Reawakening

by Stein, Charlotte

She woke with a snap for two reasons. The first was the aching gush of glorious pleasure winding its way pleasantly through her body. The second was a complete and total awareness of the sound she’d just made.

  It wasn’t even a sob, really. Or a whimper. Or a light moan. She’d made a noise like a goose dying into the quiet, dark stillness of the bedroom. The bedroom that she was totally not alone in.

  Not like before when she’d had her last completely inappropriate sex dream. Previously, she’d woken up alone in the bed and free of any possible witnesses. This time, there could have been witnesses.

  Like the one who was kind of staring down at her from the prop of his three times folded over pillow, with a knowing look in his bright sparking eyes.

  She stopped breathing momentarily. Tried to think of possible excuses for making a dying goose noise. Only she couldn’t think of any, because her brain had ceased functioning. Every part of her had ceased functioning, apparently. That was what happened when you had a sex dream about someone who slept right next to you on a nightly basis.

  God, how stupid was her brain? What had it been thinking? Jamie was obviously, clearly a light sleeper. He was always the first one gone in the morning. Five am, to Blake’s more reasonable Seven am. Sometimes he’d make a noise in the night and be up and out of bed, pacing around—though the noises he made were always of a completely appropriate nature.

  Argh, no, the zombies are eating me! That sort of thing. Never oh God yes, yes, come all over my pussy, Jamie.

  She looked into his deep blue eyes, and tried to assess whether the above had been said. True, she’d definitely honked like a goose. But had he been awake for the whole show? Had she said other things, more incriminating things, with words and diagrams and oh no, oh no.

  Why did he look so…warm?

  “Bad dream?” he said, and he sounded absolutely sincere. It didn’t seem like a tease at all. But really, how could she be sure? It was always so hard to tell with Jamie—with both of them, in fact. One spent his time as closed down as a rock. The other behaved in such a jumbled, jerky, scrappy fashion…she just couldn’t pin him down.

  Then her mind went to the image of literally pinning him down, of course, and there she was. Back where she’d started, in Hornyland.

  “Uh,” she said, because that was the national anthem of Hornyland. Such a pisser, really, that it was so much sweeter than the national anthem of Zombie World—because she couldn’t act on it, of course. She couldn’t act on anything in Hornyland. Hornyland was weird when six billion people were dead and Kelsey had taken a bullet in the head and they weren’t attracted to her, anyway.

  Right?

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.”

  She flushed red, thinking of how rude her dream had made him. How she’d thought about him being a nice guy because he let sex things happen to her. He just was a nice guy, for God’s sake!

  So very, very nice. Especially with his hair kind of falling over his forehead like that and his sparking eyes swirling into hers and that good sharp, strong edge of his right cheekbone. Sometimes, Blake seemed like the handsome one.

  Because Jamie was scrappy and silly and not obvious with it. Until he leaned in close and whispered that he had dreams all the time. Then things were different. Then she felt so suddenly close to him that she was sure she could hear his heart beating through his skin, through his t-shirt, through everything. She’d probably be able to hear him on the other side of the world.

  “I dreamt one time that we were swimming in the lake,” he said and the building warmth returned as though it had never been away. It didn’t even need something particularly suggestive, as it turned out. Swimming was enough to fire it back up again, apparently.

  Well, swimming and his mouth very close to hers. And maybe that little hint of…did he have an arm around her? He was propped up on his elbow, now, and she felt almost positive that he’d dropped his forearm over her pillow, above her head.

  Strange, really, that it felt more intimate than the dancing had, when he’d put actual arms around her.

  “And you know, we were just kind of splashing around…”

  She savored his voice. The texture of it—jus’ kinda splashin’ arown. Every word he cut off or couldn’t be bothered to finish, and how wide his sentences seemed to yaw. It was probably the reason she’d had him talking all the time, in her dreams. If he sounded sexy when talking about swimming, how sexy would he be when discussing dirty things?

  Oh, very. Very.

