She held on tight.
“That better?” he asked, and it was that—such a silly question—that made something sting behind her eyes.
Yeah. Yeah. Holding someone’s hand was better.
“You’re shaking, again.”
It wasn’t a question but she felt as though he kind of wanted an answer anyway. Sadly, she couldn’t give one.
“Is it a…zombie apocalypse kind of shaking? Or a different kind of shaking?”
Thank God he was fumbling toward the words, anyway. Thank God, thank God.
“Blake told me that…”
Oh, he was definitely fumbling, all right. Almost there.
“So you know, if you wanted to I could…”
What went after could? Jesus, what went after could? She felt pretty sure it wasn’t kill the zombies in the nightmare I’m sure you’ve just had.
It was the other thing. The other thing.
“I mean…do you know what I’m talking about here, or am I just doodling around out on this limb on my own?”
Someone had stuffed dry earth into her mouth. No words would come. She had to just communicate with him through the medium of desperate, frantic nodding and some truly epic hand squeezing.
He was going to lose a finger, any second.
“Well, all right. All right.”
Dear God that could mean anything. All right. It sounded like now I’m gonna fuck you, but oh there were so many gradients in between. Handjobs and mouths on things and oh, oh—sixty-nines!
Lord in heaven, how she wanted to sixty-nine his ass off.
So it was something of a disappointment, when all right turned out to mean let’s make out. A bit. Not a real lot, or anything.
He knew. He knew what the trembling meant and the shouting in her sleep and the flush all over her face and neck and just how horny she was, how unendurably horny, and this was all she got? A hot, wet, tongue kiss?
Somehow that was even worse than the teasing promise of her dreams. It teetered on the brink of dirty but wouldn’t go over.
She had to push it over. Nothing else for it, really. He wasn’t going to take it there on his own—either because of Blake on the other side of her with his back turned, or because he wanted to be cautious. Go slow. She’d been a lesbian five minutes ago, for Christ’s sake!
So she had to just do it. Just push his hand down her body. Of course, she felt bad about it—there he was, being all nice and lacing their fingers together and all of that stuff. And here she was, using that hand holding to cajole him into touching her.
Though he didn’t exactly put up a lot of resistance. In fact, once she got him to somewhere around her belly, he let go of her hand all on his own. He moved further down, then down some more, all slow as syrup but twice as nice. She could feel her thighs trembling before he’d even gotten to the good stuff.
Then he got to the good stuff and she forgot how to function, briefly. Any semblance of competent kissing went by the wayside. Her lips kind of opened and closed, but that was about the most of it.
He had a hand between her legs. Actually between her legs. Like in the dream with Blake only so much more solid and heated and oddly tentative at the same time.
Blissful. Just utterly blissful. She’d pressed her own hand between her legs before while here. Once, in the shower. She’d even dared to press the heel of her palm to her sex while in the bed with them…but it just wasn’t the same. Relieving the ache yourself and having some other human being actually offer you some contact—it wasn’t the same.
She made a noise into his mouth. Couldn’t help it. And when he rubbed that hand over her—just ever so lightly—she couldn’t help urging her body against that minute contact, either.
Like scratching an itch, only the itch had become a plague on her soul and the scratch was in no way deep enough. It wasn’t even an embarrassment that when he rubbed harder she could feel her own excessive wetness, dampening the material. No, God no. How could it be, when her vocal chords were making little mewling animal noises, and her back had kind of bowed off the bed, and she was apparently clutching at him, really clutching?
She didn’t dare open her eyes, just in case he looked appalled. He didn’t seem appalled—or at least, not in a way she could tell through the medium of his kisses, which were getting hotter and wetter by the moment—but who knew, really?
Maybe he revealed his disgust through more tongue and a lot of sighing. Maybe he let it show by rubbing in heavier, bolder strokes between her legs, while his arm slid around and underneath her shoulders so he could hold her tighter to him.
Yeah, those were probably signs of disgust. Plus, after a moment of this agonizing rubbing, he did pull away. He pulled away and murmured all hoarse and good in her ear—easy baby, easy. As though she was going nuts and needed to be calmed, which in truth she knew she was.
She couldn’t let go of the back of his shirt. It had rooted itself to her palm, or she had rooted herself to it. Her sex felt like a miniature heart between her legs, and all she could think was—please, please just put your hand inside. Just touch my bare pussy. Just touch my clit, just once, God please.
Which seemed like a ridiculous and pathetic prayer to make. She’d begged for so many other things, so many more important things—why was this one so vital, now? Because it seemed so. When he touched her, and one finger almost slid into the groove between, it felt more vital than breathing or eating or sleeping.
She was going to come, and he’d barely done anything at all, really. She wasn’t even sure if there’d been any actual contact against her clit, or her nipples, or a whole variety of other erogenous zones that were going begging.
But she was definitely going to come, anyway. She said some things into his hair that were not words, then he pressed the heel of his palm right down over everything until intense pleasure tried to shove its way through her body. Even worse—when she twisted against him, she could feel the hot, hard brand of his obvious erection pressing heavily into her thigh.
