Shame washed through her as she dropped her arms. Why couldn’t she remember? She sucked at this.
His face was inches from hers, his lips a breath away. “Rachel, you’ll learn. This is for you. Leave everything up to me.”
“Okay,” she whispered, trying to read his eyes in the dark.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” He’d just given her a mind-blowing orgasm, like nothing she’d ever experienced before. As far as she was concerned, he could do whatever he wanted.
“This is about trust. You’re trusting me with your pleasure. Tonight is all about you.”
Wow. “Okay,” she said.
Then he was kissing her again, devouring her. He smelled so good, tasted so good, his big body covering hers, his hips between her thighs. It was heaven. Heaven. She arched her back so he’d have easier access to what he wanted.
“That’s right, baby.”
His mouth was on her other nipple, sucking hard, biting. Her pussy was drenched. She needed him.
He moved his fingers down and dipped inside her. “Jesus, you’re so wet. So tight.”
“Adam, please,” she moaned.
He lifted her right leg and wrapped it around his hip. “Now I’m going to fuck you,” he rasped. “Wrap your legs around me.”
Her other leg went up and she dug her heels into his ass. She swallowed as she felt the head of his cock nudging at her entrance. Excited but scared, she squeezed her eyes in anticipation.
“I’m going slow, baby,” he told her. “Hold on to me, I want your arms around me when I’m fucking you for the first time.”
His explicit language shocked her, but she did as he said, grateful to finally touch him, feel him. Her hands went down his muscular back. She felt the planes and dips, hard yet silky.
He pushed inside of her, the slow pressure filling her up. She sucked in a sharp breath and whimpered. Okay, now it hurt a bit. He stopped. She forced herself to relax, knowing he’d stopped because he thought he was hurting her. He waited. He reached down between them and began rubbing her clit. Pleasure exploded inside of her.
“Oh, God.”
His hips moved again as he worked her swollen nub, but she hardly noticed. He sank into her an inch at a time until he was fully seated inside of her. Her pussy was stretched, fuller than she ever thought possible, but the pain had subsided, replaced with a pleasure so intense she thought it might be the death of her.
He began moving, gliding inside of her, moving his finger faster on her clit. First, he fucked her slowly, and she gasped for breath, her fingernails gouging his shoulders, then he fucked her hard, slamming his hips into hers. His mouth crushed hers with a bruising kiss, his tongue fucking her mouth, mimicking his cock’s movements.
Yes!
This was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Bar none. Why hadn’t they done this sooner?
She felt it happening again. Another orgasm? It was building, her body tightening, ready for release. How was this possible? She’d never had more than one orgasm at a time before. He pinched her clit. Oh! The second one hit her hard, almost more intense than the first. Adam continued to pound inside of her. Her stomach tightened, her pussy constricted around his cock. His mouth muffled her scream as the feelings swept through her, dragging her under.
Adam’s hips jerked as he came too. She gripped him as his big body shuddered, loving the intimacy of the moment, as he sank deep and held himself there. He fisted his hands in her hair, a bit painful, but he seemed so far gone, coming so hard he didn’t notice. And she loved that too.
His body settled on top of hers, his cock throbbing like a heartbeat inside of her still-quivering pussy. She ran her fingers through his sweaty hair at the back of his head, shoved her face into his neck and sighed, tears pricking the back of her eyes.
“You’re mine,” he said huskily.
“Yours,” she agreed as she licked his neck. “Yours.”
Chapter Twelve
“You know, you don’t have to hover.”
Adam clenched his fists and fought the sudden urge to throw Rachel over his knee and spank her perky little ass.
“I’ll be okay by myself,” she told him. “You don’t have to stay here with me.”
Her voice seemed unnaturally loud in the vast university library. She stood there frowning at him, hands on her hips, looking so damn beautiful it hurt. She was wearing layered tank tops, form-fitting just as he liked, and underneath he knew she still wore that red bra. His pulse started racing. That damn red bra.
He’d fucked her last night. Taken her virginity. And Jesus Christ, it had been spectacular. Right now, all he wanted to do was fuck her again. If she expected he’d keep his distance, she was in for a rude awakening.
“You don’t carry a gun. You can’t fight, and you’re little. Forget it. I’m stuck to you like glue,” he told her.
She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not that little.”
He looked her up and down from the top of her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, down, past her long legs in skinny jeans to the tips of her brown boots. True. Rachel wasn’t petite. She was certainly stacked. Built. Jesus, his dick was getting hard again.
“I feel like you’re trying to rush me,” she complained.
“No, I’m not.” Was he?
“There aren’t any live people here. You’ve already searched the whole floor, and the three above us. There aren’t any dead bodies in this section. It’s safe. It even smells kinda nice. Why are we in a hurry? It’s not like we have to be somewhere.”
He listened to her words and scanned the ocean of bookcases surrounding them, row after row of thick, boring-as-hell scholarly journals. He stomach clenched. Fuck. This shit was his kryptonite.
“I saw a copy of Guns & Ammo back in the periodicals section.” She smiled brightly.
His head jerked around like a hound catching a scent. “Where?”
