Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (23 page)

Or that I would ever get.

I sat down next to Haley and Tyler and cried
too.

We were quiet for a long time. We could hear
Page and Miller running around outside, exploring the area. Adela
must have gone to help the rest of the Parkers set up rooms because
she was nowhere to be seen.

Or maybe she wandered off by herself for a
bit. We had to be overwhelming for her. We were all short on alone
time, but she was an outsider still. It couldn’t have been easy for
her to tag along with us.

When the rooms were in order everyone came
back inside and found a place to sit. Nobody really said anything.
There wasn’t much too say.

We listened to Vaughan whimper in his sleep.
Each of his breaths was a struggle, wheezing in and out of his
rattling chest. His skin had grown even paler over the long
day.

Eventually, I handed Lennon back to Haley so
she could feed him. I curled up next to Hendrix on the floor and we
started our vigil that had followed us from the cathedral.

“We need to talk,” Tyler rasped after the
silence became too heavy. All eyes turned to her, but she didn’t
look at us. It was like she
couldn’t
look at us. “His arm,”
she said. “It’s different than Page’s.”

She extracted herself from Haley to turn
Vaughan’s arm over for us to see. Sure enough, the bite Vaughan had
gotten looked nothing like Page’s open wound that festered and
pussed.

Vaughan’s had dried out. Or that was what it
looked like. The wound wasn’t that big, a thin half-moon maybe the
length of a finger. It was like the Feeder had only been able to
sink its top teeth into Vaughan’s forearm before he got away.

The skin around the scab had turned an ugly
gray color, heavy with bruising and bulging veins. They stretched
up to his biceps and down to his wrists as if whatever poison had
been injected inside of him was spreading.

“I… I… don’t know how to treat this,” Tyler
admitted. “I don’t know if it
can
be treated.”

Tears pooled in my eyes. Was that her final
diagnoses? No way!

Vaughan was a fighter. Vaughan wouldn’t give
up, no matter what the nature of his fight was.

I looked around, hoping someone would be as
worked up as me, but his brothers, all four of them, looked like
ghosts. They stared at their oldest brother in horror, despair
already evident in each of their features.

“Don’t give up,” I ordered them with a sharp,
harpy like voice. “How dare you give up on him! This is your
brother! This is
Vaughan
! He won’t leave you,” I promised
them, opening the floodgate of tears. “He won’t leave
us
.”

I hadn’t realized how badly I’d started
shaking until Hendrix pulled me to his chest. His strong arms
wrapped around me and pressed me against his beating heart. I cried
into his shirt, hating that he was the one that had to comfort me.
It should be the other way around.

I should be the one comforting him.

More time passed. The sun fully set and the
stars came out to shine. Out of the opened window I could see the
brilliance of the full moon glow on the endless ocean. The waves
swished against the shore and soothed my threadbare nerves.

Hendrix’s hand moved over my back. He slipped
it under my shirt and pressed his bare hand to my naked skin. I
loved the heat of his body against mine. I would never grow tired
of how electrifying it felt to have him touch me, caress me… put
his hands all over me.

“How about we take a break?” I whispered in
his ear after hours of sitting on the floor. My butt ached from the
hard floor and I was tired of imagining bugs crawling over my skin
in the darkness. “Let’s go find a bed and get a couple hours of
sleep. Vaughan will be okay for a while.”

Hendrix looked up at me with dark, unreadable
eyes. I couldn’t make out his expression in the dim light, but
instinct sent a shiver down my spine.

I had no expectations of this night. We were
both devastated by Vaughan’s condition and exhausted from today and
yesterday, last week, all the weeks before that… basically from
this life in general.

But Hendrix and I hadn’t been alone in a very
long time and not once since we said our vows.

The promise of spending time with just him
held a host of possibilities and intimacies.

“Okay,” he whispered against my temple. His
full beard scratched my skin. I closed my eyes, loving the
feel.

He stood up slowly, working his legs to get
feeling back in them. Then he held out his hand to help me up. I
thought he would explain our departure, but that didn’t seem
necessary. I wasn’t sure if anybody noticed that we left.