And that was just…too much. He was turned on. Actually and really turned on—and he wasn’t even trying to hide it, particularly. For a brief moment, she wasn’t even sure if he was keeping still—it could have been that he was rutting up against her. Just a little. Nothing too obvious or crude, of course. Just enough to make her moan his name.
Which didn’t seem like a good or sane thing to do. Especially when Blake suddenly moved around somewhere behind her, and neither she nor Jamie moved one inch. No jumping apart occurred. In truth she felt they were a little past jumping apart, and right into if you move away, I’ll kill you.
Surely Blake would understand that? Right? Was his hand on her left breast a sign that he understood that?
Probably not, if the sudden size of her eyes was anything to go by.
Of course, she tried to keep them small. She attempted to minimize her shock by not moving a whole lot, and pressing her face into the turn of Jamie’s throat. But it was kind of difficult with Jamie’s hand between her legs and Blake’s hand on her left breast.
Not even kind of, really. Just absolutely difficult. She wanted to turn and look at him—to see what he was doing, maybe, or understand his intentions more—but that seemed absolutely difficult, too.
And besides—she knew without looking what he was doing. He’d turned over onto his other side so that he could see everything. And once that was done, he’d put a nice, friendly hand on her boob.
Oh, and he was jerking off. She could pretty much tell that he was jerking off.
What more was there to say, really? Except for lots of things that sounded like the garbled pleasure-stuffed noises of the deranged. And though she tried with all of her might to not be deranged, it was just impossible with two men on either side of her, obviously turned on but not trying to push their luck, touching her in a really pleasant, almost-like-a-handshake sort of way.
Only, you know. In a way that was also designed to achieve her maximum possible pleasur
e.
She felt almost bad about it, after a moment. Like she should offer them handshakes in return. And she would have done, she really would have done if Jamie hadn’t chosen that moment to finally, finally reach her clit through what must have been acres of material, and Blake hadn’t thumbed her nipple in this really soft, almost absent-minded sort of way.
At which point she could only hang on as great rolls of pleasure made their way through her body.
She tried not to be too embarrassing about it. But it was hard, when her body had kind of forgotten what an orgasm felt like. Her body did the equivalent of someone saying what the fuck was that? It jerked, and shuddered, and wouldn’t let up on all of the sparks of shivering sensation and the little aching aftershocks.
Though she couldn’t feel too bad about losing control of herself. Not when Blake was, apparently, a total loudmouth in bed. He moaned and gasped and made appallingly rude little guttural noises until she couldn’t think straight about anything at all. Wasn’t this the guy who had trouble saying please pass the peas, usually?
Jesus. Jesus. How on earth was he going to communicate with her after this? How was Jamie?
In fact, how on earth were any of them going to say anything to each other ever again?
Chapter Six
They’d done it. They’d actually done something. And though she kept trying to wake up and realize it was all a dream, reality wasn’t having any of it. Never mind that dreams never came true. Reality didn’t give a shit about that.
It just wanted her to accept that she’d had two guys fondle her in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
But boy, was it ever hard going. For a start, they didn’t seem to want to say too much about it. Like it wasn’t that big a deal. So they’d all masturbated together like horny maniacs. So what? People did worse things every day.
Like eat each other.
Really, it was only natural that they’d progressed to this. And she knew in her heart that she should have been relieved. After they’d all dozed and/or pretended to be asleep, they’d eaten breakfast together. Jamie and Blake had still pal-ed around. Everybody could still look each other in the eye.
It hardly seemed worth mentioning that everywhere they’d touched her, they’d left an imprint like a burn. She could still feel Jamie’s mouth pressed into the skin of her throat—hell, she could still feel Blake’s breath pressed there.
They’d left a trail and the trail led down, down into the land of more, more.
She couldn’t stop touching all of those points—even though doing so made her look like a serial masturbator. Who needed that? What kind of person really wanted to see her touching her left breast all the time?
Apart from a person like Jamie, who’d lost just a little of his restraint somewhere along the way to mutual masturbation and now occasionally watched her with steady, heated eyes. And touched her in odd, intimate ways when she was least expecting it.
Though bizarrely, it still didn’t tweak her comfort zones. He did it all so amiably and they were both so casual about it all…what did it matter if Jamie pushed a hand under the thick mess of her hair, to suddenly grip the nape of her neck?
Like a massage. Like a light and totally casual massage. Like something that made her liquid, anyway.
And Blake…well. Blake was a little more reserved with it. A little more cautious. But she could feel the shift, anyway. He batted at her when she said something teasing, like—is that a gray sweatshirt again, today, Blake? Don’t push the boat out too far, okay?
He even smiled—and that sure was something. Real, wolfish smiles, from Blake.
Plus the next day he wore an actual blue sweater. Which seemed like some kind of progress, all right. Especially when he looked at her with this sharp little spark in his eyes, and Jamie slapped the table, and she just thought—
I should have made a move on them, last night.
