by J. Thorn
I sighed against his mouth, reveling in the consuming heat of his body against mine and the drugging power of his kisses. He had said a lot of things today, and I would think about them later- especially since I was pretty sure we were now something official- but right now all I wanted were his kisses, all I could comprehend was the way he tasted my mouth and touched my body.
Gradually his kisses became more insistent, more demanding and more than ever he was sweeping me away in him.
His hand slid to my back and pressed me tightly against his body. A groan escaped his chest at the feel of how we fit together, which only seemed to drive up my passion. My arms locked around his neck and I found myself completely lost in him.
He left my mouth to explore my jaw line, trailing wet, hungry kisses down my neck, across my collarbone and to the other side of my throat. His grip was tight on my hips now, clutching at me like I was a lifeline, like I was the only thing standing between sanity and extinction.
“Haley,” he moaned into the hollow of my throat. “You need to know-” more seductive kisses that were dragging me into mindlessness. His tongue slipped over my skin, driving me further to the precipice of something I was certain I wasn’t ready for but helpless to stop. He lifted my body so that I was forced to stand on tip toes while he ravaged my soul with his touch and desire. “I’m going to give you everything.” I whimpered a protest that was barely audible. “But you have to give me everything in return.”
I opened my mouth to say something about taking this slow, or maybe just not talking while we were kissing, but then his mouth was back on mine and I was lost to the unequivocal feeling of his perfect mouth on mine. My chest and stomach tightened and compressed with the passion he was pouring into me- pure, raw, so authentic I felt tears prick the back of my eyes.
I had thought so certainly that he was only interested in me because I was available.
But not after this- not after he worshipped me with his mouth, held me so possessively to him with hands that craved always more of my skin. He hadn’t lied; he was giving me everything- every single piece of him. And even if it wasn’t love yet, it would be soon.
Neither of us would be able to stop that from happening.
There was too much in this kiss, in his feelings for either of us to keep love at bay.
My heart pounded with the idea and then matched a rhythm with my surging, heated blood. My mind rebelled against the idea of giving into love so young, so isolated from anything decent or humane. But my body, my blood, my heart and soul seemed ten steps ahead of my brain anyway. For the first time in my life, my mind was forced into quiet submission while I let feelings and hope rule my life.
Nelson took a step forward, forcing me back, and then back again. Finally, the single bed was pressed against the back of my knees and I was falling. I looked up at Nelson and didn’t notice the musty comforter or the lumpy mattress at all. All I saw was Nelson; all I could understand was the intent in his eyes, the heat in his expression.
Delicious tingles ran through my body like electric shocks and I held my breath, just waiting for him to join me on the bed.
“Haley, you know what I want,” his voice was rough sand, so low it was a growl of unfiltered intent. “Are you going to give it to me?”
Too afraid to say my answer out loud, I asked, “Sex?”
He shook his head, while his lips twitched with amusement. “Not that.” And then he seemed to think better of his response, “Not that yet.”
It was my turn to shake my head at him.
“I want you yes, always. But more than your lovely body, I want what’s inside of it. I want you, Haley. Are you going to give us a chance?”
I nodded, feeling heavy pressure against my chest, holding me in place, keeping my gaze trapped in his.
“Say the words,” he demanded. “I want to hear them.”
“Yes, I’m giving us a chance,” I whispered.
“And I can have you?”
“All of me,” I promised.
He jumped on top of me- but in like a sexy way, like a hunter pouncing on his prey kind of way. His mouth was on mine in a moment and he was drinking me in again, completely altering my entire perspective on life, love and the end of the world.
Suddenly living in the Zombie Apocalypse didn’t feel like the seventh circle of hell. It felt possible and full of potential. All of a sudden a purpose greater than myself, greater than my survival was growing inside of me, blooming into a mission, rising into a conviction, emerging into a crucial philosophy that I was destined to believe in. This wasn’t love- not yet- but it was the greatest, most intense emotion I had ever felt. It beat all of the fear I lived with, the grief that plagued me and the clawing pain of despair. This emotion, whatever it was, trumped even the dullness of depression.
This thing with Nelson would save me.
And not just from Zombies.
From the hopelessness of our world and the incessant struggle to survive. Nelson was purpose, comfort and faith all rolled into one life-altering event that would forever define who I was now.
His hands were under my shirt again, inching their way up my pebbled skin. My own hands were on his neck, then his face, pulling him to me as close as he would go- desperate to connect us in every way. We were lying next to each other, every limb tangled together. He pushed up on his forearms so that he hovered over me, pressing his body down on to mine with exciting pressure.
I kissed a path along the scruff of his jaw, loving how the whiskers scratched my skin, made a tangible mark on my body, proving that I was Nelson’s.
“There you guys are,” a voice panted from the doorway, effectively breaking us apart. “We thought you got eaten by Feeders. We were about to hold a memorial service.”
Harrison.
“I told you not to go in there!” Reagan shouted from somewhere beyond the doorway.
“You have an iPhone?” Harrison walked in to the room completely, ignoring the fact that Nelson was still lying on top of me and murdering him with the stink eye. “This music sucks. Do you have any Lil’ Wayne?” He began casually scrolling through my phone.
