by Angie
Alex had hated her clinging. Clinging being his term for any touching taking place outside of sexual congress. Oh, no, Alex had preferred to be adored from afar. Made it much simpler for her sister to slip on in and have him.
What a beautiful moment their wedding was. It had truly brought new lows to family awkwardness.
Ouch, a year on and still she felt the sting.
And why that old wound had chosen to pop up and nip her on the ass here and now she couldn’t say. It fit with her flurried, messy state of mind. Hell, she didn’t even know if any of her family were alive. Being betrayed dwindled in importance in the face of cold, hard death. Her insides felt strangely empty, as they always did when she thought of her family. She’d well and truly been left alone. Alone, except for the giant in her bed.
Daniel yawned again, cracked his neck and watched her. The other people out there wanting who knew what didn’t seem to concern him. That made her want to thump him. Hard.
Right on his big, fat, pretty, patient head.
“Talk to me, babe,” he said gently. When she didn’t reply, he raised an arm, pointed a lazy finger toward the chest of drawers. “Your gun’s up there. I didn’t want you accidentally blowing my head off during the night. Because that would be sad, right?”
She smiled and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Right. Sad.”
“I get the need to be cautious, Ali. I do. But you’re assuming everyone’s out to do harm before you have proof. Shoot first and ask questions later.”
Tension drew her tight, across her shoulders, down her spine. She was a puppet at its mercy. “You’ve been on the road for six weeks and you think otherwise?”
“Yes. Though frankly, on the roads I used, I didn’t see anyone,” he said with the same cool, calm expression.
“We have a decision to make. We can stay here, holed up for a while, or we can sneak out. Avoid whoever the hell is out there and the infected, hopeful y.” Daniel rolled onto his side and put his head in his hand. The bed wasn’t big enough for him, his feet dangled off the edge. “You know what I want, this decision is yours. I’m not going to push you into anything.”
Which was a nice change from his high-handed pushy bullshit of yesterday. She kept her mouth shut, but her whole body leant forward, toward him. It was more than the dip in the mattress. Something about him drew her in, slowly but surely. A weakness in her armor needing remedy. Caring for someone else, given the state of the world, was crazy. She might as well just press the self-destruct button now and be done with it.
“We can give it some time, wait till you’re ready. We do however need to make a move sometime, babe. You see that, don’t you?
Staying here … it’s not good.”
The thought of leaving her hidey-hole had those rabbity instincts rising to the fore. Hide. Hunker down. And hurry up about it.
But where? Back up to the roof? For once, it wasn’t the answer. Not after cleaning up, sleeping in a real bed, talking and interacting with someone as if she were a normal person.
Whatever normal was now.
Moving on would involve trusting this man.
Sprung so tight, she barely trusted herself.
“You think I’m going to get cornered staying here?”
“Yes,” he said.
The rabbit kicked hard in protest. She rubbed her breastbone with the side of her hand. “Supplies are … they’re getting hard to find.”
He nodded.
“Yeah.” Her stomach dropped away, and she shut her lips tight to hold in the words for a moment longer. When she forced her mouth open, her jaw clicked in protest. “You’re right. We should go.”
He blinked, stunned. “Real y?”
“Yes.”
The big man whooped like a kid let loose in a toyshop. She sat in his lap, his arms wrapped around her, kisses peppering the top of her head before she even registered he had moved. “You won’t regret it. It’ll be great. Promise.”
“Okay. Put me back.” She swatted at his arms, a half-hearted protest at best. Al the warm male skin surrounding her, the heat and scent of him, created a heady combination. The impulse to grab him back and hold on tight startled the crap out of her. “Enough.”
“Never. Or not yet. We’ll pack up what you want to take, and make for the highway. First, though …” He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head and made a happy humming sound. “Quality time together is very important for new couples.”
Sitting on his lap, the prod of the hard-on beneath her butt could not be mistaken.
“Since you’re in such an agreeable mood we could have sex to celebrate. That would be nice. A real bonding experience,” he mumbled against the top of her head, voice all low and rumbly. Highly sexed and self-assured, the arrogant ass. “What do you say, babe?”
She could hear the grin in his words, the amusement at her reaction. Her elbow caught his unprotected ribs.
He laughed outright at her then. “Ouch. Beat me, I don’t care, this is worth it. Tel me I’m right again. Slowly this time. Real y draw out the words, play it up for me. Feel free to pant in between if it feels natural.”
“You’re being an idiot. Let me go.”
“I might be, but you’re smiling and laughing. Why the hell would I care? I didn’t get a response back on the sex issue either …”
“Dan. Let go.”
He stilled, his big arms wrapped around her. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve said my name.”
“Real y?”
“Mm.”
She shrugged it off, but deep down, it did feel kind of good. Warming, almost. Maybe she wasn’t alone. “Let me go”
He sighed and the octopus grip on her eased. “Right. Sex later maybe.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Un-fucking-believable. They were arguing again.
Finn lay flat atop a cargo truck and watched through the scope of his rifle, rapt, as half a kilometer ahead the pair had it out in the middle of a four-lane highway.
