“I think you’d better open your eyes and learn to keep them open or I’m going to give you back to your father.”
I was going to keep my eyes open and shoot him in the foot, the jackass. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Trust me, little girl, I would dare.”
“Vaughan,” I hissed at him. “I’m so sick of you bossing me around! Worry about yourself and get off my back!”
“Keep me alive, Tyler, and I’ll stay off it for as long as you want!”
“Good! And while you’re staying away from my back, you can just stay away from the rest of me too! I don’t want anything to do with you, you big, hairy, overbearing Goliath!”
“Overbearing? I’m saving your ass, and you’re calling me overbearing? Woman, you are a real piece of work!”
“And you’re a tyrant! A stupid tyrant! Why the hell did you run after this? Are you looking for trouble? Are you trying to get me killed?”
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” he growled.
I tried to come up with a snarky response, but my brain stopped making sense and my mouth miraculously shut up.
The Feeders were dead. All of them. They lay littered in the meadow, piles of undead corpses strewn about. My back had been pushed against the nearest tree, and Vaughan’s now-empty gun had been tossed at our feet.
One of his hands took my wrist and bound it in a vice grip above my head where he held me firmly in place. He pressed the back of my hand into the rough bark. His other hand found my hip and his thumb dug into the tender flesh there.
“Keep your eyes open.” His words were spaced and slow, driving into me the directive I knew, but couldn’t obey.
“I’m trying,” I gritted out.
He pressed his body into mine. I felt every inch of his hard frame. He was muscled, taut and tight with too much power for one person. He vibrated energy and accomplishment and something deeper, even more intense. It was a force that I was too afraid to put a name to, a calling too seductive to spend any time dwelling on.
“You’re not trying hard enough.”
He smelled like sweat and blood, like victory and hard work. He filled my head, and the lingering stench of Zombie rot faded into nonexistence. His skin glistened with beads of perspiration even though the dwindling afternoon breeze was crisp and cool. His grasp on my waist clamped down harder, and he jerked me into him- chest to chest.
“You’re making me not want to try!” I argued, holding an irrational fight when my entire body buzzed with something as hot and dangerous as anger, but oh, so different. “You bossing me around and yelling at me doesn’t make me want to try! It makes me want to throw my gun at your head and let them have you!”
“I’m not worried about them getting to me, Ty.”
I licked my dry lips with my dry tongue in a fruitless effort to make it possible to swallow again. His heated gaze that tracked the movement seemed captivated by that small gesture.
His head lowered.
“Then what are you worried about?”
“I’m worried about you.”
His words had hovered in the air for a few seconds before they dropped like an atomic bomb all over my will and carefully built walls. He annihilated whatever protective force I’d convinced myself was impenetrable. And as soon as they were down, he led a full-scale assault on every other one of my emotions.
His body heat suddenly seared my skin. His heavy breathing filled my head. His scent. His touch. His uninhibited, dark look that turned those blue eyes into wild, feral things. They looked at me with naked desire, unrestricted want.
How long had he felt this way?
How long had he wanted to do more with me than fight?
I didn’t know those answers. But I did know that Vaughan Parker was about to kiss me.
And I was going to let him.
I sucked in a desperate breath just before his lips crashed to mine. I thought I could prepare myself for a simple kiss, for a boy to touch my lips again for the first time since Logan. I thought I could ready my spirit and indomitable will and prepare for Vaughan, for all of him. For every touch. For every bite, lick and kiss. For every intimate moment, he chose to share with me.
I was wrong.
I had never been more wrong.
There was no way to prepare for this man or his kiss.
He came in like a tsunami of craving need. His mouth met mine with ravenous hunger and explosive lust. His lips weren’t soft; they were dry but perfect, rough but exactly what I needed.