“Harrison, two seconds to get the hell out of here,” Nelson growled.
Harrison just waved him off, “Think of it like my education. You know, since there’s no other way for me to learn about the birds and the bees.”
“Oh, my gosh,” I groaned. I covered my bright red face with my hands and scrunched my eyes tightly closed.
“Get, out,” Nelson said slowly, dangerously. “I will not say it again.”
“Listen, nobody wants you guys to seal the deal more than…. Ok, probably you want it to happen more than me. I’ll give you that. But it’s like an hour till sunset and you’ve been summoned back to communal living and a life without privacy. Sorry, big bro, but your family needs you.”
Nelson looked down at me, his expression full of disappointment and concern. Placing a reverent kiss to my temple he slid off me and crawled to standing. He held his hand out and helped me to my feet.
“Is everything alright?” he asked with an entirely different tone and demeanor.
Harrison looked up anxiously and then forced himself to hold Nelson’s gaze- like he was demanding his expression to be strong. “Page has a fever. She’s had one ever since we got here and it’s only getting worse.”
I sobered quickly at that announcement. Nelson reached out and grabbed my hand, tugging me to equal footing with him.
“Alright,” he sighed. “You have my attention. Let’s go back to the house.”
Harrison nodded and then led the way out of the room. I grabbed my iPhone and charger, yanking them from the wall before following the boys out.
Reagan was waiting in the middle of the barn, looking pale with nerves. “Sorry to interrupt you,” she tried to smile but it was strained.
“It’s alright,” I sighed. “We weren’t doing anything important.”
Nelson shot me a dirty look from over his s
houlder and then announced, “Not true. I had her seconds from falling in love with me before you two crashed our party.”
“So cocky,” I tsked in a quiet, amused voice.
Nelson turned around so he could walk backwards over to his pack while I stopped to pick up mine and the few tools I had collected. “Tell me then. Tell me you’re not halfway to falling in love with me.”
“I’m not-“
“And remember, there are witnesses to your lies, Haley Gable. We will all know and remember
your lies, should you choose, for some foolish reason, not to tell the truth.”
“We’ve known each other for one month and you haven’t even gotten to second base yet and you honestly want me to just declare, in front of your little brother and my best friend that I’m falling in love with you?” I gasped at the insanity of it all.
“That’s exactly what I want,” he grinned at me.
“I’m not little!” Harrison protested but we all ignored him.
“And Reagan will know if you’re lying,” Nelson warned.
I thought Reagan would be on my side, I mean, I had always been on hers. We were best friends, sisters in arms, simply girls forced to endure bathing in natural bodies of water and giving up our dream of laser hair removal.
“He’s right, Hales,” Reagan smirked at me. “I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“And here I thought you were on my side!” I tugged my pack on and then we collectively moved toward the barn door with our guns raised, safety’s off.
“Don’t worry,” she grumbled. “Hendrix will give you plenty of opportunity to pay me back for my betrayal. I promise.”
I snorted a laugh because it was so very true. And then I decided to just go with it. “Fine, Nelson, you want to hear that I was seconds from falling in love with you on that bed? Then yes, most definitely if you would have kept kissing me like that, holy smokes, I would have signed over my virginity in blood because I was so in love with you. The problem is we stopped. So…. I guess, we’ll just have to see how this plays out now that we’ll never get another moment alone together again.”
I thought I was being funny. Reagan laughed. Harrison and Nelson were oddly silent- awkwardly so.
Finally, when we were just steps from the back door to the farmhouse, Nelson asked, “You’re a virgin?”
The blush was back! And not because a very personal fact had been announced and repeated. Oh no, the redness in my face and humiliation washing over me was all because of the excited, awed tone in Nelson’s voice. I felt stripped bare by his tone and pushed into an intensely intimate moment by the look on his face. This was so not the place to have this conversation.
“Can we just go inside?” I whisper-pleaded. “We’ve exposed your brother to enough sex-ed for a lifetime.”
Before Nelson could respond, Harrison cut in with a, “There’s just a few missing parts. Mostly anatomy lessons, nothing huge. And since we don’t have any books or movies, if I could just see-“
“Stop right there, little pervert,” Reagan waved her gun around in the air. “Not happening. Not ever. Got that?”
Harrison grinned from ear to ear and then ducked into the house without giving Reagan a reply.
She cleared her throat and flashed an apologetic smile my way. “Well, I guess that answers that…..”
Inside the house, things were quiet and tense. Hendrix paced helplessly in the kitchen while King and Vaughan hovered over Page. She lay on a long, plaid couch in a living room just off the dining room.
I ignored Hendrix, even though Reagan didn’t, and walked over to check on Page. Her eyes were shut tight and her skin, pale and ashen. The blinds had been opened to let in natural light and a blanket pulled over her tiny body.
I could see she was shaking from chills and before I even touched her head I knew her forehead would be burning up.
I knelt down next to her, easing in between Vaughan and King. They moved out of my way like I had some kind of authority here, but probably they were just happy to pass the torch.