These people defied logic.
They were an hour out of the city, with nothing but deserted cars scattered about and bushland on either side. No movement as far as the eye could see, and Finn was making sure he could see far and well. Those two made quite the target, hashing out their issues beneath the glaringly white, hot summer sky.
The woman had a shotgun nursed in her arms and the big guy had a pistol at his side. Neither kept watch. How they had survived this long, he did not know. The whole scene made the back of his neck itch.
He’d heard gunshots yesterday around noon, but arrived too late to find anything but a mass of infected loitering around a suburban street. Otherwise, everything still. No tel ing whether the shooter had gone to ground or been kil ed, though he hoped not the latter.
Enough had died in the past two months.
He had climbed up onto the roof of a two-story place nearby, reluctant to give up on the possibility of real, live, uninfected company.
He was numb to hope, but what else could he do? The only other people he had sighted had been criminal, trouble.
But maybe this time, maybe these people.
Watching and waiting was his lot these days. He had watched innocent civilians gunned down outside of hospitals, watched the bombing of Sydney. Al those necessary measures decided and taken and the orders passed down. It all kept turning over inside his head. The eventual death toll was a figure that kept changing, never static.
He had been unable to help so many. Maybe he could save her. His scope wandered over the woman. She was more girl next door than beautiful, curvy with a few years on his twenty-six. Her loose-fingered grip on the shotgun told him all he needed to know.
Finn had been willing to give the big guy the benefit of the doubt, but test time was over. This scene more than convinced him the man wasn’t taking care of her. He wasn’t protecting her.
Not like Finn could.
It hadn’t been easy, following them. He had hung back far enough that the pur
r of his motorbike remained undetected, close enough not to lose them. A time or two he had been forced to stop and wait, listening, tracking.
Thank fuck he hadn’t lost them.
The psychotically loud trail bike they had been using sat nearby while they quarreled. Probably needed refueling, a straightforward process with all the abandoned vehicles about. Some had been run dry, but not all. Resources weren’t an issue if you knew where to look.
And exactly what were they arguing about all this time? He neither knew, nor cared. The shadows were growing. The sun had begun its gradual slide into the west. There would be a couple more hours of light at best.
Time was slipping.
Eventually the big guy fled the fight, started siphoning fuel out of a nearby sedan.
Thank fuck he hadn’t lost them.
Nothing was harming her, not on his watch.
They finished up, got back on the bike. So noisy.
Finn crawled to the edge of the truck, shrugged the rifle onto his back and dropped back to the asphalt. He moved out a minute after they did, rolling with the whole stalker situation for now.
What else was he going to do? Where the hel else could he go? Nowhere, that’s where. He followed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
His girl was going to do herself damage if she didn’t calm down.
Ali paced the top floor of the two-story brick house they had found in the middle of nowhere. Inspecting, staking out her territory, pacing her prison cell. Daniel wasn’t sure which. Her shoulders twitched, and she wrapped her arms around herself, hanging on tight.
Downstairs, people had died. They saw lots of dried gore, though no bodies. He had ushered her through and up the stairs to the dank lounge at double speed. Ali hadn’t spoken a word since their arrival, didn’t even comment on the carnage.
He was terrified she would change her mind, demand he take her back to the pastel cottage in the burbs with its bedroom done in blood.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, shoved her hands back to her sides. Inside him the worry escalated. He rubbed his fingers together, wanting to grab her but holding himself back. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed to move on so fast. It wouldn’t have cost him to give her more time.
She crept up on the sliding glass door that led out onto a balcony. A timid hand reached out and slid the door open a hands-breadth, but left the curtains drawn. The setting sun gave him glimpses of a golden halo above her head as she peeked out through the gap. They were safe for the night.
“Careful,” he cautioned.
Another nod.
Outside, the climbing jasmine turned the balcony railing into a tangled tropical garden. It also blocked out the worst of the smel from downstairs. The garden didn’t warrant this level of fascination. Though clearly, his girl thought otherwise.
The highway close by made this place just a pit stop. There was nothing more than a couple of houses and a petrol station attached to a mini-mart named Creek’s Bend. The mini-mart had long since been wrung dry and set on fire, leaving the inside a charred, black wreck.
They would need to restock soon, tomorrow perhaps. But tonight they were fine and dandy, if only she would speak. Sometime soon would be good.
A whole day of nitpicking and now nothing, his girl loved extremes. And to reach a time and place in his life where he was desperate for a woman to talk to him about her day, mood, choice of shoe color, whatever she wanted to discuss – he would do his best by the topic.
“You hungry?”
She shook her head.
“Thirsty?”
Another negative turn of her head.
Ali sunk down onto the carpeting, sitting cross-legged before the split in the curtains.
Maybe it was the novelty factor. She had only been on the road for a day. For him, the great outdoors had boiled down to flies during the day, mosquitoes at night. There’d been summer storms that whipped up the dust and debris and turned the earth to mud, making the going slow. The glare of sunlight toasting him throughout the day, followed by the long, long nights on his lonesome.
