His voice lowered to a deep, seductive whisper. “Maybe I never told you this, but you disrupted me from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
Again he pulled her close to him, making her revel in the familiar heat and hardness of his body.
“Do you know that I was half in love with you before I even knew your name?”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but so was I,” she admitted.
“I knew I had to do whatever it took to survive because you were waiting for me,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “I had to get back home to you.”
She looked up at him, thinking that the scar on his face made him seem more dangerous, yet somehow more handsome, like a pirate of old.
His eyes suddenly grew serious. “If something would have happened to you- ”
She brushed that off and said, “I had no intention of that letting that happen. And you- Look, you even survived Helice. Although Liam confided in me that you two were at odds the whole way here.”
Soft laughter rumbled in his chest as the smile widened on his face. “Yeah, she told me I was uncivilized. And a barbarian. I imagine she is waiting for me to begin baying at the moon when it is full.”
Lauryn laughed but she grew serious and bit her lower lip when she saw the familiar, hungry look come into his eyes. “We should wait,” she said.
“That’s true,” he murmured, running slow, sensuous kisses along the sensitive flesh on the side of her neck. “Anyone could come along,” he whispered.
Except he didn’t want to wait. He had waited too long already.
Lauryn opened her lips to protest further only to have his mouth close over hers in a barely-there, softly-lingering kiss. His fingers came up to rest against the side of her face in a very tender gesture. The kiss deepened, became hard and hungry as he sought to wipe out everything that had almost come between them.
For Lauryn it was the way she remembered. It was what she had craved when he had been gone. It was what she had wondered if she would ever feel again.
Passion swept them both onward towards that special bond of love and longing . . .
The sound of someone’s shocked gasp brought Lauryn quickly to her senses. She turned and blinked and saw Helice silently watching them.
Helice tried to settle her wildly chaotic thoughts, but it felt like her entire world had just been pulled out from under her feet. She was still reeling from the shock of what she had seen. Rafe kissing Lauryn, and her kissing him back.
Against her will, she felt herself grow weak with longing as memory returned to her in full force. She couldn’t help imagining the hard heat of his body, but pressed against her own instead of Lauryn’s. She couldn’t keep from feeling his kisses ravaging her mouth until her body felt like it was on fire and her breath came in deep pants.
And yet, in the rationale part of her brain, she knew it was unreasonable. Utterly unreasonable to still be thinking of such things. But she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to be the one he was kissing. She wanted to be the one he couldn’t get enough of. Desire swept over her in a tide so strong that it almost matched the jealous rage that overcame her when she thought of Lauryn.
Why Lauryn? Why not her?
For Rafe she would get down on her knees. She would fall at his feet. She would yield up her entire self.
But that would never happen.
Because of Lauryn.
“They’re sleeping in the same room.”
Eymann sighed deeply. They had been through this already. “Caleb and Selia?” he asked wearily in the darkness.
“No, not Caleb and Selia. Your sister and- Rafe.”
He sighed again, but only very quietly this time.
“You should have seen them,” she went on in a heated, but suppressed voice.
She still couldn’t get it out of her mind. The unrestrained passion. The wild hunger. .
She almost hated Rafe now. Almost. She felt like he had betrayed her. The hatred she bore towards Lauryn was intensified a hundred times over.
“You might be able to overlook it,” she told Eymann coldly. “I cannot. What kind of example is she setting for her children? As for that, Maddy is out of control. She has been disrespectful towards me in everything she says and does. And so has Liam. I didn’t tell you that Maddy told me right out that if I didn’t have anything good to say, that I should keep my opinions to myself.”
At the moment, Eymann, also, kept his opinion to himself.
Out of the silence, he heard, “We’re obviously not welcome here.” And then, “I think we should leave.”
“And go where?”
She didn’t have a specific answer for him. “We can find some place that is better than this.”
Eymann didn’t agree with her. He honestly liked Maddy and Liam. And Rafe. And strange as it was, he was coming to believe that Lauryn had done a fine job of raising both children, especially since she had done it on her own.
“You’ll see that I’m right. You’ll come to see that this isn’t the place for us,” she predicted.
She didn’t admit that she hadn’t quite come to the point of leaving herself. Perversely, she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Rafe again, in spite of what he had done. But that might change if she had to continue to see the two of them together. That thought was altogether unbearable.
She heard Eymann’s voice come out of the darkness. “This is our home now.”
“For now,” she said. “But that might very well change.”
“I don’t want to leave. And I don’t want to discuss it any further.”
“You don’t want to discuss it?” she echoed, surprised at his uncompromising tone, one that she had never heard from him before.
“You!” she breathed in the darkness, turning her face to him in accusation. “You call yourself a Christian. Are you telling me you can tolerate living in a household where sin is rampant?”
“Don’t you get it?” Eymann said to his wife. “I like these people. They’re family to me. All of them.”
As he said it, Eymann only now realized how the loneliness and the bitterness of the past had begun to fade away from him. He did have a family now, a nurturing, caring one for the first time in his life. He had a sense of belonging that he had never experienced before.
“Some family,” Helice muttered venemously beneath her breath. “And what am I?”
“You, Helice, are a bitch.”
Epilogue
It was such a beautiful day that everyone was outside harvesting produce from the garden. There was no wind at all. The air was soft and balmy with the feel of autumn. The trees had already begun to turn. They shimmered in the October sunshine with colors of scarlet, gold and russet. In spite of everything they had been through, it felt like hope was in the air.
Otis was the first to look up.
“What do you see, Mr. Chubbs?” Lauryn asked. She stopped picking tomatoes and straightened. She looked up at the sky herself, but she couldn’t see anything.
He must be bird watching, she thought.
But then she realized it wasn’t what Otis saw. It was what he heard. Because she began to hear it now, too. One by one, everyone else stopped what they were doing and looked up.
At first it was just a tiny speck against the blue sky. Gradually, they could make out what it was. It had been so long since any of them had seen an actual plane that they were dumbfounded. No one could take their eyes from it.
“What is that?” Selia asked as she shaded her eyes from the sun.
“They’re dropping something- ” Eymann said as he also put his hands up to shield his eyes from the bright glare of the sun.
It was the first contact that they’d had with the outside world in a very long time and no one knew what to make of it. They were afraid to hope that it might be good news. Maddy, Liam and Matt ran to catch several papers that were fluttering gently to the ground.
“It’s a letter,” Maddy said as she stared down at the paper in h
er hand.
“A letter,” Helice echoed. She walked over to Eymann and, standing close to his side, looked at the paper in his hands.
“Read it,” Rafe said.
And Maddy began to read.
To the great people of America,
If you are reading this, you have endured the greatest trial in the history of the human race. But you are not alone. We now know what caused the outbreak and we are working hard on a solution. We understand that your suffering and your losses have been great, almost unimaginable. But rest assured, together there is nothing we can’t overcome. We have been working diligently on our end and now have the resources at our disposal and the means to send you help. Our brave soldiers and volunteers are standing by as you are reading this. God bless and be prepared, because when help arrives, it’s going to be H U G E.
Deadrise (Book 7): Bloodlust Page 16