Reawakening (23 page)

He shifted again, but it was a better sort of shift. Less like running on the spot, more like getting comfortable.

“No clue, June-bug. They sure seem hungry most of the time.”

“We tried hurling rotten steaks at them, once, but they wouldn’t take the bait. I think they like things warm, and fresh. I mean, it’s not like they’re dead, I don’t think. They’re not really zombies. But they sure get rotten and gangrenous and they probably don’t smell as fresh and good as real humans.”

“You sure they ain’t dead?” he asked, and that was surprising. Part of her still used the term undead, and it sort of fit. But she’d always known they weren’t. It was obvious they weren’t.

“Sure.”

“How come? Some of them look dead to me.”

She wondered if he thought of the old saying—when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth—from
Dawn of the Dead
. If maybe he was religious at all, and if so what it had done to his religion, to see this happen. She didn’t think he was, particularly, but something suggested to her that he at least believed in God.

“It isn’t just a headshot that will kill them. Other stuff will, too—just like it would any other living thing. Electrocution. They can bleed out. I’ve found a couple that obviously starved to death—you know, trapped ones that couldn’t get at anything to eat.”

Hopefully saying something like that made it easier for him to continue believing, if he did.

“So eventually, they’ll run out of food and be gone.”

That
took her out of the God thoughts. In fact, it pulled her up so short that for a moment she found herself just staring at nothing, unable to grasp what he was saying. Gone, had he said gone? As in no more rabid cannibal people?

As in no more of this?

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess they will.”

“You never thought of that, have you?”

The truth was—no. But that sounded so stupid she had to go with something else.

“Sometimes I imagined that we could just wait them out. But it’s hard to really believe that when you’re amongst them. They’re not like us. They can just keep going. They’ll do anything to survive—lose limbs to get at food, chew through whatever gets in their way. Where as we…well. I guess we didn’t want it enough.”

“You did.”

He said it quick, like he didn’t even have to think about it. Like it floated on the top of his mind at all times—how hard she’d fought, maybe. Or how much she wanted to live.

It made her consider just what it was that made him love her.

“Yeah. I did.”

Was it that? Just that? How much she’d wanted to live? The quiet after she’d said it seemed to suggest so, but she couldn’t know for sure. And that was okay, too, because the quiet felt good and calm after all the fire and the bad memories coming down hard, hard.

She found herself running her fingers over the scar she could see clearest on him, the way he’d done it to her. Just feeling it out—the one on his arm, that ended in a knot. He didn’t flinch away when she did it and his heart rate didn’t go up, so she thought it might be okay to ask. Just this one more thing, so that they knew everything about each other and had nothing else to hide.

But once she’d asked
so where did this one come from, then?
She kind of wished she hadn’t.

“I did it to myself,” he said, real simple. There wasn’t even a waver in his voice, as though it hurt to say it. Instead he sounded ever so faintly rueful, as though it still struck him as silly to this day.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t find anything silly about it, at all.

“I think that’s worse than my exploding slaughterhouse story. And maybe my barbed wire story, too.”

She felt him shrug.

“Hey—it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Why did you? Why? Were you on some kind of medication or did you just—”

“Sometimes things just hurt so bad that you have to take your mind off it. That’s all. That’s all.”

“Don’t say it like that, like it’s small.” Funny, that she then found herself biting down hard on her lip. Replacing one pain with another just like he’d said, so that maybe it would sting behind her eyes but no real tears would come. “Was it before, did you do it before? You did, didn’t you.”

“Yeah, it was before.” He hesitated then. She could hear it, like a breath he hadn’t taken. “I’ve thought about doing worse things to myself since, though.”

Clearly he’d considered sparing her. Was it wrong that she wished he had?

“Don’t say that.”

“Oh honey, I don’t anymore,” he said, and he sounded so sure. He even made her look at him, though she didn’t want to. “I don’t need to.”

His expression wasn’t the one she’d expected. It was warm and oddly satisfied in a way that gave her some understanding of why he wasn’t in any rush to get to the end of the marathon and break through the tape. Why would he be when everything was so sweet now and good—as though all of that had just been a bad dream?

“I used to think that pain—pain was the only thing that could take me away on a tide of nothin’. But I was wrong,” he said as he stroked over her face. “Pleasure’s better, June-bug. Pleasure, oh pleasure is better.”

And when those hands slid down over her back like he’d found a new thing to map out and it was her, she knew. He was right. Dear Lord, he was right.

Oh, no one in the world had ever been as right as he was.

Chapter Twelve

It took until he was over her, trying and failing to screw that big thick thing of his into her suddenly tiny pussy for her to realize why he’d probably been a gentleman and let Blake go first. Though strangely, thinking about him wanting the way paved for him made her feel hotter, rather than what she expected it do to—make her blush and not want to really think about it.

It was just a shame that the way hadn’t been paved, at all. She could feel how slick she was—like oil on leather—and just the thought of Blake’s come all slippery down there gave her the same kind of sick thrill as all those paving ideas had.

But it wasn’t working.

Probably because her entire body felt so jammed tight she could have made diamonds out of coal just by squeezing kind of hard. Her brain said
the more you want it…
But her brain was just a teasing, mean little idiot.

Porn always made this look so
easy.
The guy had a cock the size of a ham hock? No problem! Just shove it right up that chick’s ass—hell, she could probably take it in her
nostril
if you push hard enough.

