I nodded and grinned, feeling the anger drain from me at his words. “Yeah, little bit,” I laughed. “But I’ve come to expect that from you.”
“It sounded way better in my head, if it’s any consolation.”
“I don’t exactly say the most thoughtful of things,” I sighed. “It’s not like I can really say anything about your lack of tact and weird timing, is it, now?”
He shook his head and grinned. “Not really.”
His hand moved to the back of my neck and he leaned over and kissed me, his mouth feeling hot and needy on mine. I kissed him back, loving the dance our mouths made together, the way his rough beard scraped against my face, making me feel raw and loved. I always felt so connected to him, like this had always been—just me and him. Feeling breathless, I finally pulled away, quickly doing a scan of our surroundings and checking for deaders.
“You need to go get some sleep. You’re on watch after me.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m not leaving you out here on your own.”
“Are you really being a sexist jerk again right now? Because your good looks will only get you so far. I will kick your ass if you don’t stop pulling this shit on me.”
I raised an eyebrow right back at him, and neither of us said anything for a long while, before Mikey finally relented.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I know you can handle yourself. I’ll go get some beauty sleep.” He winked and stood up. “I’ll be in the back of my truck when your shift is over.” He stared at me for another long moment and then walked away.
I watched after him, knowing there was no way I was going to his truck later. Our makeup sex would not be in the back of a truck. Besides, I totally had the heebie-jeebies after the last time we did it in the back of a van and we had woken up surrounded by hundreds of deaders. That was, after all, when everything seemed to really go downhill—ending with the death of pretty much all of our friends. And that was not something I wanted to experience again—mainly because I was drastically running out of people, and people dying was a shitty way to end a hookup.
I shuddered at the memory and continued to stare off into the distance.
I swapped shifts with Nova around midnight—or what I assumed to be around midnight. The moon was fat and round in the night sky, not a cloud in sight, making it both cold and strangely bright out.
Either way, I was glad to be finally getting some sleep. The thing about staying up on watch when everyone else went to sleep was that it was boring—I mean like mind-numbingly boring. Either that or you sunk into a depression that had you wanting to blow your own brains out by the time your shift was over, because all you had during those long, lonesome hours were your thoughts and memories. So it was boredom that made me sleepy as I waited for Nova to come and relieve me. I longed for stupid things like my iPad to play some ridiculous game on to help me pass the time. Of course that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, though, since all electronic devices had become some of the most pointless objects known to man. All that information, trapped inside these silly little gadgets with no way to retrieve any of it. It was so depressing, it was funny.
I bid goodnight to Nova, climbed into the front of my truck, and grabbed my blanket before wrapping it up around my ears. It was freezing outside, and I longed to turn on the engine and start the heaters, but it would be a total waste of fuel and the noise would attract deaders for miles, and Deaders in the Dark was never a fun game to play. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Around an hour into shivering my ass off, I wasn’t so sure if it wouldn’t be worth wasting a little fuel. I could feel myself on the brink of sleep, only I just needed a little more warmth to send me over.
I peeked my eyes open and rubbed my hands together, blowing into them to generate some hot air. I stared out of the windshield and watched Nova jogging in place and doing jumping jacks for several long minutes. I was guessing it was to keep warm just as much as it was to keep her fit. My door cracked open, the light coming on and startling me, and I jumped before grabbing for my gun and swinging it in the direction of the now-open door.
Mikey stared in at me, his brown eyes almost black in the dark. “Easy.” He held his hands up. “I thought you were coming to…you know, after your shift.”
I was cold, tired, and cranky, and I couldn’t stop the irritation from lacing my words. “You presumed wrong then, didn’t you?” I looked away, not wanting him to see how much he had spooked me, or irritated me in his presumptions that I would just jump into bed with him.
“Whoa, what did I do?” he asked, climbing all the way in and shutting the door behind him.
The truck instantly fell back into darkness, and I was glad of the sanctuary that it provided. I wasn’t really angry at him, though, even if his presumptions
were
irritating, and I forced myself to apologize.
