“I think I need some food,” I muttered, grinning at my own weird ruminations. “I can’t tell, but I must be starving by now, and my blood sugar is likely below what is advisable for anyone, let alone someone who should keep a balanced diet to prolong what little time she still has left. And some booze, too, although I doubt I’ll manage to get more than slightly buzzed. Unless there is something else still on your mind?”
Sam shook her head. “Not really. It was nice to air our old laundry—”
“Nice?” I echoed, smirking.
“Necessary,” she corrected herself. “And thank you for sharing. But I think you will agree with me that we don’t really have much in common anymore. Of course I could regale you with tons of funny baby stories, but I know you likely can’t relate, and I understand that must be painful for you on several levels. Village life doesn’t hold a candle to being out there, fighting the good fight or whatnot. And that’s about it.”
Part of me was tempted to blab out that, just maybe, there was a slim chance that I’d get to understand more of her life, but I cut down on the impulse as soon as it appeared. There was no sense in it, and in a way, it even seemed cruel of me to mention the possibility of me having a child myself. I was so happy for her and her family, knowing that she’d get to not just have her kids but watch them grow, and likely even take care of their children, and maybe their children’s children. At best, the knowledge that my baby might already be an orphan upon birth would just mess with her head—and really, if Martinez and Charlie got to adopt and raise my spawn, she’d learn of it soon enough. And if it was just a futile dream, or I died long before that child had a chance to live, then it was all the same whether she knew about it or not. It was my dream, not hers, or even ours, and while it felt stupid to jealously guard it like a treasure, that’s exactly what I did.
I could have offered up a myriad of platitudes now but since they all felt tainted with passive-aggressive undertones to me, I simply walked up to her, gave her a long, heart-felt hug, and then I left, walking out of her life in every way possible.
Chapter 13
I found Nate sitting by one of the many fires roaring in the middle of the settlement, a lot of familiar faces all around. I took my time greeting Minerva and thanking her for her hospitality, then got some quality bear hugs from Jason and Charlie. I’d seen them both fleetingly on the battlefield today but there had been no time for chatting, and none of us had wanted to get killed over exchanging pleasantries. No surprise about finding Martinez sitting next to Charlie, and I gave him the most conspiratorial look I could manage without shouting at him to stop being a wuss and finally spring the question and make it official. Martinez chose to ignore me, but it was in such an overt way that I knew my message had been received. I didn’t recall the name of the woman sitting next to Jason but I remembered her from our last visit, and there was no question about who the father of the two small children on her lap was, seeing as they had both inherited the shocks of ginger hair on their heads from Jason. I almost felt like griping that everyone was hell-bent on unleashing the next generation on this planet, but really, I was glad about that. We were still losing way too many people as it was, and a massive increase in pregnancies was to be expected now that birth control was pretty much back to middle-ages standards. Sadie was also sitting there, a very much awake and lively Christine climbing all over her, still a little timid about joining the other kids that were running rampant all over the town but likely less than a day or two away from joining them.
Sagging onto the log next to Nate, I snuggled up to him, nudging his arm until he relented and lifted it onto my shoulders, laughing softly. “You seem awfully relaxed for someone who looked ready to never ever come down from her high again,” he teased—for the most part. Looking up, I saw the cautious concern in his eyes. At my “don’t worry about it” look I sent back, he eased up, going as far as to nuzzle my head with his face before planting a soft kiss against my temple. “Love the hair color. But, shit, it smells like you doused yourself in all the bleach left in this world.”
“Too bad for you,” I quipped, then skipped on to the important part—food. He had a bowl full of jerky strips sitting next to him that, even at that distance, smelled… interesting. Since he made no move to hand it to me, I got up once more to fetch something from one of the huge pots simmering over the fires, full of stew, curry, chili, and whatever else could be easily thrown together and taste good. Everything was chock-full of vegetables, very important for those of us forced to subsist on shit that couldn’t easily rot on the road. Upon my return, I eyed Nate’s jerky again, as if it would tell me where it had come from if I just stared at it long enough. He pointedly pushed the bowl further back, as if to say, “You’re not getting any of that.” Fine with me—for sustenance, the chili-curry-stew would more than do. And when he finally let down his guard and idly chewed one of the strips, I just so happened to steal a kiss from him when he was distracted, joking across the fire with Jason—and yup, there was definitely something there that tickled my taste buds.
“What exactly was that about?” Nate asked as he pulled away, his voice sounding neutral enough but his gaze imploring.
I shrugged, but then forewent playing coy. “You can feel the beacons. And although I still feel no hunger, I can taste just a hint of your questionable mystery meat. I thought it was just a fluke a few days before we got to California, when you came back after hunting. So I suspect it’s blood rather than the mystery-meat part per se, or a combination of both. I was just a little curious, is all.” And because it wouldn’t have been me without adding a little pizzazz to the observation, I added. “By the way, one of the scavenger girls has a family recipe you might want to look into. I didn’t ask for specifics, but I have a feeling it is more along the ‘Hills have Eyes’ lines than her abuela’s special spicy chicken.”
