Chapter 8: The Interrogation
The cold light of a Jackson morning did nothing to soften the edges of what had happened in the cabin. Jess stood before the rough-hewn door of Maria Miller’s office, the central lodge buzzing with the muted activity of a community at work. The scent of baking bread and woodsmoke felt alien, a mockery of the raw wilderness still clinging to her skin.
Beneath her jacket, just above the collar of her shirt, the skin of her neck throbbed with a delicious, secret ache. Ellie’s teeth. A mark left not in violence, but in frantic, swallowing passion. Jess could still feel the press of Ellie’s body, the incredible wet heat of her mouth, the greedy sounds she’d made as she came. The memory was a live wire in her gut, short-circuiting her normally razor-sharp focus.
The door opened. Maria Miller stood there, her posture straight, her eyes missing nothing. She was a woman carved from the same unforgiving timber as the mountains, but with a cunning patience Jess distrusted on instinct.
“Jess. Come in.”
The office was orderly, a map of the valley spread on a large table, inventories neatly logged on a chalkboard. It spoke of control, of a world defended, not just scavenged. Jess felt like a filthy, wild thing tracking mud across a clean floor.
“Sit.” Maria took her own chair behind the desk, steepling her fingers. “Ellie’s report from the patrol was… abbreviated. You encountered a small horde. She took a knock to the head. You found shelter from the blizzard.”
“That’s right.” Jess’s voice was too tight. She forced her shoulders to relax, a practiced mimicry of calm.
“The shelter. The cabin. You were there overnight.”
“The storm didn’t break until dawn.”
Maria watched her, the silence stretching. Jess could hear the tick of a clock, the distant laugh of a child. Normal sounds. Her thigh muscles twitched, remembering the crush of Ellie’s hips.
“Ellie seems distracted today,” Maria said finally, her tone neutral. “Uncharacteristically quiet. That knock on the head might have been worse than it looked. Or… something else happened out there.”
Every instinct screamed to build a wall, to lie. But survival here, in this place of rules and walls, required a different kind of cunning. A partial truth.
“It was a close call,” Jess said, meeting Maria’s gaze. “The infected came out of the snow. We were exposed. It… it shakes you. Reminds you how thin the margin is.” This was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
Maria leaned forward slightly. “And the two of you, alone in that cabin for all those hours. How was that?”
The question hung, dripping with implication. Jess’s mind fractured.
Maria’s steady gaze blurred, replaced by the dark, hungry look in Ellie’s eyes in the firelight. The feel of Ellie’s hands, rough and sure, shoving her pants down over her ass. The freezing air on her bare skin, then the searing heat of Ellie’s mouth—
“Cold,” Jess blurted, shifting in the chair. The movement made the fabric of her shirt rasp against the bite marks, a vivid spark of sensation. She fought not to react. “We shared body heat. Standard procedure. Slept back-to-back. It was about not dying.”
It was a good lie. Clean, practical.
Maria’s eyes flicked downward, for just a fraction of a second, to the base of Jess’s throat. Jess had fastened her jacket to the top, but a frantic, twisting movement in the cot, Ellie’s mouth sucking a bruise into her pulse point, had left a sliver of discolored skin visible.
“I see,” Maria said, her voice devoid of judgment, yet full of unspoken conclusion. “And how are you finding Jackson? Its… routines?”
The interrogation was pivoting, becoming a threat assessment of a different kind. Jess was an outsider, a variable. A variable now intimately connected to one of Maria’s most capable, and emotionally complex, defenders.
“Fuck, you’re soaked,” Ellie had grunted, her fingers pumping deep, the heel of her hand grinding against Jess’s clit. The crude words had unraveled her completely. Jess had come with a silent, shuddering scream, her back arched, her cunt clenching around Ellie’s hand like a vise.
“It’s secure,” Jess managed, her throat dry. “Orderly.”
“Order requires trust, Jess. Transparency.” Maria let the words settle. “Ellie has a history of forming… intense attachments. She’s strong, but the world has taken much from her. She doesn’t need complications. She doesn’t need to be distracted from her duties, or from her own healing.”
The message was crystal clear. You are a complication. A distraction. A risk.
Rage, hot and defensive, surged in Jess’s chest. It warred with the shameful, searing recall of Ellie’s taste on her tongue, the way Ellie had chanted her name like a prayer. She wasn’t some infection to be quarantined. What happened in that cabin was the first real, unfiltered thing she’d felt in years.
But saying that would be surrender. It would give Maria everything.
“Understood,” Jess said, the word tasting like ash. She stood, the movement abrupt. “Will that be all? I have inventory duty at the greenhouse.”
Maria gave a slow nod, her eyes never leaving Jess’s face. The assessment was complete. The verdict, unstated, hung in the air between them: I am watching you.
Jess turned and left, closing the door softly behind her. The moment it shut, she leaned against the log wall of the corridor, her heart hammering against her ribs. She brought a trembling hand to her neck, her fingers pressing into the bruise, the pain a sharp, grounding anchor.
From the shadowed end of the hall, she saw her. Ellie. Leaning against a doorframe, arms crossed, waiting. Their eyes met. Ellie’s gaze dropped to Jess’s fingers on her neck, and a knowing, defiant smirk touched her lips. It was a bolt of pure, undiluted lightning through the fog of Maria’s warning.
Jess pushed off the wall and walked toward her, each step a conscious choice. She stopped inches away, the air crackling with the memory of shared breath and sweat.
“Well?” Ellie’s voice was a low murmur, for her alone.
“She knows,” Jess said, the words barely a whisper.
Ellie’s smirk didn’t falter. It deepened. “Good.”
Then she reached out, her fingers hooking into the belt loop of Jess’s pants, and pulled her into the empty storage room beside them, kicking the door shut with her boot, plunging them into a dim, dusty privacy.
Before Jess could speak, Ellie was on her, pinning her against a shelf, sending a jar of rusty nails clattering to the floor. Her mouth was desperate, her kiss a reclaiming.
“She can know,” Ellie breathed between biting kisses, her hands already pulling at Jess’s belt. “She can watch all she fucking wants.”
Her hand slid into Jess’s pants, past her underwear, fingers finding her wet and ready. Jess gasped, her head thunking back against the wood.
“Still thinking about it, aren’t you?” Ellie whispered, her mouth at her ear. “Thinking about my mouth on your cunt. About how loud you made me come.”
She drove two fingers inside, curling them, and Jess saw stars. It was rougher than in the cabin, fueled by defiance and adrenaline. Ellie fucked her with her hand, a hard, relentless rhythm, her thumb painting frantic circles on Jess’s clit.
“Yeah, you remember,” Ellie panted, watching her face. “You’re dripping for it. Dripping for me.”
Jess could only nod, her hips bucking, meeting every thrust. The risk, the danger of discovery, of Maria’s disapproval, poured gasoline on the fire. This was stupid, reckless, a liability. It was also the most alive she’d ever felt.
“Gonna come,” Jess choked out, a warning and a plea.
“Do it,” Ellie commanded, her voice guttural. “Come on my fingers. Let her hear you.”
The orgasm tore through Jess, a violent, silent convulsion that clenched around Ellie’s hand. She bit down on her own lip to stifle the cry, the taste of blood metallic on her tongue.
As she shuddered through the last waves, Ellie slowly withdrew her fingers, bringing them to her own mouth, her eyes locked on Jess’s as she sucked them clean with a deliberate, obscene slowness.
Outside, they heard the clear, sharp sound of Maria’s voice giving orders in the courtyard.
Ellie didn’t flinch. She leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of Jess’s ear, her voice a triumphant, filthy promise.
“Let her know.”