“I’m just tired,” I said. Okay, so not quite an apology, but I was thinking it in my head so it was almost the same thing. “I don’t sleep much these days, and when I do, I wake in a shitty mood.” No need to tell him I’d been waking from my dreams screaming—nightmares, torture, and zombies plaguing my sleep.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “Am I okay being here? I can go, leave you to sleep.” He turned to go and I reached out automatically, grabbing his arm to stop him from leaving.
“No, please stay.” The words rushed out of me before I could stop them, and I knew I sounded ridiculously lame, but I couldn’t help it. Now that he was there, I did want him to stay. I didn’t want to be alone. I inwardly groaned at myself. “It’ll be warmer if you stay, and I’m freezing,” I tacked onto the end to save myself from sounding completely pathetic.
“Sure sure,” he said, sitting back down. If it was possible to hear a smirk, then I could definitely heard his.
We lapsed into silence, both of us staring out into the darkness, trapped in our own dark thoughts. I thought of our losses and of our gains, of how much the world had changed, and of the scary things that moved in the night, and I assumed he was thinking the same. And then I thought of Mikey, of his kisses, and his arms around me. I thought of how much I had missed him, missed the physical contact of a man.
“All that ketchup gave me killer heartburn,” Mikey said, breaking the silence.
Okay, so clearly just I was thinking about those things, then. I sighed heavily.
“I’m tired, I need to sleep,” I said, not wanting to talk anymore.
I felt him shuffle around, and I was getting ready to snap at him again when he spoke.
“Come here. Body heat and all that,” he said, holding his arms out to me.
I moved over to him right away, not needing to be asked twice, and he wrapped his blanket over my legs while I wrapped my blanket around the top half of us. I slouched into him, his arm coming to rest around the top of my shoulder, and I laid my head on his chest. The soft
thud-thud
of his heart made me sleepy, the sound so very human and so very reassuring. Our body heat mingled together and I felt drowsiness tugging at me. It was strange, being this close to him after everything we had been through. I felt both comfortable and uncomfortable. But it also felt right.
His arm traced a pattern on the top of my arm, and I waited for him to try something with me, but he made no move to do anything. Every once in a while he kissed the top of my head, and something akin to pleasure bloomed in me. I relaxed even more and closed my eyes, welcoming the nothingness behind my lids.
I never would have believed that I would find this again. I assumed I would be alone forever, doomed to die a horrible death at the hands of a madman or the teeth of a deader. Of course either of those options was still a possibility, but was nice to know that I wouldn’t be totally alone, and someone would mourn my tragic death afterwards.
I sighed, feeling both sad and happy, but mainly content there in his arms, and then I cringed because obviously I hadn’t mean to sigh and make it obvious that I was somewhat happy and content. Mikey’s hand stopped stroking my arm and I felt his head move a fraction, as if he were trying to see my face and decide if I were asleep or not.
“It was a yawn,” I said quietly. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“A yawn?” he asked.
“Yes, a yawn. I told you, I’m tired.”
“Sure, sure. That was what I thought. Nina is really tired, she often sighs and then yawns.” His tone was ridiculously smug, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.
“Whatever,” I replied instead, the hint of amusement in my tone. “Just go to sleep, will you?”
I actually did yawn then, and I felt him chuckle, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing back. “Just shut up,” I snorted on a soft laugh.
I draped an arm across his middle and I tugged him closer, wanting more of his heat, feeling greedy for it. My fingers danced around the edges of his sweater unintentionally, fingering the hem of it, until they slipped underneath. I grinned in the dark when he froze, his body going tense as my fingers touched his heated skin and made small circles on it. I was about to giggle again, and tease him about garnering some self-control, when his hands abruptly moved from around me and I almost slumped sideways.
“Whoa,” I called out.
He turned his body toward me, and his hands clasped either side of my face without any hesitation. He tugged my face up to meet his, and his lips pressed firmly against mine, his tongue pushing between my lips greedily. I really wanted to say no, to tell him I needed to sleep, and that I wanted our makeup sex to be more than this. But I couldn’t stop him, or me.
Our hands moved restlessly under each other’s clothing, almost frantically, finding skin both hot and sweaty under the blankets, and chilled out of them. We moved clothing and covers aside to reach the parts we were both so eager for—a breast, a thigh, a hard stomach, firm shoulders. Mikey was careful with my fresh wounds; the stitches on my stomach and shoulder were tight and sore and he avoided them as best he could. My hands were on his belt, unbuckling and lowering his jeans before I even realized what I was doing, and then like a woman possessed I was straddling him, tugging the blanket up and around my shoulders to keep us both warm and lowering myself down onto his lap.