At least he had his girl. Something was going on with her, however. Something he hated to be left out of, needy fuck that he was.
Daniel crouched down behind her, not touching uninvited, though hovering damn close. “Quiet, isn’t it?”
Another nod. A desperate mind might see it as gaining ground.
“What are you doing?”
She glanced over her shoulder, swallowed, and licked her lips with the tip of her tongue. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Right?”
Ah. Right. Sort of. “You’re afraid?”
One terse nod. “Terrified. Have been al day.”
“Oh. That’s what the snarky was about. Got it. Okay. Now I’m understanding.” He shuffled closer, daring to storm the fortress. He lined up the back of her arm with the front of his, leaning in til his mouth was next to her ear. “Keep talking. I’m listening.”
She turned back and her eyes flew open. Her brows shot up, startled at finding him right there. But she didn’t move away. Score one for his team. “It wasn’t all me being snarky. You were being unnecessarily stubborn and pushy at times.”
“I humbly apologize. Keep going.”
“I’m starting to think it’s just your nature.” His girl almost smiled, the corner of her mouth compressing. “Uh … I don’t know. It felt so exposed out there on the road but now, stuck in this place, I feel weird. This was someone’s home. And they probably died here.
It’s … it’s all so messed up now, isn’t it? The whole world. Or what’s left of it.”
He nodded and smiled.
The brows descended further than necessary. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because, for the first time in my adult life, I’m getting where an equally adult female is coming from without bursting a blood vessel or something. It feels like a breakthrough. You’re talking to me. I love it.” Daniel ignored the scrunched-up face his honey dealt him. He dropped his shoulders with a sigh and smiled some more, relaxing into the conversation. “Yes, it’s all messed up. And no, my nature is delightful. More importantly, however, this place has a flat roof. Once the sun sets, we could climb up there, star watch. Get a different perspective. What do you say?”
“The roof?” Her throat worked and her eyes searched the floor. “Ah. Wow. I don’t think I could do that. Be out in the open again.
Shit.”
“Okay.”
An infected stumbled onto the street outside; a long, low groan echoed across the empty landscape. A shiver slid down her back.
Her hand, fingers trembling, fished for the shotgun sitting by her side.
“Ali, it’s okay,” he said, earning another nod. Actually, it was closer to a jerk, and far from convinced.
He had searched the place thoroughly, barricaded the door downstairs and the stairwel both; he’d junked them up with furniture.
Nothing was getting near.
“You really think we could go up on the roof?” Her plush mouth was set in a super straight line of disbelief. She stirred up all sorts of tender in him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise.
It had been a long day, and apart from riding him on each and every decision made, she had been a trooper. She questioned, but she didn’t whine. A delicate line to tread, but one he’d begun to appreciate.
Especially since she kept checking him out when she thought he wasn’t looking. Talk about life affirming. Turning around to find her focusing on a lower level, say where his ass had been. It made everything much more than all right. He loved it. The hitch in her breath and the telltale spike of those nipples through her t-shirt made life superb.
On the bike she had settled against him more with each passing kilometer. She held on good and tight, leaning into his back as they wound through build-ups of once upon a time traffic. He doubted the cuddling was conscious on her part, but it meant she was relaxing.
“We c
an definitely go up on the roof,” he said. “It would even be safer than staying down here, when you think about it.”
She paused, cocked her head. “You’re smiling again.”
“You make me so happy.”
She snorted a laugh, which was quite possibly the cutest thing he’d ever heard.
“You know, I think you ran out of words,” he said, earning another small smile. “You certainly used up a lot on me today with all the constructive feedback. Which I appreciated very much.”
“You think?”
“Mm hmm. Happens to guys all the time. We have less words per day than women. I know this for a fact, saw it on TV once.”
Ali darted the tip of her tongue across her lips, eyes flitting between him and the world outside. Like anything was happening out there. “I don’t have a penis. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I had. I’m very grateful, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Actual y, I had.”
He nodded, shuffled a little closer. Close enough so he could see the goose pimples on the side of her neck rise when she felt his breath there. And she stil didn’t move away. “Thought you might have.”
Outside, the sun sank, slowly turning the world to gold, then gray, then black. A solid black these days, being minus electricity. The kind of darkness you only used to get out in the middle of nowhere.
The first star twinkled hopefully through the slice of life the curtains afforded.
“Make a wish,” he said.
“Okay.”
Daniel dragged over his backpack and cracked a can of soup. She had to be hungry by now, no matter how taken she was by the scenery. He fished out a clean spoon and filled it up with the cold and gelatinous but nutritional goop. With all due ceremony, he held it in front of her pretty pink mouth.
“Time to eat. Open,” he said and she did, making him feel all sorts of good. Purring in her ear and rubbing up against her wasn’t out of the question. Though he doubted she’d appreciate it. He alternated spoonfuls, one for her, one for him. It satisfied some primal caveman thing in him to feed her.
He wanted to do all sorts of things for her but, for now, he was stuck with what she would allow. The whole quiet, meditative state seeped into him and everything was good and mellow. He could roll with this.