She pointed. “On the other side of the elevators.”
Hell, kicking back with his favorite magazine sounded great. He even had an emergency beer stashed in his backpack. He peered down at her. “I’m not illiterate, I can help.”
“I know, honey, but I need to browse. Slowly. Without someone looking over my shoulder telling me to hurry up. I need some possible locations for our dream farm so we don’t end up driving around aimlessly. It’s better if we find what we want here and drive straight to it. It sucks that we can’t just search the internet. We probably could have found what we needed, and with directions on how to get there, in less than an hour. But instead I need to go through this.” She swept out her arm to encompass the whole area.
He smiled. Honey? She’d called him honey? “Don’t you want to look at books on farming? Or on solar or wind power, first?”
“Well, I want to find a place that’s cutting edge. I thought maybe I’d find some kind of article touting a fancy new organic farm. After that, I’ll go look at those sections. I’ll come find you when I do. We need to take all of those books with us. And any others we can find on how to live like it’s the eighteen hundreds again.”
He chewed on that for a second. “Okay, I’ll get outta your hair.”
“I just don’t want you to be bored.”
“Uh-huh.” Total bullshit. He knew when he wasn’t wanted. Fortunately for her, he didn’t really want to be here either. One thing he’d learned about Rachel was she was smart, real smart. He’d never gone to college and she had. Hell, she’d been at UC Davis, majoring in History. She’d do a better job with this than he ever would. Adam pulled two walkie-talkies out of his backpack, turned one on and handed it to her. “Here. Channel one. Call me if you need anything. You breathe into this and I’ll come running. Don’t go too far. And keep that pepper spray in your pocket. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted him.
; He stared at her, unblinking. Gave her the look he gave new recruits.
“What?” she said, her voice full of fake innocence. “Go…go.” She shooed him away. “Have fun. I’ll be fine.”
But he wasn’t about to be dismissed. He stepped close and cupped the back of her head with his hand. Something flickered in her eyes, something dark and inviting. Something that made him understand she was remembering last night, playing out their night of sex in her head, the same as he was.
Oh, hell yes.
He dove in and pressed his lips right below her ear. He loved her lips, but right now he wanted this more. Rachel drew in a sharp breath. He felt her shiver as his tongue swept out to lick her skin. She dug her fingers into his biceps. He’d already discovered he loved this spot. The secret spot. Her scent drove him crazy, and it seemed to be concentrated right here. Her clean perfume managed to slice through all the morbid environmental smells, a bright light that sent him into a frenzy of need as quickly as throwing a lit match on a gasoline spill.
She swallowed. “Adam—”
“You smell so damn good.” He sucked in a deep breath, his nose pressed against her throat. “What is that?” He’d seen her use it before but had no idea what it was.
“It’s, um, Amazing Grace by Philosophy.”
“I could smell this all day.”
“Well, good news for you. Today, I sprayed it everywhere.”
He lifted his head, his breath stuck in his throat. “Everywhere?”
“Uh, huh.”
“Christ.”
He threaded his fingers in her hair, tugged her head back and crushed her lips with an almost brutal kiss. She melted into him. Tongues clashed as she met him stroke for stroke. He kissed her like there was no tomorrow. Because, like Rachel often reminded him, maybe there wasn’t. He needed to take this life and live it to the fullest, take it in with great big gulps. And he did, until he finally broke away, both of them breathing heavily.
He rested his forehead against hers and cupped her face with both hands. “You stay safe, baby—” he paused, “—because after this, I’m fucking you again.”
Rachel stood there watching Adam’s retreating back and his magnificent ass—her pulse pounding, chest heaving, lips tingling. She tried her best to recover from his overwhelming masculinity. He was so manly, so sexy, so everything. She swayed on her feet and grabbed the back of a chair for support.
He was going to fuck her again right after she finished her research?
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled that goofy smile again. Well then, she’d better get cracking. No time to waste.
Invigorated by the nostalgic scent of paper and ink, she got to work and waded through the shelves of journals, touching them reverently. This grounded her, something as normal as research. These days, normal wasn’t boring, normal was good.
She meandered through the cases of journals and eventually pulled out an armful of potential candidates, shuffled over to a table, dumped the load and started reading. One abstract comparing the efficacy of free-range, organic farming to corporate mega farms seemed promising. Aha. A list of demonstration farms, along with locations in the bibliography.
Score. A few were even in California.
Rachel gnawed on the inside of her cheek. Should she call Adam first before she went looking for maps? She glanced at her watch, maybe just a quick check in. She might be clueless when it came to guns, but walkie-talkies she could handle.
“Hey, Adam?”
“Copy. You found something?”
“Almost. But I need to find the map room first. I think it’s just down the hall. I wanted to check in with you before I changed locations.”
“I want to check that room out too. I brought my netbook and solar charger. I want to see if I’m able to power up their equipment. They might have some digital maps I can download.”
“Sure, but there’s no need to hurry. I have a list of farms that might be what we want, but I still need to find their locations. For all I know, I might need to go back out in a few minutes and start over again because these might all be somewhere we don’t want to live. I’ll call you as soon as I figure that out, and I know I’m staying in here, okay? Then we can work together.”