We both sighed as he pushed slowly inside of me, and I gasped at the feel of him both hot and hard inside my softness. Our mouths connected and our teeth clashed as I moved on him over and over, eager for this feeling to last, to never have to think about anything outside of this cab again. I wanted to be trapped in this bubble with him, in that moment, for as long as I could, and deny that the world was what it was just outside the window. Because outside the window were nightmares and demons, the very things that went bump in the night and frightened small children. There was loss and death and sadness, and I hated it all. I hated everything about the world, and needed to make it vanish from existence if just for a few moments. I was hungry for it, starving for freedom from this terrifying nightmare that was life.
And so I kissed him hard and soft, and gently and feverishly. I moved on him, my hips bucking and grinding against him, loving the feel of his mouth on my skin, his hands gripping me and tugging me harder and closer to him, until we were almost one. And I clung to him and this moment, refusing the tears that wanted to escape and begging for obliteration.
Here I wasn’t a bitch, and I wasn’t hard and broken. I wasn’t sad with loss and grief. I was a woman, and like all women do, I too needed to feel wanted and desired. I needed to know that I was more than just a killer of the dead, but that I was also me. Nina. After all this time, I was still me, and I could still be soft and feminine when I needed to be. Because here I didn’t have to be tough. Here, wrapped around him, I could be me with no pretense.
But like the inevitability of the sun rising, I knew this moment wouldn’t last—couldn’t last. His hands gripped my ass, pulling me against him harder and harder until I was panting and mewling, sweat trickling down my spine as I bit down on my lip and swallowed back my cry of pleasure. Lights burst behind my eyes, my muscles and nerve endings tingling and tense with longing as we rode the wave, and I clung to the feeling for as long as I could.
I gripped onto Mikey, burying my face in his neck as I caught my breath. Even then I was reluctant to leave his closeness, wanting to keep this soft, feminine part of me for a little longer. Mikey made no move either, his hands trailing up and down my back, his mouth placing soft kisses on my neck as he caught his breath.
It was hot in the truck, the air almost sticky and thick with heat—our heat—and I felt something akin to satisfaction. Sleep began to suck me under and I decided it that it actually was time to move now. I pulled back, looking into his shadowed face. A small frown puckered between his eyebrows and I traced a finger across it, smoothing out the frown. His dark eyes looked seriously into mine with unflinching resolve and I leaned in, meeting him halfway as we kissed again.
“You’re such a sweet-talker, Mikey,” I said jokingly, my voice still throaty with lust.
He grinned at me. “It was the sexy ketchup talk wasn’t it?” He kissed me again, all the while trying to stop himself from laughing. “That wasn’t what I came in here for, you know,” he said quietly, his voice serious.
“Really? I’m pretty much certain that was what you asked me to meet you in the back of your truck for.” I stared down at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I just wanted to hold you.”
“Because you’re such a gentlemen?”
He laughed again. “No, I’m not, but I did just intend to hold you. I missed you. I’ve hardly slept since I fucked everything up. I can’t sleep properly without you.”
I knew exactly what he meant, because I had been suffering through the same thing: every night waking up screaming and covered in sweat as I dreamt of zombies; their blackened teeth and clawing hands.
“Obviously if things had progressed this way, I wouldn’t have complained, either.” He grinned at me.
I rolled my eyes but smiled. “Asshole.”
He grinned back and watched as I climbed from his lap, feeling a little embarrassed at how I had basically just attacked him and used him—his body—for my own satisfaction.
We dressed and resumed our pre-makeup sex positions, with me leaning against him, my arm draped comfortably across his middle, though now I felt no tension between us, no feeling that I was on the edge of a precipice waiting for something, and both of us felt a little more relieved that maybe things were back on track. It wasn’t just the sex, or the fact that we had both finally admitted how we felt about one another. It was the meaning beyond all of that—the knowing that no matter what happened, we had shared something special. We had found our light in such dark times, because we had found one another. Both of us were ridiculously imperfect, and yet perfect for one another.