It was hilarious to watch Nate’s expression go from curious to fascinated to slightly concerned and then right on into a deep dive into condescension territory, but what was missing was the disgust so often present when we’d talk about the topic of how to get him fed. Maybe that wasn’t even mystery meat in his jar, and he was guarding it jealously because it was the first thing in a long time that he liked to eat and could stomach and thus didn’t want to share with me, who could easily chew cardboard and not find it revolting. Or—what sounded way more likely—with a good portion of the settlement people here being scavengers, someone else had developed a certain taste for certain special flavors, and they’d found a way to take care of that. Logically, that made the most sense. Huh. The more you know—or don’t, in this case.
“How did your talk go with Sam?” Nate asked, carefully neutral, but I could see he was trying to change the subject and at the same time get back at me for bringing it up in the first place.
“Better than being ambushed in the bathtub usually has a right to go,” I admitted. “I presume you saw her asking around for me?”
“And spend twenty minutes trying to decide whether she should actually go in or not,” Nate pointed out. “I almost took pity on her and told her to just get it over with, but that might have set her in the wrong mood. Glad you got your chance for closure.”
I was a little surprised he’d jumped to that conclusion, but then again, if I hadn’t, I likely would have come stalking over here, fuming, and in need of some way to work through the added level of aggression. Perceptive, my husband was, but sometimes I was simply very easy to read.
“Speaking of tangents,” I started, looking around. “How much more time for socializing did you plan for tonight?”
Nate gave me a calculating look that made me guess I wasn’t the only one who was finally in the mood for something other than spending the entire night locked inside my head. “Why, that eager to jump my bones?”
“Generally speaking, yes,” I enthused, incapable of holding in a low chuckle. “I mean, that right there is the cabin where we last made love when I still had all
my fingers to poke and prod you with, in all the places you like, don’t like, and insist you don’t like but secretly love.”
As intended, I got a pained look for that worst of puns—but it didn’t take away from the glint of interest in his gaze. “For the record, the latter never happened, and I think the worst ‘prod’ I’ve ever gotten was an accidental elbow in the face while you got dressed inside a car. And besides, how much longer do I have to suffer through these less than clever and certainly not entertaining jokes?”
I struck a musing pose before shoveling another mouthful of food down my gullet. “How much longer do you still intend to live?”
Oh, I so loved him glaring at me like that. “Who even got this shit into your head?”
Now it was my turn to be slightly annoyed for real. “You, of course.”
“Me?”
I nodded. “Sure, you. You can’t go all ‘well, at least that shit shook you out of your depression!’ in my face and not expect to get that dish called revenge, served cold.”
Nate stared at me for another moment—pretty much like he was considering if I’d actually gone insane—before he burst out laughing, loud enough to turn heads all around us. My turn to be playfully annoyed—and to poke his arm with what was left of my left index finger, which made him shut up in favor of grabbing my entire hand so he could plant a kiss on my palm. “You’re not wearing your gloves,” he remarked, and it almost sounded like it came with a hint of praise. Couldn’t be, since we were talking about my husband here.
I shrugged, extricating my hand once more so I could continue my meal. “First, it felt ridiculously inconvenient to get them off, clean them, then put them on again, and then off again half an hour later when we slink away to do the dirty. Also—and this is a much bigger point—I left them soaking in bleach for half an hour to get out the shambler gunk, and then had to dunk them in water forever to get the bleach out so it wouldn’t eat away what’s left of my fingers as soon as I donned them, and it takes a while for them to dry after that. Last but not least, I’m not ashamed of how my hands look. I wear them in combat because I have a much better grip that way and I need the extra protection, but right here, right now I trust that you will defend me, if the need arises, with your questionable jerky strips. Happy?”
“Excessively so,” he professed, grinning.
Silence fell between us as I continued to shovel dinner into my mouth while Nate listened to conversational snippets going on all around us. Pia joined the round, returning from somewhere else in the settlement, wherever that had been. I was a little concerned for a second, afraid she’d spend another night brooding at the fire, but maybe a minute later Blake and Buehler joined her, the marines reengaging her in a conversation that seemed to have been going on for a while now. She caught my gaze for a second and went as far as giving me a wink before she laughed at something Buehler remarked that I didn’t quite catch. Needn’t worry about this old dog, it plainly said.
“You never answered my question, you know?” I quipped at Nate.
He let out a long-suffering sigh, as if I’d been nagging him about something for hours, before he leaned in. “Since I don’t intend to sleep a single minute tonight, I think we still have a little more time for socializing. But while you were holding court in the bathhouse, I got us a cabin—an entire one this time, not just a room so everyone else gets to listen in to our deep philosophical conversations all night long.”
That made me snort—and pat his knee. “Good man.”
Nate groaned. “I swear, one of these days I will put you over my knee, in front of all these people, and spank you, and then we’ll see just how well you do with being a brat.”
All I had for him was a bright, saucy smile. “Bring it on, old man.”