Illness was out of any of our realms of expertise and the smallest sickness could be life-threatening to any of us. Page was worst case scenario for us and I hated the idea of her suffering anything, let alone facing something as scary as death because there were no such things as clinics, doctors on call or antibiotics anymore.
It would be almost impossible to even figure out what’s wrong with her unless she had an obvious symptom.
I laid my hand gently on her forehead and she leaned into the touch like it was soothing. Her skin was hotter than Hades, and my entire body sagged with that knowledge. My heart started thrashing in my chest and my relaxed mind was suddenly at work, struggling to find any solution to soothe her pain and suffering.
I stroked her hair gently and then asked in a whisper, “How are you feeling, Pagey?”
She let out a moan of agony and put a hand to her throat.
“Is that what hurts? Your throat?” I asked gently. A sore throat was both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it was easy to check and bad because strep throat could be really dangerous if not treated. I knew this, because I had a cousin when I was growing up that didn’t get his strep treated with antibiotic and ended up in the hospital for three days because the infection had spread to the rest of his body.
She nodded, but barely. And then she whimpered and leaned into my fingers that were carefully combing lines across her scalp.
“Will you show me, sweetness? Can you open your mouth so I can see?”
She whimpered again and shook her head.
I turned to Vaughan and asked, “Have you checked her throat?”
“No, this is the most she’s told us. While you guys were out checking the barn, she laid down in here to take another nap. Hendrix and I thought it was weird, but maybe stress related? We haven’t had a good place to sleep in a while. She woke up about twenty minutes ago crying and that’s when we realized she had a fever. Reagan had some Tylenol, so we gave her that. But it’s been a while now, shouldn’t it have kicked in?”
I frowned at that. The Tylenol should have definitely brought down her fever. I found it frustrating that pain meds didn’t help. That was our best bet as far as miracle cures went.
Damn it.
“Does she have her tonsils?” I turned back to Page, hoping I would get her to open up. But first I needed to make sure I needed to.
“Yep,” Vaughan answered. “Harrison, King and Page all have their tonsils.”
“Good.”
“What do you think it is, Hales?” Reagan asked from behind me.
Nelson put a hand on my shoulder, standing century as I took over as medical professional. I was a little surprised the Parker brothers trusted me with this role. I assumed their protective instincts would keep Page as close to them as possible, but I also knew that helplessness could be crippling. I’m sure they loathed the feeling of not being able to do something for their cherished baby sister.
“I’m thinking it might be strep. If her throat hurts and she still has her tonsils, then there’s a good chance it is. I just want to look down her throat to make sure.”
Nelson knelt down next to me and reached for his sister’s hand. Holding it in his huge hand, he pressed a tender kiss to her knuckles. “Pagey, can you open your mouth wide for Haley? She wants to see why you feel so bad. She wants to make you feel better.”
I pulled out my semi-charged iPhone and turned on the flashlight app. If this wasn’t a bright enough light I would ask one of the boys to borrow their flashlights, but this seemed easier and faster.
Page finally opened wide enough for me to shine my light down there, but my real break came when she broke out into a yawn. The bright light from my phone illuminated her small mouth and shone light directly onto the white, pustules dotting her enlarged tonsils on either side of her throat.
Gross.
But at least we had a diagnosis.
“Does anything else hurt, babe?�
�� Reagan asked over my shoulder. “Your ears, your head?”
“Both,” she squeaked out in reply.
“Alright, baby girl,” I whispered while placing a kiss on her burning forehead. “Get a little sleep, alright? We’re going to make you some ice for that sore throat of yours.”
I stood up and Nelson followed. He turned to King and asked him to stay with Page in case she woke up and wanted something and the rest of us moved into the kitchen. Hopefully Page was out of it enough so that she didn’t pick up on how dangerous her sickness could be for her.
“What treats strep?” Vaughan asked immediately. His game face was on, tight lips, drawn eyebrows, wide stance and crossed arms. Vaughan was about to go to war and the entire idea was so familiar to me I realized how palpable his fight was. Only instead of fighting off hordes of Zombies, Vaughan was going to fight strep throat until he was the lone victor. Nothing came between him and his family.
I cleared my throat, hating to be the bearer of bad news, “Penicillin.”
“Ok, we don’t have penicillin,” Vaughan bit out. “What next?”
“Amoxicillin,” I answered again- just as dismally.
“Haley, if you keep naming things we don’t have I will ask you to leave the room,” Vaughan growled.
I took a step back, hating that he intimidated me so much. But how could he not when his vision tunneled to include only his sister- only a way to fix his sister. And I wasn’t sure there was a way.
“Vaughan, I know you’re concerned, but you need to change your attitude. I will not tell you again,” Nelson warned. “Haley’s trying to help. Do not piss all over her efforts.”
Vaughan’s eyes snapped up to glare Nelson down, but Nelson seemed entirely unfazed. He rolled his eyes and put a comforting arm around my waist.
Nelson’s touch gave me the courage to say what I needed to say, “Strep could go away on its own in a few days. It’s definitely not the worst thing she could have right now, even though she is absolutely miserable. That being said, it’s not the best thing she could have either. If this doesn’t go away on its own, then it’s going to get really bad for her before it gets better. If it gets better.”