His mouth consumed mine in an endlessly needy act so much more profound than a kiss. He flooded my senses until it was painful; he demanded everything inside me until I was empty. But then he soothed with sweeter, slower, impossibly more intimate kisses, and he filled me with something that wasn’t me… that was him… his… a gift from him to me. He poured himself into my emptiness, my broken vessel and somehow he mended all those shattered pieces and made me feel full. Complete. Whole again.
My free hand fisted in his t-shirt before I told it to go there, and I hungrily demanded he come closer without giving him an inch to escape. Apparently I was as insatiable as he.
One of my legs wrapped around his and he slammed my hips back into the sturdy bark of a tall pine behind me. He fitted his body so we were flush together and the hand at my waist slid around my back and banded me to him.
His lips moved from my mouth to my jaw to my neck where he nipped and sucked and kissed his way from collarbone to earlobe, across my jaw and back to my mouth. He whispered my name in a frantic prayer of devotion. His hand at my wrist held it helplessly high, but his thumb worked in seductive circles in the palm of my open hand.
He built a fire in me that was hotter than anything I had ever felt, and I had a blistering premonition that this inferno would burn me to ash if I let it.
No, not if I let it. I had no control over this. If he wanted it to.
There was no coming back from Vaughan Parker.
I knew that instinctively. He was an end-all in a world that didn’t permit longevity.
If I gave myself to Vaughan, there would be no recovery, no rehabilitation. Unlike Logan- although it tore me up to admit it- I didn’t believe Vaughan could be killed by a mere bullet. He was superhuman. He was more than a man. He was something so otherworldly that Zombies quaked in fear of him.
I had a moment of solidarity with Reagan. I knew she had been terrified of what a relationship with Hendrix would mean for her in a world like today. I knew she had run from him because she didn’t want to bind herself to someone so… eternal.
Eventually, she had given in against her better judgment. And even though she seemed happy with Hendrix, they still ended up apart. Reagan would never recover from losing Hendrix.
I saw that as plain as day on her face.
I saw it because I recognized it. Hendrix might not have been shot by my daddy with real bullets, but the outcome was the same. She would mourn him forever.
And I was already mourning one boy.
Vaughan and I wouldn’t have to try to avoid a love triangle because we would be stepping into one from the get go. Logan already resided in my heart, and it wasn’t fair to make any man compete with a ghost.
No matter how unflinching Vaughan seemed.
“You’re closing your eyes again,” Vaughan rasped against my earlobe. His tongue was hot and smooth against my sensitive skin.
I chuckled despite the direction of my thoughts. “I’m kissing you, not shooting a gun. I’m supposed to close my eyes.”
“I’m not talking literally, Ty. It’s the same concept. You’re shutting down because of fear.”
I really opened my eyes this time and unfisted my hand so I could push him back. I glared up into those soft blue eyes that looked pained even while they remained so hot with desire.
I yanked my hand free from his wrist-hold so it could join my other one against his chest. “You think you know everything.” I pushed him again, but he didn’t move. “Bu
t you don’t know me, Vaughan. You don’t know a thing about me.”
He grabbed my wrists again, both of them this time, and held my hands against his heart. I could feel it pounding rapidly beneath my palms. “I know you wanted me to kiss you. I know you’ve wanted me to kiss you for a long time now, Tyler.”
I made a hissing sound that reminded me of a rabid cat. I wasn’t proud of it, but I was angry enough not to care. I tore my gaze from his and focused on the dead Zombies in the meadow.
I tried a hundred retorts to spit at him, but I decided that’s what he wanted. He liked it when I fought with him. He liked it when I gave him attention, even if it was negative. My best defense was to ignore his existence, and he would eventually go away.
He didn’t.
He leaned in so that his lips were at my ear. “Don’t tell me I don’t know you. I do know you, Ty. I know that you’re not over Logan, and I don’t expect you to ever be over Logan. But I also know that I’m not him, and I will never have to compete with him. We’re different men. I swear to you, that I will never let you forget that.” He bit my earlobe with a rough nip, tasted the fleshy part of my ear with his tongue at the same time. “You fight me on everything, but maybe it would be good for both of us if you stopped fighting me on this, yeah?”