  “Then the water started turning red, and I could feel all these hands, clawing at my legs and I knew any second they were gonna pull you down. I knew. ‘Cause that’s what my dreams are always like.”

  Or, you know. Not sexy at all.

  “You okay, June-bug?” he asked. Probably because she’d flinched when the warmth and happy swimming had abruptly turned to something blood red and dark.

  And now she was blushing again, too, because really. What sort of insensitive fucking person dreamt about sex when everyone around her still lived in Tortureville? He’d probably seen his wife and family eaten in a swimming pool. He’d probably tried to get to them across acres of water, before the zombie lifeguard tore off their limbs.

  Jesus. Jesus. It wasn’t even funny, thinking about zombie lifeguards. It was awful. Jamie wouldn’t appreciate her apocalypse humor, the way Kelsey had.

  “Hey, it’s okay. We wake up again, right?”

  He had a hand on the side of her face, now. No doubt her mortification just looked like womanly distress or something like it and he felt the best way to cure it was to touch her hair, and her cheek, and was he rubbing a thumb over her temple?

  He was, and she couldn’t help herself. She just had to close her eyes and savor it a little—because he did it so rarely, so rarely. The dancing had seemed like an electric jolt to her spine precisely because it had involved so much contact.

  In a place where contact wasn’t allowed. She’d seen to that, the first night she’d spent there. She’d let them see her skittish and sleepless, freaked out by their maleness and unable to function. And now they were too scared to give her so much as a handshake.

  She thought about saying to him, then—please shake my hand. Just to see what kind of response that would get. Just to see if he would. He could start by sliding his fingers over hers, and rubbing his palm over each one, then…

  She opened her eyes and he was closer. Much closer. That one too-daring thumb had found its way to making circles over her temple, and they were lovely. Not sexual, exactly. Lovely in a different, but still warm way. Soothing, she thought, as her eyelids went heavy and her breathing slowed and everything turned to syrup.

  She became aware—somewhat absently—that his arm had stopped hovering in the air, somewhere above her chest. He had laid it down over her collarbone to better facilitate temple rubbing.

  “Feel better?” he asked and she thought God, yes. Most of her didn’t even feel all that embarrassed, anymore. He’d rubbed away her humiliation, along with her sudden lifeguard terror.

  And oh. He was so, so handsome. Just really handsome, up this close.

  “You’re kinda still trembling, June-bug,” he said and she wondered if she’d really been trembling before. Or was he just looking for a reason, a dream excuse for the minute tremors that were shaking their way through her body?

  “Am I?” she asked. It came out slightly breathless, which seemed like a weird thing. Plus, he was kind of moving his face down. Which seemed even weirder. Why was he moving his face down toward her face?

  She tried to recall why people did that, again, and kept coming up against nothing at all—until the very last moment. Until his warm breath brushed against her mouth and the heat humming through her body reached apocalyptic levels and, oh dear God in heaven, he was doing that thing. He was doing that thing!

  She thought they’d called it a kisp, back in the olden days of no-zombies. Or was it a tiss? Tiss sounded more li
ke the action she remembered.

  Though the thing he was doing hardly resembled the echoes of said action, in her head. This wasn’t like Martin Campbell, in the backseat of his Dad’s Ford. It wasn’t even James Parker, outside the movie theatre.

  No, no. This made her hands spasm into fists. Her whole body spasmed, in fact. She couldn’t stop it going rigid—though it was fortunate really that it did, because she couldn’t for the life in her remember what it was she was supposed to do.

  Kiss him back? That seemed like a ridiculously unobtainable goal. She’d only just remembered that the word was kiss, for God’s sake. Her eyes were wide and her body had turned to stone and his mouth was so, so soft. Unbearably soft, really. He didn’t push, and he didn’t pressurize her into anything further, and his lips just molded against hers as though they’d always meant to get around to it.

  She wondered, then, if he’d really known. About the dream, and how it hadn’t featured any zombies whatsoever. It certainly seemed as though he’d guessed, now that he was here kissing her mouth and touching her body and looking right at her with his big sparking eyes.