They’d been waiting for it. She knew they had. They hadn’t even slept facing away from her—Jamie had dozed off almost spooning her right side, for God’s sake. She just couldn’t fathom what had stopped her.
Maybe it was due to the easy way the last thing had happened? Just almost like a mistake, like something you did for a buddy when they were feeling low, like…she didn’t know.
And still couldn’t fucking say.
Though she’d made up her mind—tonight. Tonight was going to be the night when she had some kind of awkward conversation with them about it. About how it wasn’t like basketball and they couldn’t just fall into a game. They could do stuff and ask for stuff and that was cool. Right?
Absolutely. And after that, she was going to fuck both of their brains out.
She wasn’t sure if she’d ever thought of a more excellent plan than that one.
* * * *
Unfortunately, there was one pretty big and glaring problem with her excellent plan. And it came to her when Jamie said, too brightly and too cheerily—
“We’re gonna take a short trip out. To get some extra fuel for the winter.”
She kind of hated him for using the phrase “short trip out”. Like he was just popping down to Wal-Mart for some barbecue supplies. And she would have hated him harder if it hadn’t then occurred to her with some measure of embarrassment that she could get something too, while they were out.
In fact, it was a necessity that she get something. They were clearly planning on going without her but that didn’t matter. She needed this thing, and they could go fuck themselves. What did they think this was? The age of chivalry?
“Great. I’ll come with you.”
That stuck a bag of sand in their craws. She could see it immediately on their faces—a sudden shadow passing over. One that made her feel kind of bad, for thinking that age of chivalry thought. And kind of good, that they felt that way about her.
It made actual mortal terror happen when they considered her coming with them and possibly getting torn limb from limb. But that was okay because just thinking about them both flying away in the helicopter to meet their certain doom made her unable to breathe briefly.
Jamie went to say something, but she never found out what. It got stuck in his mouth or his throat or someplace else that she liked to call “my empty heart cavity”.
“I think what Jamie’s trying to say is,” Blake started, and she kind of really loved him, for that. “We need someone to stay here. And that’s…that’s not ‘cause you’re a woman. It’s just…simple math.”
“Yeah. Math,” Jamie echoed. He seemed excited, suddenly, as though Blake had introduced the most gripping concept of all time.
“I mean, there are two of us. And only one of you. If we lose one of us, there’s still…help me out here, buddy. I think I’ve started talking in a different language.”
“Nah, it’s coming through clear enough,” Jamie said, then turned to her. She didn’t think him turning signaled that something good was on its way. “If you die, there’s no more of you. If one of us dies, there’s a spare.”
Yep. Definitely not something good.
“Don’t talk like that. Neither of you are a spare.” The words snapped out of her, good and strong. And they stayed that way through the even harder part of this speech. “If another woman came along, is that what I’d be? The spare?”
Though immediately after she’d spoken, it became clear that neither of them had considered that way of looking at the whole thing. No. They’d been thinking of it in a different way altogether, apparently.
And she knew they had because they both laughed. As though she’d said something crazy.
“Not like that, like—” Blake started, then Jamie finished it. Or at least, he tried to.
“No no no, June-y…come on. You don’t love us, so it don’t matter. Whereas we—”
He stopped mid-speech, as though suddenly sensible of the only possible end to that sentence. And the only possible end meant…well it meant…
It meant that there’s no more of you took on a
different slant, altogether. He wasn’t using the word you in the woman way. As in “there’s only one woman”. He was using it in the you’re special sort of way. In the I love you sort of way.
She thought of Blake saying you’re amazing three hundred times, and went a bit dizzy. Then tried to say something back—just anything at all, really—and wound up taking a lot of little weird breaths, instead.
What if she said it back and Jamie didn’t mean that? It had only been a few months, after all. Also—what if she said it back then they went off into Zombie World and never returned?
“I’m coming with you, no arguing. And if you try to, or you try flying off in that helicopter without me, I’ll swim across that damned lake after you. Got it?”
They didn’t argue once water excursions had been mentioned. And they argued even less when they revealed their attitude to zombie safety, and she found she had a lot to say about it.
For a start, neither of them seemed to think it necessary to wear neck or wrist guards. They didn’t even have any in their entire extensive armory! She searched through it and came up with gas masks, face protectors of various kinds, HAZMAT suits.
But no goddamned wrist or neck guards—to the point where Blake actually asked her what she was doing at the kitchen table, cutting up belts and poking new holes through the leather.
She had to explain. Actually explain.
“Act like you’re going to swing at me,” she said, which sounded like a good, solid, practical thing to say, despite the awesome nerves that were currently threading through her system at the thought of Blake being this clueless.
“You want me to…pretend to punch you?”
He was growing a bit of sarcasm, steadily. Day by day. She couldn’t fault him for it—it was comforting. Like the real him, coming back.
“Yeah—just in slow-mo. Swing your arm.”
She stood and he was good enough to follow. But he hesitated on the fake punch.
“What is this going to prove?”
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