We walked quietly through the door and down
the stairs to the path. I had expected Hendrix to choose a close
bungalow so that he wouldn’t be far from his brothers, but he
surprised me by picking one directly across from us, the furthest
away he could take me.

The moon and stars lit up our path and the
cool ocean breeze danced around us. If it wasn’t the Apocalypse and
his brother wasn’t gravely ill, if we weren’t running from Feeders
and hadn’t just killed a crapload of men and Zombies, this would
have been incredibly romantic.

Okay, even Zombies couldn’t ruin this. It was
still beautiful. The ocean was still moving. The anticipation for
what was yet to come tonight still thrilling.

Hendrix’s hand slipped into mine and he
pulled me up the creaking steps and through a cock-eyed door. The
room was sparsely decorated with a table and chairs, two end
tables, a couch that had been shoved against a wall and a bare
mattress.

Hendrix closed the door behind us and latched
it. “Finally,” he breathed, leaning against it. His shoulders
collapsed and his head dropped back against the door.

I moved to wrap my arms around his waist. I
couldn’t stay away from him.

His hands ran over my back again and slipped
beneath my shirt. I tipped my head up to ask him if he was ready to
go to sleep but before I could get a word out, his mouth descended
on mine, capturing it with a kiss.

I opened for him, not having any reason to
resist. As soon as our tongues touched, he moaned the most
masculine, most virile sound into my mouth and I practically burst
into flames.

I pulled back, panting and desperate to give
him an out. “We can wait,” I breathed. “If you’re too… if you’re
not up for this, we can wait.”

His voice was nothing more than a primal
growl and the sexiest sound I had ever heard. “I’ve waited, Reagan.
I’ve waited enough.” His mouth captured mine again in a needy kiss.
We escalated from zero to sixty in a half second and I couldn’t get
enough of him. Teeth, tongue, lips, we were nothing but feeling and
desperate kisses.

He picked me up by my thighs and I wrapped my
legs around his waist to keep from falling. He stalked to the bed,
his mouth never leaving mine.

A fire started inside of me, strong enough to
burn me alive. But it felt amazing. It felt like nothing I had ever
felt before.

I had waited a long time for a moment like
this. Sometimes because of my circumstances and sometimes because
of my choice. But everything, all if it, every decision and
bad-timed interruption had led us to this moment, to this night we
could spend together.

I couldn’t have picked a better man to give
myself to. I couldn’t have predicted that we would make commitments
first or that I would fall so irrevocably in love with him, I
couldn’t define myself without this love.

But here we were now. And it felt
amazing.

It felt right.

I couldn’t wait for another second.

My hands tangled through his hair and our
mouths worked to fan this consuming flame. I couldn’t get close
enough. My thighs squeezed around his waist. I felt his hard body
pressed to mine, his heart beating a frantic rhythm, and his
muscles flexed to hold me in place. We were as close as we could
get like this, but I needed more.

I needed so much more.

He ripped his mouth away from mine and just
when I started to complain, I fell. Or not so much fell, as Hendrix
tossed me in the middle of the bed. My back hit soft mattress and
not a second passed before he pounced on top of me.

“If… if we need to wait… for you, I mean… We
can.” The words were pulled from his mouth in the most reluctant
but thoughtful way.

I smiled up at him. His eyes were so dark,
his expression worshipful and reverent. His longish hair fell over
his forehead and his strong hands held me with demanding
intent.

He had never been more beautiful. Nothing on
this earth had.

Not even the ocean could compare to this man,
my husband.

“I’m ready,” I told him softly. “I love you,
Hendrix Parker. This… you are what I want.”

His expression softened to nothing but pure,
raw love. Lust had been a beast inside of him until this moment.
Now love drove him, this eternal connection between us.

He dropped his forehead to mine and took
several steadying breaths. “I love you too, Reagan. I have for so
long. I will for the rest of my life. I swear it to you.” He kissed
me again, whispering words I hadn’t heard since before everything
fell apart with Kane. “More than all and to the end.”

