Reawakening

by Stein, Charlotte

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Oh honey, I don’t anymore,” he said, and he sounded so sure. He even made her look at him, though she didn’t want to. “I don’t need to.”

  His expression wasn’t the one she’d expected. It was warm and oddly satisfied in a way that gave her some understanding of why he wasn’t in any rush to get to the end of the marathon and break through the tape. Why would he be when everything was so sweet now and good—as though all of that had just been a bad dream?

  “I used to think that pain—pain was the only thing that could take me away on a tide of nothin’. But I was wrong,” he said as he stroked over her face. “Pleasure’s better, June-bug. Pleasure, oh pleasure is better.”

  And when those hands slid down over her back like he’d found a new thing to map out and it was her, she knew. He was right. Dear Lord, he was right.

  Oh, no one in the world had ever been as right as he was.

  Chapter Twelve

  It took until he was over her, trying and failing to screw that big thick thing of his into her suddenly tiny pussy for her to realize why he’d probably been a gentleman and let Blake go first. Though strangely, thinking about him wanting the way paved for him made her feel hotter, rather than what she expected it do to—make her blush and not want to really think about it.

  It was just a shame that the way hadn’t been paved, at all. She could feel how slick she was—like oil on leather—and just the thought of Blake’s come all slippery down there gave her the same kind of sick thrill as all those paving ideas had.

  But it wasn’t working.

  Probably because her entire body felt so jammed tight she could have made diamonds out of coal just by squeezing kind of hard. Her brain said the more you want it… But her brain was just a teasing, mean little idiot.

  Porn always made this look so easy. The guy had a cock the size of a ham hock? No problem! Just shove it right up that chick’s ass—hell, she could probably take it in her nostril if you push hard enough.

  But back here in zombie semi-reality…

  “Goddammit.”

  “Just go for it, okay? You’re not going to cleave me in two.”

  “Hey—it’s happened. Don’t you think it hasn’t.”

  “Oh Christ.”

  “It’s just it’s been so many hundreds of years since I did this I was kinda hoping it had shrunk in the meantime.”

  “I hate to break it to you, hon, but your massive cock isn’t laundry.”

  He laughed, but in the middle of it he somehow managed a deadly serious, “God, I want to fuck you so bad.”

  She tried to shove downwards on him, but he wasn’t having any of it. He shied away just at the last second, just as she was certain that slick passage was going to take him in without a hitch.

  It made an ache start up where the lack of him was.

  “Then just come on—please.”

  His head hung down suddenly but she knew why. Lust had dragged it there.

  “Ohhh that almost sounds like you’re begging for it. Are you begging?”

  She nudged her hips up to his and found something hard to rub herself against. Another millimeter and it would be on her clit—the way Blake had done it. God, just the memory of that sensation, that firm, slick sensation rubbing and rubbing…

  “Will it get you in me faster?”

  “It might.”

  “God, you’re so… Okay—please. I’m begging you. Fuck me.”

  “I dunno. What was it you wanted, again?”

  He was pressing down just ever so slightly. She could feel it. Every now and then, the very tip of his cock just brushed over her swollen bud. She wasn’t even sure how it was swollen again, but it was and Lord, why couldn’t he just stop being such a tease?

  “I want you to fuck me.”

  “Be more specific.”

  Apparently, he liked to hear dirty talk as much as he liked to dish it out. The response was too quick for it to mean anything but—though she was glad of it. The rush of his words made it easy to hit something back, even when her mouth and her mind wanted to fumble it.

  “I want your big cock in my hot, wet cunt.”

  “Oh yeah, cunt’s good. I like that. Be a potty mouth again, June-bug.”

  “Fuck me baby, fill me up until I’m bursting. I can’t wait any longer, I’m dying. I’m so wet and swollen and aching for you—come on and do it to me. Come on and fuck me hard until I beg you to stop—that’s the only way I want to get on my hands and knees. When I’m begging you to stop.”

  He bared his teeth for that one. Spread her thighs one-handed, as wide as they would go. And he did it in a jerky way, too, as though her words were just a little too much. A little bit past what he could take.

  Then he did something that was past what she could take. Sudden—as though he wanted it to shock, which it absolutely did. He was just so direct and firm about it—two fingers over her clit in quick circles, until she let out a gasp and put her head back.

  Of course, she knew why he’d done it. Once that pleasure was busy gushing through her body, sliding into her took on a new ease. He just pushed into her in one smooth glide, to the point where she was sure she couldn’t take any more.

  It was probably around the halfway mark. She could see him fighting not to shove or go deeper when there was nowhere else to get to, and his face had taken on such a strained and disbelieving look that she had to imagine what it must feel like. All that slick, tight heat, hugging him like a glove.

  He’d probably forgotten how it felt, too—the way Blake had. Blake, who she could feel watching them even though he was still pretending to be asleep. He’d turned over somewhere around the word cunt and occasionally she caught a glimpse of those baby blues out of the corner of her eye.

  It made her want to tell him—don’t pretend. You don’t have to be asleep. And she would have, if it wasn’t for that lowdown feeling that this was different. Just a little different.