I expected him to drop the point—as he usually did at this turn in our banter—but instead found myself being not just dragged off the log but hoisted up and onto Nate’s shoulder so that I was dangling upside down from it, the last spoonfuls of my meal disappearing into the night. My yelp got everyone looking over, to which Nate responded by offering up a quick bow—that almost sent me off his shoulder and toppling backwards into the flames, if he hadn’t quickly gotten a better grip on me—much to everyone’s amusement. “I’m sorry, ladies and gents, “ he called out. “But I’m afraid I need to teach my wife some manners since she does nothing but bad-mouth me, day in, day out. I know you’ll understand.” And as if that wasn’t bad enough yet, as he turned to step over the log and leave, he slapped my ass, and it was not a gentle pat.
“You’re such an asshole!” I protested, drowned out by everyone’s laughter—and quite a few suggestions how he should go about that task. “You’re all assholes!” That just made them laugh all the more. I tried to wriggle myself free but Nate clearly had no intention of letting me go, carrying me off as if I weighed nothing.
Well, clearly we were feeding him the right stuff to keep up his strength.
Nate didn’t stop until he’d reached our cabin—which was a good five hundred feet away from the fire pits and well out of shouting distance—and only let go of me to throw me onto the bed. Maybe not exactly throw, but I wasn’t being set down gently, and I had about two seconds before he pounced on me, pinning me to the mattress effectively. Any protest that I might have uttered—not that I had much on my mind—disappeared when his mouth came down on mine, as hungry and demanding as his hands on my body. I was more than up for the challenge, giving as good as I got, loving the feel of warm skin on skin once we were both peeled out of our clothes. As convenient as screwing around in a car was, it didn’t hold a candle to getting it on with lots of room and no care for what you might bump into. Nate didn’t give me any chance to get up to any shenanigans, covering my body with his, his lips skipping down to the side of my neck. I was more than happy to wrap myself around him, opening myself up to his eager fingers, quickly replaced by his cock when he realized I was more than ready. As he thrust into me, he bit down hard—hard enough to hurt, but also enough to make me let out a guttural laugh. I had zero qualms about sinking my fingers into the strong muscles of his upper back, then rake my nails down to his ass, urging him on to take me hard and fast and deep, and make me forget about this shit—
My climax hit me with the strength of a lightning bolt, and it wasn’t just the sheer physical satisfaction. No, this was us again, like we should be, abandoning all reason or care in the world for a few minutes of bliss—and then a few more, and more, until everything else ceased to exist. I felt my body key up, adrenaline flooding through me, the roaring in the back of my mind intensifying once more, but the anger remained like a distant memory, not important now. There was a small part of my mind that was still working, that was concerned about this, and when it made me pause for a moment, Nate froze above me, staring deep into my eyes—and I could swear I could physically feel his body sync to the beat of my own drum. He grinned, and I answered it with a feral grin of my own, rearing up to drown his resulting moan with my mouth. He flipped us over so that I ended up kneeling above him, but rather than let me rear up and move, he pulled his arms around me and held me close, leaving only our hips to move freely—but I didn’t exactly need more than that. I couldn’t tell whether it was his lip that caught on my tooth or vice versa, but suddenly, there was the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. I could taste it—actually taste it as it hit my tongue, mixing with saliva, thinning out, then getting stronger again as our kiss intensified, driving me wild… and I definitely wasn’t the only one it had that effect on.
We didn’t exactly maul each other, but by the time I found myself breathless and on my back, my legs too shaky and weak to stand, with Nate stretched out contently next to me, I definitely had a few more bruises and bite marks than when I’d dragged my tired ass into the bathhouse—and so did Nate. I had to admit, he did look a little worse for wear. Oops.
“Guess the part about the scintillating philosophical discussions was a lie, huh?” I wryly observ
ed once my breathing had properly slowed down.
Nate let his head fall to the side so he was looking at me rather than the dark rafters above us, his attention briefly locking on to what I was sure was blooming into a substantial hickey on the side of my neck before skipping on to my face. “Are you complaining? Give me five”—he considered for a moment—“three more minutes, and I’ll give you something to complain about.”
Reaching over, I idly smeared the tip of my finger through a trickle of blood leaking from a scratch across his ribs before sticking it into my mouth and sucking on it, my gaze never leaving his. He let out a low, rumbling growl that should have made the hair at the back of my neck stand up but didn’t. Before my mind could wise up, I pushed myself up and leaned over him to directly lick up the smear before crawling up his body, swinging one leg over him. Turned out, three minutes was a pessimistic estimate after all.
As it was, those teasing quips were the only words we exchanged that night, and I couldn’t find it in me to regret it.
Chapter 14
The morning dawned too bright, too soon, particularly to my bleary eyes and overall sore body. I was sure that Nate would have loved to claim he was the reason for the latter, but while he’d definitely been a contributing factor, my arms and back hurt from hacking and slashing at zombies all day long. I would have loved to make up on the socializing front what I’d missed out on last night, but when I dragged my sore ass to the fire pits, I already saw the first trucks leaving, hauling firewood and people out onto the plain.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 95