And then I stopped having to worry about
dying a virgin.

The rest of the night passed with gentle,
exploring hands, the sweetest kisses and a love that consumed me
more than any fire or desire.

We stopped worrying about Vaughan and how we
were going to survive the rest of the way to Colombia. We released
our guilt and fears and anxiety that had built up inside of us both
until we were drowning in them. We forgot that there were Zombies
and evil men and a long road ahead of us.

And we lived in a moment, a night, a world
where there was only us. Where we were the only people that
existed.

The only people that mattered.

Where there was nothing but our love and the
promise of an eternal future together.

Chapter Four

The cold breeze stirred over my bare skin. I
snuggled closer to the heat source next to me.

That wasn’t enough, so I slapped at the bed,
searching for my quilt.

More reality seeped into my sleepy brain and
I started to come awake in panicked stages.

I’m naked!
That freaked-out thought
was accompanied by,
There’s a man in my bed!

Then I remembered I wanted that man to be
there and that I was naked on purpose.

A wicked grin curled my lips as I stretched
leisurely next to Hendrix.

Oh, my god, we fell asleep
! That
panicked thought jerked me into a sitting position. Hendrix groaned
next to me and flopped his arms and half of his chest over my
middle.

I couldn’t believe we’d actually fallen
asleep. I hadn’t slept that hard in… a really long time. I couldn’t
even remember when I’d been so blackout asleep I couldn’t tell how
much time had gone by.

Our weapons and clothes were nowhere to be
seen. All of our important things had been strewn about in the
extra-fun task of undressing each other.

I rubbed sleep out of my eyes- another
phenomenon- and blinked at the hazy morning light filtering in our
borrowed bungalow. I looked down at Hendrix’s golden body wrapped
around the pale skin of my stomach and smiled with our secret.

This man was mine. More so than he had ever
been. I couldn’t help but feel like I was glowing. I had never been
happier or more in love.

But like all good things in the Zombie
Apocalypse, this intimate moment had to come to an end.

A knock at our door caused Hendrix to stir
more fully awake.

“What?” he grumbled loudly.

I covered my chest with my arms and mentally
willed the intruder to stay outside.

“It’s Vaughan,” Nelson said in a scratchy
voice. “He’s awake.”

I sat up straighter and sucked in a deep
breath. That was a good thing, right? Vaughan was awake? That had
to be a good thing!

But then why did Nelson’s voice sound so
distraught?

“We’re coming,” Hendrix answered with more
clarity.

The silence from the other side lasted for so
long I started to think Nelson had walked away. Finally he said,
“Hurry.” His footsteps sounded on the stairs and disappeared along
the path.

Hendrix rolled over on his back. His closest
arm stayed wrapped around my body, but he threw the other over his
head and buried his face in the crook of his elbow.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered.

I immediately lay back and curled up in the
crook of his arm. I wrapped my arm around his stomach and threw my
leg over his, pressing myself as close to him as I could.

“You can,” I told him.

“Reagan…”

“What would he do if this was reversed?” I
asked in a small voice. I hated each word I spoke, but I didn’t
have a choice. Hendrix couldn’t let himself stay in denial. And I
was afraid that if he waited too long to leave this bungalow, it
would be too late.

“He would keep the family together,” Hendrix
admitted. His voice broke when he repeated, “He would make sure we
were all together.”

“Then do that for him,” I coaxed. The tears
slipped down my cheeks and pooled on Hendrix’s bare chest. Neither
of us moved to wipe them away. “Let him have his family
together.”

A violent sob tore through his chest. It
shook his whole body and didn’t want to quit. He turned to face me
and pulled me so tightly to his chest I could barely breathe.

I felt hot tears in the crook of his neck
where he buried his face. It was like he had to hide, like he
couldn’t bear to face the awfulness that this day would bring. If
he could just keep from opening his eyes, he wouldn’t have to deal
with anything other than this room.

“Hendrix,” I pleaded. “We need to go see
him.”