  Though when he finally pulled away, he looked unsure, to say the least. She could tell he did, despite the fact that most of her wanted to concentrate on how kiss-fucked his mouth appeared, already. His parted lips looked slick, and red.

  It made her want to go in for another, before he’d decided if the first had been given the okay.

  “I don’t know why I did that,” he said, but that was fine. After all, she understood perfectly. He’d done it because she’d made a goose-like mating call.

  She thought about saying it was cool. Everything was cool—apart from her body, which had turned to molten lava. But sensible words wouldn’t come, they just wouldn’t come. And besides—he’d only given her that tiny little taste. Did he really think it was enough?

  She had to just…get at him. Everything in her surged up, up to her neck muscles and her mouth muscles and anything that would mean their lips came together again. Move her brain said. Move up to him and show him that it’s totally cool. He thinks you’ve turned to granite because you’re scared, for fuck’s sake.

  Though it wasn’t so easy in practice. Her neck muscles obeyed and her head sort of bobbed in his general direction, but the whole operation turned out so jerky. Like she’d decided to kiss him in spasming stages. Like she was an idiot who couldn’t make up her mind.

  He even said, “Oh, no—you don’t have to.”

  As though he’d somehow managed to pressgang her into a romantic smooch and now she felt forced into round two. Lord, how awful. It was so awful, in fact, that it gave her the push she needed to put a hand on his face. To go that extra couple of inches and find his mouth with hers.

  It was definitely different the second time around. The first—maybe you could have mistaken that for a brother/sister kiss. A slightly incestuous brother/sister kiss, but even so. It had retained a note of pleasant chastity.

  This one was…less chaste. Maybe because her hand got hold of a hank of his thick hair and clenched it into a fist.

  But really, could she be blamed for that? Her hands wanted to be fists, apparently. They could no longer tell the difference between fighting, and fucking. The adrenaline went up and all they heard was go, go, go now now, now, harder, faster more.

  She could hear her heart hammering in her teeth. This wasn’t like the dream sex, all stuffed full of slow building warmth. She could feel herself wanting to lunge at him and eat him, and only weird zombie thoughts held her back.

  Not that the zombie thoughts were really getting a foothold, however. The feel of his wet mouth and his teeth clashing with hers and the sudden electric slide of his tongue…yeah. All of those things pushed zombies way, way down on the list of current concerns.

  He tasted like cinnamon. Actually tasted of it! And every time he moved just a little bit—slanted his mouth over hers, turned a little to the left, pulled back just bit—she could feel the real alive grate of his stubble against her skin.

  How long since she’d felt that? God—forever, forever. It didn’t even qualify as a sense-memory. It was like digging up some long buried ancient artifact. The feel of stubble against skin. The hot, wet taste of someone else’s mouth.

  Then the burst of pleasure that all of the above prompted. It made her want to kick out of the covers. They were too hot and too much. Everything was too hot and too much.

  Apart from his hands, which didn’t want to touch her anywhere.

  His left remained resolutely on the pillow above her head. The right had immediately lifted off her collarbone the moment she pressed her mouth to his. In fact, she could sense that whole arm, hovering somewhere just above her body as though touching her anywhere else…well. That would just be too much.

  But it was okay because her hands had no such qualms, apparently. She squeezed that fistful of his hair, as though it would yield juice if she really put some effort into it. She wormed her other hand free of the covers and used it to bunch the t-shirt material at his shoulder into a big crinkled mess.

  For a moment, it was sort of like a tug-of-war. With hair, and t-shirts. If she just did it enough—twisted him hard enough, showed him she wanted him enough to practically wrestle him into a kiss—he’d crack. He’d put his hand down, on her collarbone.

  Or other places.

  It was going to happen. She could feel him teetering on the brink and he definitely made a noise into her mouth. One that sounded suspiciously like a goose, dying. Then another noise—this time like something bursting and letting all of its tension out.

