself to compete with his mistresses. Younger, skankier, no shame whatsoever. Christina couldn’t live with herself if she became Angel’s idea of a wife.

But this felt good. Part of it was knowing she was throwing this in Angel’s dead face—still she felt in control of herself, in charge. Pleasingly sexual. Vampish, rather than any word that could be used as a slur.

How long had it been since she’d specifically walked back all those things she’d said up in Angel’s presence? Trying to make it clear, in so many words, that she didn’t actually want to fuck Frank despite what she’d said and how she’d acted. But seeing Frank with Emma had made her angry and horny—she couldn’t fight back against both emotions.

I’m a dirty girl, Christina thought pleasurably, taking the stairs two at a time. Horny as a bitch in heat. Being petty as hell in staking a claim on a man just so her sister couldn’t have him. And because he had a big dick.

Her cunt was throbbing. She craved much more than an orgasm. That she could give herself with her hand. But being full, truly filled—she’d need a fat, stiff prick for that.

Frank was lightly snoring when she slipped into the bunkroom he’d claimed. She found it adorable. Such a hard man… but still human. It didn’t come naturally to him, not anymore, but he’d been tender with Emma. That whore might work his niceness into being something more.

Christina shut the door softly behind her. The only light came from a set of shut blinds letting in a bare minimum of would-be moonlight. Another little trick. But Christina appreciated the low blue light that washed over Frank, showing him to Christina like he was the only man in a dark world.

He was naked, sleeping on his back, hairy arms and legs protruding from a tangled sheet. Christina looked lovingly at the thick length of masculinity resting across his thigh, like a snow-painted mountain chain beneath the thin covering of his blanket.

The irony wasn’t lost on Christina that she was acting like Emma usually would. Showing off her body, being aggressive, practically daring a man to be man enough for her. Once, that would’ve made her feel like a hypocrite. But who the hell cared anymore? The world was burning. She wanted what she wanted.

Christina padded silently up to him, unbuttoning her blouse as she drew close. She stopped halfway there. She wouldn’t shrug off her skirt so quietly. She backed up a few steps, bumping into another bunk which thankfully didn’t make a sound, then slowly unzipped her skirt.

It fell down her legs. She stepped out of it. With her blouse open and her stockings on full display, not a stitch covering her ass, she felt more vixenish than ever. Gingerly, she sat on the foot of Frank’s bed.

Looking at his face, his troubled brow, while she pulled the covers down off his body. He was mumbling lowly, sweating enough to glisten in the muted light. Bad dreams. Well, she’d give him one hell of a good one.

Christina eased her fingertips underneath his prick, lifting it up lightly. Running the fingers of her other hand over it in a lewd massage. Immediately she felt Frank start to respond. His manhood swelled in her hand. Christina wrapped her fingers around it and felt it throb against her grip.

Dirty girl. Dirty, dirty girl, Christina thought to herself, feeling like she was glowing.

Slowly, lusciously, she ran her tightened fingers down Frank’s shaft and back up it. Frank groaned in his sleep, shifting atop the bed, fucking his stiffening erection through her fingers without even being aware of it.

Christina let go of him. She shuddered with arousal, staring at how his endowment twitched and throbbed in a tower up over his belly. Already thick, creamy drops of precum ran down his glans. Christina ran a finger up his cockhead, swiping away some to taste.

She soon found herself sucking on her fingertip. The taste ran deep inside her. Her sex felt more alive than ever. She ran her hands down her body until they touched the garters that surrounded her pussy, pulling on them, then letting them go. She wouldn’t snap them yet. She’d leave them on for Frank.

Christina wanted him to see what he’d turned her into—what a seductress she’d become for him.

Lowering herself down on top of his legs, Christina wrapped her lips about his bulbous cockhead, slurping unashamedly and loving the pang of arousal she got when he throbbed inside her mouth, his taste blooming on her tongue.

Cock holster, she thought. I’m his cock holster now.

She sucked more of him into her mouth, towards her waiting throat. Waiting, yet unprepared. The longer he spent between her lips, the bigger he was getting…