  The sound of Jamie’s voice was different. His moans were deeper, more unsettled. The things he said had lost their dirty edge and carried instead a sense of desperation.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t…I don’t…Remind me what I do now, again?”

  But it was useless because she couldn’t remember, either. It had seemed simple when Blake did it, now it was hard. Impossible, almost—and not just because of the solid pressure of him between her legs.

  She moved a little and it was like urging every nerve in her body against something rough and unyielding. Not to mention the shaky moan he let out, and the way he begged her not to.

  “Just wait,” he said. “It feels too good—I need you to wait.”

  But the thing of it was—she didn’t want to. She wanted him to come inside her, hard and uncontrolled and too eager, and she wanted him to moan the way he was doing as he went off. He’d been waiting long enough. It was okay for him to take her and use her and get to that pleasure he’d spoken so gloriously about.

  “I wish I could,” she said, then borrowed something from him. That little running on the spot thing he’d done. That little jig—so wired and kind of painful, only not here. No, no. It was gorgeous, here, to urge herself against him and get the thick bar of his cock right over that sweet spot inside her.

  He was pressed tight to it, too. She could almost make it out—that little swell, that bundle of nerves—whenever she rocked a certain way or…hell. She didn’t even have to rock a certain way. She could have moved off the bed and out the door and still felt his dick in that good, good place.

  And that feeling—it was on her face. She knew it was. It was all over her. He was kind of trembling a little, but she understood that she was too, as though that break of pleasure had plans to wipe them out.

  It was like oblivion and oh he was giving into it, now. He rolled his hips and rocked into her, and when she cried out for more he got one arm beneath the nape of her neck, beneath that scar, and held her to him so he could rock her
harder. Better. More.

  She clung to him. She had to. It was less like fucking, now, and more like holding on. And when he panted in her ear—

  “Fuck, I’m gonna come—that okay? Tell me it’s okay.”

  She had to let go. She had to let go while clinging to him so tight there’d be bruises tomorrow.

  He was leaving bruises on her too, but oh they were so sweet. Little bursts of pain through the pleasure, little reminders that she needed to breathe and take it and feel it all, then—

  “Oh God yes, Jamie, Jamie!”

  She knew it was obvious she was coming even without the shouting. She could feel herself clenching too tight around him, could feel every muscle in her body tensing and tensing. It came close to too much, all those waves of sensation pushing through her. And she could tell it did for him, too, because for once he couldn’t speak. She could feel the breaths behind the sounds he wasn’t making against the side of her face—all those gasps then finally, finally, such a guttural shout of pleasure.

  It was delicious. It was more than delicious. It was life and love and everything good in the world, it was, it was. If this was it until the end of the world, well that was all right by her.

  It’d be all right by anyone, she reckoned.

  * * * *

  When she woke, Blake was gone. She knew it immediately—the same way a person might realize that they’d lost an arm in the middle of a sleep. Jamie was there—solid and heavy against her back, hard again in a way that made her want to giggle—but when she stretched out her arms the bed was empty of Blake.

  And, of course, it could have been that he’d woken up thirsty and decided to get a drink. Or maybe he’d gotten a cramp and taken himself off for a stroll. But somehow, she didn’t think so. Her mind turned to the way she’d clung to Jamie and how Blake had laid such careful eyes on her and everything else, and she just couldn’t think so.

  Though really, it was the words that clinched it. The ones that Jamie had mouthed at her. Had Blake seen them, those words? Had he assumed that maybe she’d mouthed them back? She didn’t know and even if she had it was impossible to tell if they’d had an effect on him.

  After all, it wasn’t as though she was some great prize. Maybe he didn’t care that she might have told Jamie she loved him, in silence, in secret. He was far too busy with other concerns, like getting up in the middle of the night to leave her with her heart’s true desire.

  She winced, in spite of herself. It sounded like bullshit in her head—the idea that it was Jamie and only Jamie she cared for—but it didn’t sound like bullshit when she put the words in Blake’s mouth. It sounded totally reasonable and sane and the more she thought about it the more the Blake in her head became casual and dismissive.

  Oh yeah, the Blake in her head said. I don’t give a crap if you love him and not me. I’m off now on a boat to find some babe who’ll fuck me like they’re hanging on to a rock in a storm.

  She didn’t know what was worse about fake-Blake. That he might care enough to sound that defensive or that he wanted a babe and she wasn’t it. Though admittedly, that last notion made her wince even harder than the heart’s true desire thought had. How self-absorbed, to be concerned that the third corner of your ménage might want another person all to himself.

  She tried not to hate herself too hard for thinking it. Unfortunately, it was really tough going.

  She slid out of bed as carefully as she could. When Jamie slept, he slept heavy—but there was no sense in testing that theory. Let him sleep on in peace, while she dealt with whatever this was.

  And it was something. Blake wasn’t even anywhere in the house—he’d gone all the way out and onto the porch and though she hesitated to open the front door when it was so dark and creepy in the woods with no lights, she had to go to him. People didn’t sit on a porch at night in the backend of autumn because they felt good and happy. They did it because they probably wanted zombies to come out of the woods and eat them.

