Reawakening (27 page)

“Hey—you with me?”

He sounded more amused than sharp over her sudden lack of attention—which made her believe he understood what she’d been thinking about. But then she glanced over her shoulder at him and his expression was all innocence. Totally not bothered by their sudden proximity.

And it was proximity, too. Kind of shocking, after the whole
maybe I’m not that into you
thing. She didn’t think he’d meant to drag her all the way in front of him—as though maybe, oh sweet Lord, maybe he was just going to take her from behind—but it ended up that way all the same.

He was wearing weird overalls, and she could feel the heavy buttons on them suddenly digging into her lower back. Not to mention the thoughts those overalls conjured up in her lust-addled mind.

Like, for example—
I bet he’s not wearing anything under them except that t-shirt. I could just pop those buttons and the whole thing would come off in one big piece. Or he could pop the buttons and get at his cock real easy, incredibly easy, and then he could fuck me over this generator like all of that other nonsense was just a bad dream
.

“Okay, so…” he started out, but his voice seemed to come out a little more wavery than he’d intended. She felt pretty sure he’d just meant to show her where the gas went, but now that they were here and she was all pressed against him, it seemed different.

Especially as he had to give her a tutorial that featured long nozzles being poked into deep holes. It was so ridiculously suggestive that for a moment she considered the idea he’d known, and
wanted
things to go this way. Wanted to kind of hint at sex things and maybe get her into a slightly rude position without coming out and saying it.

But then if so, why hadn’t he just gone for it that morning? She didn’t get him. She didn’t understand what was so hard or why it had to be this way, and all of the above crowded out her higher thought processes until she just had to blurt out—

“Jamie, I really want to—”

It was a good attempt, if somewhat interrupted by the feel of his erection pressing into the curve of her ass.

Of course, for a moment she tried to pretend it was something else. She didn’t want to pretend it was something else but it just felt like the best course of action, all things considered. He was waffling on about pressure caps, he’d already brushed her off once that day—it seemed unlikely that the feel of her body against his had revved his engine.

Even if it had totally revved hers. Jesus, just the feel of his stiff cock pushing against her…it set her on some impossible edge she was never going to get off of. And she couldn’t even think badly of herself over it, either, because he’d had one go around already today, and she’d had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Running—that’s what she’d had. Blake hadn’t even tried it on with her when she’d stopped to tie her shoelace.

Though Lord knows she’d wanted to try it with him when he’d stopped to tie his. The sight of his perfect round ass in those sweatpants, all bent over and ready for her to just…

Oh, both of them making her crazy. They’d opened the floodgates, now, and she’d turned into a crazy sex maniac. Though really, who was the sex maniac? The person who got a bit hot and bothered over the feel of something heavy and hard against their butt, or the person who got the heavy and hard thing in the first place?

Plus, she could hear Jamie’s voice kind of losing its way. Whenever she moved—and she honestly tried to not move all that much—it went a little high, until one of them definitely had to say something. She could have just not acknowledged it before, but he seemed in no hurry to move away, and she could absolutely tell that it wasn’t just a wrench in his pocket…something had to be said.

Though it was surprising when he was the one to break first. He backed off abruptly and it was like a pressure valve letting off a great gush of steam—though not exactly in a good way. More like in a now-the-boiler’s-going-to-explode sort of way.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. It’s gotta mind of its own, you know.”

That
was all he had to say? He’d fucked her upside down and inside out the other day and he was going with the kid’s schoolbook version of erection getting?

Plus, he looked so embarrassed when she finally managed to break through the shell of lust around her and stand up semi-straight. As though she’d caught him molesting her underpants or something similarly stupid.

After all—didn’t he realize that she’d
love
to catch him molesting her underpants? She would have killed to catch him molesting her underpants back when sex dreams had been her only comfort. Now they’d actually had sex, and he was still being all wary and weird.

“I don’t get why you’re sorry. I told you—I told you to say if you wanted it.”

He’d backed up against the metal shelving behind him for some unaccountable reason. And he looked…she wasn’t even sure how he looked. Horny—she knew that much for certain. Really fucking horny, as though the morning thing just hadn’t been enough. Not by a long, long shot.

“I don’t want you to feel obliged,” he said, but the words came out tough and mealy. Like he had to really strain to say them—though she couldn’t think why. What she was going to say next to him? Yeah, that was the kind of thing that made people strain.

“Is that why you jerked off this morning, instead of fucking me?”

But he didn’t seize up, the way she expected him to. He didn’t flush red, either. Instead his mouth went open and clear affronted-ness spelled itself out on his face, shortly before he came out with—

“Oh that ain’t right, bug—you spying on me? I did that in the privacy of my own bedroom…I mean, our own bedroom…I mean, someplace that isn’t private at all. But that’s not the point!”

She tried not to laugh at the way the words came out. At the way he corrected himself on each totally false point and lost any of his angry steam along the way. By the time he’d gotten to
not the point
, those little crinkles had appeared around just his right eye. It was always just his right eye, when he was amused. And it always happened before his mouth got around to smiling, too.

“I just don’t get why you did it! I was right there—didn’t you want me?”

Oh, that one trapped him. She could see him trying to look to one side for an answer but there was nothing forthcoming down by the sacks of potatoes.

“It’s not as easy as all that,” he said, finally, though she could tell that even he found it a weak response.

“Were you really tired?”

Pause.

“No.”

“Did you want to fuck me?”

Another pause, longer this time. And when he spoke, he kind of blew the words out. A little shaky. A little greedy.