He pulled away so fast that I sunk to the ground without his sturdy weight to support me. My breathing was heavy and fast, my head spinning out of control.
“What the hell took you so long?” Vaughan snapped at some entity behind me.
“We couldn’t find you! We got here as fast as we could!” Hendrix spat back defensively.
I reeled with dizziness. I was going to puke again.
I felt Vaughan look down at me, felt his scorching gaze take me in. “Not fast enough.”
Chapter Three
My heart still hadn’t slowed down.
Vaughan had kissed me three hours ago, and my frantically beating heart still hadn’t calmed.
I worried I had gone into some kind of hyper-speed heart attack. I would have asked somebody if that were a real thing, but I was supposed to be a medical expert here. So chances were if I didn’t know, then nobody else would know either.
I didn’t want to get into it, but me being a medical expert? Yeah, that was laughable. Gage appointed me because I’d been a trainer for the football team in high school. I hadn’t known what I was doing then and I didn’t know what I was doing now.
I had just wanted to ride the bus to away games so Logan and I could fool around in the back.
I wondered if Gage was punishing me for that by using all that “training” to bite me in the ass.
He was just enough of a vindictive bastard to do that, too.
I released my grip of death on the dusty fabric of the silk-covered ottoman where I’d made my nest after dealing with all those damn Zombies. Vaughan, Hendrix, Nelson and Haley had gathered the bodies and built the funeral pyre. They were monitoring it now. It had been raging for a while, but the darkness outside made me think they would be coming in for supper soon.
I pulled my knees to my chest and surveyed my options.
Reagan was keeping watch over Page for now, but I needed to check on her in a few minutes. Miller hadn’t left Page’s side either except for a brief moment where he seemed to have spoken to our mother. I knew he had a major case of hero worship for all things Parker and he’d adapted their fierce protectiveness for that little girl. I couldn’t even bring myself to discourage it. His vigil over Page gave him something to concentrate on, something to think about other than what had happened to him while he’d been with my father. Page gave him purpose that brought him back to life.
He had been so damaged in those months he spent as my daddy’s POW. When we first got him back to the compound and he’d woken up to freedom, he hadn’t even spoken to me. I can still picture him lying on that mattress on the floor. I’d been severely beaten up but in much better shape than him. After I’d chewed half a bottle of aspirin so I could move again, I’d taken care of him and not left his bedside until he woke up.
His eyes had opened and I’d never felt that kind of relief before. My brother was alive. And he was going to live.
He’d stared at me blankly and rolled over to face the wall.
From the highest peaks of joy to the very depths of despair. I couldn’t have left his bedside even if I wanted to. I spoke to him for hours without getting a response from him. I pleaded with him to forgive me for letting Matthias take him and I begged and cried for him to forgive me for not coming sooner. I apologized for everything I could think of, but he still wouldn’t look at me or talk to me.
Then Vaughan and Hendrix had come in screaming and shouting about Reagan and Page not being at the Colony and I knew exactly where Kane had taken them. Miller had rolled over and actually looked interested in the conversation.
Hope had bloomed, so I told the older Parkers where I thought Kane might be keeping the girls. I had no idea how to get there, just a general vicinity where I vaguely remembered it being located. With the possibility of Page’s rescue, Miller jumped into the conversation and added his two cents. Later we’d pulled Gage in to collaborate the destination and somehow we’d come up with the right answer.
Although, I wasn’t sure we would have ever found the cabin exactly if it hadn’t been for the fire.
The charred forest clued us in to the right road to turn on; then we just had to follow the ash and soot. By that point, we’d all given up hope. Everything had been charred to dust. We had not even a glimmer of optimism Page and Reagan had survived. Neither Miller nor I had known about the underground fallout shelter.
But that was no surprise to us.