  His hand shifted on the pillow, above her head. He was going to do it. He was going to touch her hair—any second, any second—

  When Blake shifted, she couldn’t blame Jamie for reacting. Couldn’t at all. Because she did exactly the same thing, right down to a hand over her wet mouth.

  She jerked away and bottled everything up again like stuffing a fifty foot tall genie back into a thimble, then just laid there, trying not to pant.

  As though they were guilty. They were guilty.

  Kaboom, she thought, and tried her best not to laugh the laugh of the damned.

  Chapter Five

  They didn’t talk about it. Sometimes she felt sure she could see him thinking about it, but who knew, really? It took a smarter person than her to figure it out. She’d never even been in a complicated, weird relationship before the apocalypse.

  Now, here…it just seemed like a lot of pressure on her already over-taxed brain. Which was good in a way, because it got her thinking about something other than slo-mo death. But even so—what the fuck did all of this mean?

  She would have killed to know what they talked about in their alone time. Caught herself sneaking out when they were in the middle of a game, just to see if she could catch what they were saying.

  Maybe something along the lines of—

  I swear to God, I won’t make out with the only girl left in the entire world.

  Oh, hey—me neither, buddy. That would be weird.

  Then they had a manly handshake in her head and vowed not to have sex ever again with anyone. Unless they maybe found a far prettier girl, of course, at which point they could, like, take turns with the plain one.

  She covered her face with her hand. Was that what she really believed? It didn’t even make any sense. Blake didn’t want her, even if Jamie had kind of moved away from her as though Blake had declared undying love, the other day.

  And Jamie didn’t want her either, even though he’d kissed her like her mouth had been made of candy in the middle of a candy-drought. He’d probably just slipped, and fell. Onto her lips.

  She covered her face with both her hands. It was easy enough to do, here, in the storeroom. They weren’t around to ask her what was wrong. She didn’t have to answer them with something crazy like “I think we’ve trapped ourselves into some kind of boiling love triangle. In the middle of the apocalypse. The zombie a
pocalypse. The zombie apocalypse has caused our boiling love triangle.”

  Dear God, it sounded even more insane than she’d feared. Though still not quite insane enough to distract her away from sudden noises and the automatic gripping of the crowbar she’d taken to carrying around with her outside—ever since the missing Blake dream.

  She stood and checked left and right down the aisle. Just like crossing a road, only with more zombies. Only with more tinkling fear, playing underneath everything. Because of course, the downside to the storeroom was its near-creepiness.

  It was basically a bunker, built beneath the ground. Honest to God stairs led down from the muddy forest floor to a lined and wired room, separated into two aisles by a vast metal shelving unit, like something out of Wal-Mart. Hell, for all she knew it had come from Wal-Mart.

  Everything else in it looked that way. The opposite aisle to the one she was currently stood in housed fuel containers, batteries, other supplies of that nature. A big, slick generator, that fed the house. Tools. Firearms—some of a kind she’d never seen before in her life. They’d made her briefly see Jamie in yet another new light—as though he’d actually been some crazy militia-type woodsman, stockpiling for the revolution.

  Even though she kind of knew that wasn’t true. When she’d asked him what sort of society he’d go about rebuilding, the night before, he’d replied one where everybody took better care of each other.

  And she could feel that that was true in everything he’d built here. In this aisle, she could see all kinds of things beyond simple rations. How-To manuals on comforting subjects. Carefully saved boxes of candy kisses and pancake mix. Just good stuff—warm stuff. She would have run her hands all over it again if she hadn’t been wired to the noise, somewhere in the direction of those dark, narrow stairs.

  She let the crowbar slide down a little in her hand. You couldn’t get a good hit if you grasped it in the middle. It needed to be on the end, so they couldn’t get too close. Put some distance between you and them.

  Even though most of her was starting to slowly, slowly realize that it wasn’t going to be them. It was going to be Jamie—probably come to see where she was. How awful, that him doing so seemed almost as terrifying as the other option. The zombie option.