  Or because they wanted to do some of the odd, private things she almost caught them doing, sometimes. Like Blake with the little wooden horses he seemed to like witling. Badly. And Jamie with his guitar and his collection of weird, acoustic pop songs. She swore she’d almost come across him playing Girls Just Want To Have Fun, the other day.

  “I’ve got absolutely no clue how you can sit out here staring at the woods when it’s so dark the trees could be anything,” she said, by way of some kind of opener. She probably needed to say something much more serious, like don’t leave our bed like that in the middle of the night, but replacing one scary thing with another felt much more comfortable.

  And it continued to do so even after he’d jumped about a mile, as though she’d terrified the life right out of him.

  “Jesus, June. Don’t sneak up on someone during the zombie apocalypse—I almost shit my pants.”

  He had a hand on his chest and it made her mind go over all of those times she’d jumped in just that way. All those times when her heart had almost busted right out of her.

  “You’d think I’d know better, huh? I once almost blew someone’s head off for sneaking up on me,” she said, but he just shook his head.

  “Yeah, but things are different here. I don’t even have a gun.”

  “Fatal error, if that oak over there turns out to be a raving cannibal.”

  He paused then. He’d put on that sweatshirt he had—the one with some college on the front. It looked worn, and she wondered for the hundredth time if he’d somehow had it with him, when Jamie had picked him up. Was that what he’d been wearing when the world ended? There was a suit amongst the otherwise very relaxed wardrobe they had—really nice, Prada—and she’d always assumed he’d been wearing that when his car broke down and he found the gas station. But maybe not. Maybe not.

  “Do you always think that way now, June? Like everything is going to turn out to be one of them?”

  His voice was so soft sometimes—it made even difficult questions easy. Strange, really, that such a masculine man could make his voice so careful and soothing.

  “Always. I spend most of my time thinking that one of you is going to change into one of them.”

  He turned to look at her on that note. Face as handsome as the day was long. Longer than that even. As handsome as a thousand years were long. She wondered if he knew that the little hint of sadness in his eyes only made him more so, and doubted it. He probably thought he was handsome in Prada suits and civilization, and little else.

  “We’re not, you know.”

  “Yeah? Could you tell my subconscious that? Because it wants to have nightly dreams about you dying horribly.”

  “Is that why you’re up? Bad dreams?”

  “No. They don’t come as frequently, anymore.”

  “Then why?”

  “You know why. I wake up at six am because that’s when Jamie gets up. I wake up in the night if one of you turns over. You can’t just get out of bed at three am and not have me wonder where you are.”

  She watched his mouth turn into something like a smile. He didn’t really pull it off, however. As though her saying that she worried about him partway pleased him, but only partway.

  It made the question swell up inside her, as though at any second her mouth was going to get around to forming the words did it upset you, that I love you? Did you feel cut out in some way, or is that just the fevered imaginings of my stupid brain?

  She couldn’t tell. And he didn’t say. Unless she counted you and Jamie have something special followed by a wistful smile, which she totally and absolutely did not. No way. Not even if it made her feel bad and weird inside and like she should do more. Say more.

  Especially when she thought of his dying light eyes and all those amazings forced right out of him and how charming he must have been, once. Before zombies and strange threesomes and Prada suits at the bottom of drawers.

  “Blake?” she started, but he cut her off at the pass.

  “You don�
�t have to worry about me, you know, June. I mean, this isn’t the way things have to be.”

  She thought of him with his hat turned backwards like Jamie’s, when he slung a basketball around the court. The smell of him when he’d carried her.

  But it came out as a ridiculous, blurted—you’re stupid, you know that? Just stupid. Because he was, and she couldn’t believe that she had to be right on this nonsense, instead of anything good or happy like we’re going to be safe, now. We’re okay, now.

  “And how are things, Blake?”

  She didn’t mean it to sound defensive but it came out that way, even so. It was probably the dark woods making her antsy. She kept her back to them and leaned against the porch rail, but that only really made things worse. She couldn’t see what the woods were doing then, and every so often the wind would rustle through the leftover leaves and make her brain crazy.

  As though zombies rustled when they moved! No, no, no. These zombies squelched when they moved.

  “Honey—I know you love him more than anything you feel for me. And that’s okay.”

  She started to protest, because really wasn’t it stupid to talk about things like love so soon? It probably was. Even though Jamie had mouthed them as clear as anything, so she couldn’t even mistake them for other words like elephant or hi huffed Hugh. Even though she felt it back, oh God she felt it back like some inescapable flood pouring over her incapacitated body.

  “I don’t—”

  “Yes you do. You know how I know? Because I love him more than me, too.”

  Her immediate response to that was instinctual. She could no more help it than she could have helped something equally as embarrassing, like a burp. Her eyebrows went up and her mind went automatically to them alone for two years. Playing endless games of Scrabble to mask the homoerotic subtext before hugging each other in a totally manly way about the hundreds of hot women they’d failed to save.

  But Blake was onto her game.

  “Oh for God’s sake—not in that way, all right? Was your mind always in the gutter or have we just put it there?”