It wasn’t like Daddy was real forthcoming with all his plotting and paranoia.
At least now Miller was flickering with light. It wasn’t exactly like his soul burned as brightly as it used to, and he was painfully quiet these days, but he had a purpose. Page gave him something to do, a way to keep his mind sharp and occupied. He would heal eventually from all the rest of the trauma; right now he needed a crusade to keep him engaged with reality.
Gage kept watch over Kane and my mother a ways away from Page and Reagan. They huddled together on the floor looking about as comfortable as anyone could have been after three days of sitting in that same spot, knowing their future was dependent on the broken-hearted, broken-spirited girl just barely keeping herself together with Scotch tape and Elmer’s glue.
Reagan had pleaded her case for Kane, and for some stupid reason, Vaughan and Hendrix listened. Although, I suspected they hated his existence almost as much as I did.
Actually, almost everyone in this room hated Kane with a deep, abiding intensity that would raze villages and breathe fire and brimstone if they could. I held the worst of the animosity though, and Reagan sat at the opposite end of the spectrum from me.
Her weird, twisted up emotions for my brother actually gave me the heebie-jeebies. So even while I knew I should talk to her, at least tell her I was happy she was still alive, I couldn’t make myself sit within five feet of her.
She was out of her ever-loving mind to give up Hendrix for Kane, and I wanted no part in her descent into madness. My family made up the worst of the worst. How Reagan didn’t see my soulless brother for the harbinger of death that he had truly become was beyond me.
Unrelated to any of our drama, the scientists huddled in another couched area and seemed to argue tirelessly. They cycled through all kinds of debates. Each topic of discussion had a revolving place-number and they devoted equal amounts of time to each topic. They were intellectual and argumentative and I avoided them at all costs.
Except when they studied Page like she could be their next experiment. Then I paid very close attention to them.
I didn’t know if Vaughan had filled them in on her bite and her seeming immunity to Zombieism or if he had decided to keep that secret. They were obviously smart people, and it didn’t take a genius to figur
e out that the bloody wound on her back was a Feeder bite.
Or maybe in all their studies, they’d never come across a person immune before and so they believed Page was sick for another reason.
Whatever they imagined happened to her, was enough to keep them around. We had offered them to stay one night, but their group went to Vaughan the next day, asking if they could stay with us for a while.
Either they were frightened of the North American Zombies or they had an agenda.
I bet on an agenda.
“Ty, you’ve been summoned.” Miller plopped down beside me and immediately leaned forward with his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees.
I rubbed a comforting hand on his back. He was exhausted all the time. I didn’t think there was an actual physical problem with him, but his emotions had been shot to all hell. My chest tightened and I just wanted to pull him into a hug and rock him back and forth like I used to when he was a small child.
“Mama?” I guessed.
“And Kane,” he sighed. He looked over his shoulder at me. “Do you think Vaughan will kill them?”
My lips pursed and I didn’t know how to respond. He sounded so hopeful and the light in his eyes made me want to promise that Vaughan would crucify them. But then I wondered what kind of damaged eleven-year-old wanted someone to kill his mother and older brother? I mean, really, how deeply did the trauma have to go for him to be sincere?
“I don’t know, Mill.” Honesty was the best policy here. He couldn’t help his feelings and I didn’t blame him for having them. “I don’t know what Vaughan will decide to do.”
The light flickered out in his eyes and his mouth pressed into a grim frown. “I should do it myself. I should be brave enough to do it myself.”
I scooted forward and threw my arms around his neck. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that! You are brave. You’re braver than anyone I’ve ever known. And you don’t need to kill your own mother for that to be true. If Vaughan doesn’t kill them, it’s because he’s thought it through as much as he can and decided that there is a good reason not to. We need to respect Vaughan and his decisions. We’re his guests. And that is our family over there. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to die, but not at our hands. And not while they’re our willing prisoners.”
Love and Decay, Season Two Omnibus: Episodes 1-12 Page 47