Gladiator by Kate Lynd

understanding immediately what she wanted, what she needed. “Have you been a bad girl?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, biting at his nipples, “you tell me.”
    “Well, let me see,” he said, guiding her to the floor and spreading her legs. He drew up alongside her and took her nipple in his mouth as he slid his finger inside her pussy. She writhed and moaned hoarsely.
    “More,” she begged.
    “Like this?” he asked, freeing her nipple and stroking her clit so slow and torturously she was panting. “Or like this?” He pinched her and stroked her alternately, and she began to quiver and pant so hard that it brought a smile to his face. She spread her legs wider.
    “Oh you like that? What about this?” He slid two fingers inside her and began to stroke her clit in slow methodical circles with his thumb.
    A broken cry escaped her and she said, “You. I need your cock inside of my hot pussy. Not just your fingers…”
    “Talking dirty to have your way with me?” He pulled out his thumb, moved, and buried his cock inside her. Then tenderly, he moved in and out, murmuring, “I love you. That’s all I ever need to hear from you.”
    She wrapped her legs around him and moved with him. He lost the bitterness. He lost the rage. He lived for her, now.
    As she came he freed her hands and he gazed down at her. She had promised him the world. She had promised him his children. And in her eyes he knew that one day he would see Kevin and Elizabeth again. He prayed he would get to protect them all from more harm. He thrust hard into her and let go.
     

Chapter Ten
     
    She was beautiful. He watched her sleep and he realized that their destinies were so entwined at this point he didn’t know where hers began and his ended.
    He and Hope had been teenage sweethearts. They’d been to college together, and when she fell pregnant he loved her all the more. And even though things were rough after the war, their love was always strong. He’d had years to get to know Hope. But he’d only spent a year with Alexandra, and they had already been tested with the agonies and the ecstasies many fifty year marriages don’t begin to endure.
    These were different times. Life expectancy was measured in how many fights one survived in an arena or how many night patrols you came home after. In this post-apocalyptic landscape, you had to pick a side. You were either a rebel on the side of democracy or a member of the mob who followed the Crown for leadership. He had refused to take a side for so long in hopes the world would right itself. It had cost him his first wife and possibly his eldest son and daughter.
    Looking into the tranquil innocence of her features in sleep, he had fallen in love again. This woman had borne him children. He desperately wanted to protect them. He’d lived a slave’s life for so long he wasn’t sure how to do anything anymore, except make it to the next day. Now he wanted a lifetime with a Healer. The Healer. The one sent to save the world. The one sent to save his soul.
    She looked up at him and touched his cheek. He gave her a lingering kiss. “Mmmm, what was that for?”
    “For coming back to me when I thought you’d gone for good.”
    “That day is in the future. Coming back to you, if I have a choice, is never really a choice. If I had to, I’d defy whatever my destiny was to come back to you. But my destiny is with you,” she said linking her fingers with his.
    “I desperately want to find my children. But at what cost to you will this be? They will be damaged, no doubt. A Gladiator’s life is no life for a man, go figure a woman, but it can be endured. I’m afraid of what Elizabeth has been through, or even if she’s been able to survive.”
    “Women have a lot going against them under my father and sister’s rule. But I made it… and I should have died a thousand times over.”
    He pressed his lips to her temple. “You’re so young.”
    “Sometimes I feel like I’m a hundred years