“Check in with me in fifteen minutes or I’m coming to find you.”
“Okay, honey.” She smiled. “Copy that.”
Rachel clipped the walkie-talkie to her pocket, stowed the journal in her backpack, slid it over her shoulders and went looking for the map room…and a bathroom, because she really, really needed to pee.
She walked down the hall and her nose twitched, picking up a familiar, god-awful smell. Oh, shit. She whirled around in a panic. Dead-body alert. What the hell? How could Adam have missed this in his sweep? And where was it coming from? It was impossible to pinpoint because everywhere in this area smelled bad. She stopped, pulled out some Vicks and spread some on her upper lip, trying to mask that familiar ghastly stench of death. Then she hefted the backpack on her shoulders and kept putting one foot in front of the other.
Nowadays, dead bodies were everywhere, if she let them bother her, she’d never get anything done.
She pushed inside the map room and the heavy door clanged shut behind her, louder than expected. Rachel scanned the room, a row of large rectangular windows providing dim light. A long, dark wood table with a reflective surface and sleek, reddish-brown matching wooden chairs dominated the center of the room. She bypassed the complicated geographic stuff and picked up a simple road atlas. She slapped the book on the table and sat down with her loot, intending to dig in and get comfortable.
She squirmed, her heavy bladder making its presence known, reminding her that she had to pee, and pee now.
Damn.
Rachel stood, her chair scraping across the floor. Her eyes swept the room. Oh, thank God, a restroom right there. She pushed open the unisex door. The smell of death hit like a blow, causing her eyes and nose to sting. Oh, shit. That dead body she’d scented back in the hallway had to be in here somewhere, rotting behind one of the bathroom stalls. Darn it. She’d probably pee her pants by the time she found another restroom.
“Shit,” she whispered.
Okay, which one was empty?
“I can do this. I can do this.” She squared her shoulders, strode over to the handicap stall, yanked open the door and stepped on a corpse.
Rachel shrieked, scared more in that instant than she’d ever been in her whole damn life—and that was saying a lot, considering she’d just survived a freaking apocalypse.
A long-dead, heavy-set woman in a red shirt slouched on the toilet, wig askew. Face distorted and crumbling, eyes open and staring up, beseeching, at…God? Rachel heard something squish and glanced down to see the woman’s blackened bare foot underneath her own boot. Lovely. She’d stepped on the dead lady’s toes and they’d squirted out across the floor like cherry tomatoes.
Rachel covered her mouth. She was going to be sick. Or pee her pants.
Or both.
You’d think she’d be used to the dead bodies by now, but no, they still managed to sicken her on a daily basis. The corpses always seemed to come up with new and creative ways to scare the crap out of her.
Today being a terrific example.
She tried to step back out of the stall, but her foot slipped on the slick floor and she started to fall.
“No!” she cried.
Her hands flew out. She tried to gain purchase against the metal stall to stop or delay the catastrophe. But there wasn’t a damn thing to grab on to, and her hands skidded uselessly down the shiny walls. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. First, she went down, down, down. Then her ass slammed into the hard tile floor. She crashed like a kid on an ice skating rink. Breath whooshed out of her chest as agony exploded up her spine. Her eyes watered at the intense rush of p
ain.
She gulped in a deep breath and tried to scramble up and get the hell out of there, but her feet tangled with the dead woman’s legs, causing the body to become unstable. The corpse tipped and swayed. Her breath caught, her heart pounded against her ribs. It started coming for her. Fast. She screamed and scooted back like a crab, but couldn’t get far, her palms slipping on the tile. The monstrosity that used to be human careened over, like a mannequin attacking. Rachel twisted and pushed, trying to avoid getting slammed with the brunt of the dead woman’s weight, but there was no avoiding it. Oh dear God. It was about to fall on top of her. Smear all over her body. All the gore, the juices, the stink. She tensed and squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’ve got you,” a deep voice said from behind her.
Two hands dug under her arms and quickly dragged her clear, pulling her out before the disintegrating flesh could touch her. Wired with fright, she twisted and clawed frantically in her haste to escape. He trapped her arms and hauled her up. The corpse hit the floor behind her with a sickening thud.
“You’re all right,” he soothed.
He walked her back into the center of the restroom, next to the sinks. She was a mess. A mass of shaking, quivering nerves. Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. Strong arms went around her and drew her in tight. She planted her face in his chest and held on to him, twisting the fabric of his shirt with her fists as she tried to calm her ragged breaths.
Her nostrils flared and tears pricked her eyes. “Adam,” she blubbered. “I thought it was all clear. You said this floor was empty.”
“Who’s Adam?” he said.
Chapter Thirteen
Rachel sucked in a breath. Fear shot through her like an electric current. She looked up, startled, at the man who was holding her.
The man who was not Adam.
She gazed into incredible blue eyes that watched her with unholy intensity. The stranger was stunningly handsome, with shoulder-length surfer-blond hair and a deep tan. She glanced down. Blazing tattoos shaped like flames peeked from the collar of a crisp white polo shirt and licked up his neck.
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