But back here in zombie semi-reality…

“God
dammit
.”

“Just go for it, okay? You’re not going to cleave me in two.”

“Hey—it’s happened. Don’t you think it hasn’t.”

“Oh Christ.”

“It’s just it’s been so many hundreds of years since I did this I was kinda hoping it had shrunk in the meantime.”

“I hate to break it to you, hon, but your massive cock isn’t laundry.”

He laughed, but in the middle of it he somehow managed a deadly serious, “God, I want to fuck you so bad.”

She tried to shove downwards on him, but he wasn’t having any of it. He shied away just at the last second, just as she was certain that slick passage was going to take him in without a hitch.

It made an ache start up where the lack of him was.

“Then just come on—please.”

His head hung down suddenly but she knew why. Lust had dragged it there.

“Ohhh that almost sounds like you’re begging for it. Are you begging?”

She nudged her hips up to his and found something hard to rub herself against. Another millimeter and it would be on her clit—the way Blake had done it. God, just the memory of that sensation, that firm, slick sensation rubbing and rubbing…

“Will it get you in me faster?”

“It might.”

“God, you’re so… Okay—please. I’m begging you. Fuck me.”

“I dunno. What was it you wanted, again?”

He was pressing down just ever so slightly. She could feel it. Every now and then, the very tip of his cock just brushed over her swollen bud. She wasn’t even sure how it was swollen again, but it was and Lord, why couldn’t he just stop being such a tease?

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Be more specific.”

Apparently, he liked to hear dirty talk as much as he liked to dish it out. The response was too quick for it to mean anything but—though she was glad of it. The rush of his words made it easy to hit something back, even when her mouth and her mind wanted to fumble it.

“I want your big cock in my hot, wet cunt.”

“Oh yeah, cunt’s good. I like that. Be a potty mouth again, June-bug.”

“Fuck me baby, fill me up until I’m bursting. I can’t wait any longer, I’m dying. I’m so wet and swollen and aching for you—come on and do it to me. Come on and fuck me hard until I beg you to stop—that’s the only way I want to get on my hands and knees. When I’m begging you to
stop
.”

He bared his teeth for that one. Spread her thighs one-handed, as wide as they would go. And he did it in a jerky way, too, as though her words were just a little too much. A little bit past what he could take.

Then he did something that was past what she could take. Sudden—as though he wanted it to shock, which it absolutely did. He was just so direct and firm about it—two fingers over her clit in quick circles, until she let out a gasp and put her head back.

Of course, she knew why he’d done it. Once that pleasure was busy gushing through her body, sliding into her took on a new ease. He just pushed into her in one smooth glide, to the point where she was sure she couldn’t take any more.

It was probably around the halfway mark. She could see him fighting not to shove or go deeper when there was nowhere else to get to, and his face had taken on such a strained and disbelieving look that she had to imagine what it must feel like. All that slick, tight heat, hugging him like a glove.

He’d probably forgotten how it felt, too—the way Blake had. Blake, who she could feel watching them even though he was still pretending to be asleep. He’d turned over somewhere around the word cunt and occasionally she caught a glimpse of those baby blues out of the corner of her eye.

It made her want to tell him—
don’t pretend. You don’t have to be asleep.
And she would have, if it wasn’t for that lowdown feeling that this was different. Just a little different.

The sound of Jamie’s voice was different. His moans were deeper, more unsettled. The things he said had lost their dirty edge and carried instead a sense of desperation.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t…I don’t…Remind me what I do now, again?”

But it was useless because she couldn’t remember, either. It had seemed simple when Blake did it, now it was hard. Impossible, almost—and not just because of the solid pressure of him between her legs.

She moved a little and it was like urging every nerve in her body against something rough and unyielding. Not to mention the shaky moan he let out, and the way he begged her not to.

“Just wait,” he said. “It feels too good—I need you to wait.”

But the thing of it was—she didn’t want to. She wanted him to come inside her, hard and uncontrolled and too eager, and she wanted him to moan the way he was doing as he went off. He’d been waiting long enough. It was okay for him to take her and use her and get to that pleasure he’d spoken so gloriously about.

“I wish I could,” she said, then borrowed something from him. That little running on the spot thing he’d done. That little jig—so wired and kind of painful, only not here. No, no. It was gorgeous, here, to urge herself against him and get the thick bar of his cock right over that sweet spot inside her.

He was pressed tight to it, too. She could almost make it out—that little swell, that bundle of nerves—whenever she rocked a certain way or…hell. She didn’t even have to rock a certain way. She could have moved off the bed and out the door and still felt his dick in that good, good place.

And that feeling—it was on her face. She knew it was. It was all over her. He was kind of trembling a little, but she understood that she was too, as though that break of pleasure had plans to wipe them out.

It was like oblivion and oh he was giving into it, now. He rolled his hips and rocked into her, and when she cried out for more he got one arm beneath the nape of her neck, beneath that scar, and held her to him so he could rock her harder. Better. More.

She clung to him. She had to. It was less like fucking, now, and more like holding on. And when he panted in her ear—

“Fuck, I’m gonna come—that okay? Tell me it’s okay.”

She had to let go. She had to let go while clinging to him so tight there’d be bruises tomorrow.

He was leaving bruises on her too, but oh they were so sweet. Little bursts of pain through the pleasure, little reminders that she needed to breathe and take it and feel it all, then—