“Hell yeah.”

The words were like a lasso around her middle. They dragged her to him, no problem at all. He still had his erection, and when he looked down at her it was with heavy-lidded, half-gone eyes.

“Then next time, just go for it. I don’t feel obliged, and I think you’re crazy for even saying something like that.”

He had his gaze trained on her lips, and it was obvious why, even when he came out with things like this—

“I just wanna tread lightly, you know.”

“Like this?” she asked then caught his mouth with hers. It really didn’t take much doing. He’d practically turned to putty before she’d even laid a finger on him, which pretty much torpedoed all those
he’s not really into it
sorts of thoughts.

He was just cautious. That was it. Just cautious.

“Yeah, kinda like that,” he said, and this time he kissed her. Just lightly. No tongue, hardly an open mouth in sight.

Still crushingly arousing, however.

“You really want me?” he asked. It would have been hilarious if his eyes hadn’t suddenly looked so wounded and open. As though there really was a possibility of her saying no.

“I do. Come on. You know I do,” she said, and it was like a chain reaction. Immediate and almost shocking. One second his gaze was too vulnerable for her to bear, the next he had his hands on her ass.

And said hands didn’t go easy, either. He didn’t pat her butt in some cheeky, innocent sort of way. He slid his hands all the way down over her back, until they found the curve of her ass and squeezed rudely. A cheek for each hand, hard and firm and with his fingers almost in the groove between.

She blushed just feeling it. Wanted to say something stupid to him like she’d never experienced an ass grab in quite that way before. But instead she had to settle for suddenly wide open eyes and a kind of jerky moan—one that definitely got his fires going.

“You like that, huh?” he said, though
like
wasn’t exactly the word she would have used. “You horny, baby? I guess I left you kind of high and dry this morning. Or did Blake—”

“No. No. Blake didn’t.”

“And you sure you want me to?”

That seemed like kind of a weird thing to say, but really, she couldn’t question it. It had been hard enough getting the words
no
and
Blake
and
didn’t
out.

“Yeah. God, yeah.”

“Tell me what you want then, huh?”

Her mind wouldn’t make the appropriate connections. She couldn’t remember how to create words. Somehow her body had started rubbing itself up against his and it was short circuiting every bit of sense she had.

“Uh…that…thing. The thing. You did before. Yeah. Thing.”

Luckily, however, he didn’t seem to be making much sense either. In fact, he didn’t even get to words, at first. He seemed a little stunned that she was rubbing herself over his stiff cock, never mind anything else.

Though really, she couldn’t say why. It felt absolutely amazing with his overalls being so underwear-less and her sweatpants being so thin. All she had to do was spread her legs a little and it was right there, right up against her swollen sex and the hard little bead her clit had become.

She guessed it kind of helped that he’d lifted her a little way off the ground, however.

“You’re gonna have to help me out a little more than that, baby. You want me to go down on you? Because although this feels real nice I can see that you’re wanting a little more than a dry hump.”

She didn’t think he should be so sure about that. There was something very appealing about a man rubbing your body against his—which he was totally doing. She wasn’t sure when he’d started it, exactly, but she could feel his swollen cock right up against her clit and he had hold of her ass really tightly and every time she tried to jerk herself against him faster, he forced her back into this maddening too-slow rhythm.

She wondered if he knew she was going to come just from this meager contact. Or if he knew that this contact was so good, so distracting, that when sirens suddenly started blaring out they both didn’t move away from each other for a full ten seconds.

Yeah, he probably understood that one. He didn’t seem to want to let it go, she could tell. The sirens blared and his hand stayed in her hair and his arm stayed around her waist and though his mouth went still against hers she could read what he was thinking, no trouble at all.

Just let us stay like this, and not have to hear that thing going and going.

She knew what that was like. In truth, she could hardly believe the noise had started up. How weird, that something bad happening was now the shocking thing, the thing that interrupted pleasantness, and not the other way around. Bad had become rare again. Good had become the standard.

It made her heart soar and want to eat itself, all at the same time. She thought of the splinter, the splinter that could so easily kill him, and suddenly couldn’t breathe.
Don’t let good become rare, again
, she thought, though it was unfortunate that the next thing she had to feel was how still he’d gone against her.

It reminded her of the way rabbits went when they heard something coming. He wasn’t quivering the way they did but there was some kind of weird, wired suggestion of it hovering just beneath his skin. As though his ears had pricked and were standing straight up, and he was just waiting, waiting to hurl himself in front of that oncoming car.

Or in this case, hurl himself in front of some oncoming zombies. God, how she wished she’d never thought of something as stupid as him dying because of a splinter. He was going to be killed by zombies in about thirty seconds. Of course, he was.

“Do you hear that massive wailing siren by any chance?” he asked, and it should have been funny. He said it to be funny, she could tell.

But it wasn’t. And especially not when she found herself clawing and grasping at those last little embers of desire, as though she could keep herself warm with them once he’d been eaten by the zombies that were probably invading the island as they spoke.

“I was hoping I’d gone nuts and it was just in my head,” she replied, which should have been funny, too. But it was hard to laugh when he’d plastered that fake smile on his face then decided to say something like—

“It’ll be nothing. Goes off all the time.”

Funny, that his gaze remained so cool and flat that it made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Even funnier that the siren hadn’t gone off in all the time she’d been there. Somehow, she doubted it started wailing and wailing like a giant with a toothache because a sparrow landed on one of the mines.