Blood Soaked and Contagious (26 page)

I would die for her. I would live for her. I felt a future in those lips. There was fun in it, as well as joy, confrontation, adoration, love, and a dance of intimacy that would last until I could not go any further... and then, it would breathe life into me again.

Somewhere in that infinite moment, the kiss let us go. We were left with sore mouths, wide eyes, and more feelings than could have been expressed in anything shorter than a lifetime. I could have summed those feelings up in three words, but I was afraid to say them on the off chance that she did not feel the same.

I guess that is what she meant. The walls around my heart rose up when the storm passed.

“Ah. Charlotte. Um.”

She smiled and shifted her body in a devious and delightful way. “Pretty impressive, wasn’t it?”

“I’m speechless.” Certainly, there weren’t many words in my head, but there were about four million naughty thoughts trying to hog time on the Sex-A-Tron widescreen in my mental Madison Square Gardens. My anatomy had distinct opinions about things, and I was trying like Hell not to listen to the running commentary or follow the explicit advice of Quixote and Los Panzas.

How her thigh ended up pressing against my Three-Course Gourmet Feast didn’t matter to me as much as that it was making it entirely too difficult to form a complete sentence. I know I can’t hide anything of import if my face is in on the game. My features are way too mobile to conceal certain kinds of information, and Charlie was far too good at paying attention to little details.

She giggled at me and shook her head. “You’re attached to being a gentleman, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me it isn’t because I’m Shawn’s sister. I don’t want to back you into a corner, but I’d like to know.” The giggles and smiles were replaced by a more serious expression like a light switch being flipped.

My brain was frozen solid. I wanted her. I liked her. I did not want to screw up the flow of possibilities centered around the presence of this exquisite woman in my life. Words were not forming, and when you have no words, all you have is action.

I returned the favor of her thigh pressed against me, but instead of pressing, I pushed her thighs apart and occupied the space between them. I mounted her and ground the zipper of my jeans against what I ached to touch. With my arms holding me in place, I let her feel what I couldn’t form words to say, and I kissed her with every iota of lust I felt.

Her legs wrapped around my thighs and she made incoherent noises against my tongue. I hadn’t planned to keep grinding the zipper-enabled Mariachi into her, but I couldn’t help myself.

I managed to break the kiss and looked down into her slightly glassy eyes. While our bodies tried to disintegrate my blue jeans by sheer force of will and mad friction, I managed to find words.

“I do not care who your brother is. I don’t care where you came from or why. All I know is that I want you right here, right now, and every moment I can have you from this moment forward.” There was a growl in my voice, a feral authenticity I had never heard before, and I still had things I needed to say. “I don’t want to be your gentleman, Charlie. I want you screaming my name as badly as I want to possess you.”

I saw her breath catch and her eyes open to the size of saucers. The more she lifted her hips off the concrete, the less control I was keeping over my ache to make the zipper go away, but I was not about to lose a fight with myself until I was ready. Growling, I slammed my crotch into hers and pinned her to the floor, sandwiching her between hardnesses.

“I’m a liar, a cheat, and a killer. Another minute of your unbelievably erotic body underneath me and I won’t be able to be the honest man I want to be for you. Give me a little time, Charlie; let me give you the man I want to be for you, and then I will take the woman you want to give me.”

She moaned, inhaled, and twisted somehow. The next thing I knew, I was the one flat on my back on the concrete with her on top. Just as fast, her hand went between the front of my body and my jeans, and she gathered me into her grasp. My back arched and all that came out of my mouth was a groan that started at the back of my throat and punched itself between my teeth.

“Goddamn it, Frank. Promise me.”

“Praaaahh?”

“Promise me you’re not... Arg! Fuck, Frank! Promise me... ” She was having trouble getting her words out, so I didn’t feel quite so awful. Actually, I felt more than a little pleased, because that meant I wasn’t the only person almost blind with lust.

“I promise!”

“Promise me you’ll love me and possess me and fuck me like your very own girlfriend!”

“God! Yes! I promise! Please get your hand off my Quixote before I can’t ask you to stop!”

“What the Hell is a Quixote?”

“Penis!” I still hate that the word came out as a lame little squeak.

“Oh? You mean, this one?” She squeezed, and I thought I was going to die or experience the rapture.

“God!”

“You can call me anything you want, Frankie the Girder, just don’t make a fool out of me.”

“No, Charlie. I want you too much. I didn’t know I needed... ” I tried to shut up before I made a fool out of myself.

“What do you need?” She let go of Quixote, much to his dismay and my existential relief, and draped herself over me so that our faces were a breath apart. “Tell me what you need. Please. I want to know, Frank. Please tell me.”

“I didn’t know I needed you.”

She kissed me, and it was as much about love as the one before was about sex. “You didn’t know it because you’re a boy, sweetheart. I knew it. That’s because I’m a girl.”

“I’m really happy about that. A boy with breasts like those would take a lot of getting used to.”

“Ooo! I’m gonna pinch you for that one!”

“How about you wash my back, and then we can use the spiffy tub and soak together?”

“Jesus, Frank! That is so close to genius I might just fall head over heels for you!”

“Promise?”

We got up off the floor. I shucked my clothes and assumed the position on the stool after I retrieved it. She laughed, and I turned around to find out what was funny. I didn’t expect her to be standing there, bold as brass, with her hands on her hips and not bothering to cover anything. The first thing that went through my head was, “Oh! Creamy!”

Guys like to talk about women who have curves in the right places. Charlie had curves in not only the right places, but also in Locations Optimized for Amorous Deployment. “L.O.A.D.” in government speak.

“I guess I should’ve warned you, but I thought Shawn would have said something about it.”

“About what?”

She grinned, and I had a Robert Heinlein moment. “We were pretty much raised nudist.”

“Do you know the kinds of mental images that gives me about your brother? I mean, I see him leaping and pirouetting through the wheat fields of your homeland. Julie Andrews is singing in the background. This is just not right!”

She covered her mouth with her hand and started laughing like a loon. I just stared, because the view was That Good (trademark, copyright, marca registrada, etc.). After all, she’s a L.O.A.D.

When the laughter let go of her, she sauntered over, knelt down, and proceeded to scrub my back.

“You know, I can barely see where the scars are.”

“Really?”

“No kidding. These little nano-things did quite a bit of work beyond throwing stuff out of you. Feel this?” She traced a line under my left shoulder blade, toward the middle of my back.

“It feels like your finger. Why?”

“I just ran my finger over five places where you ought to have scars from shrapnel. There aren’t any bumps or swelling, just a little discoloration.”

I shuddered a little. Having an army of Tiny I Don’t Know Whats running around inside me, regardless of the fact that they’d been doing good things, gave me a feeling of vulnerability I did not like at all. Jayashri and Charlie probably had their own set of feelings about this, or would, once their little friends started to do active things beyond making them slurp gray goo.

Come to think of it, why was I okay with having had to slurp metal-loaded saliva?

“Frank, are you okay there?”

“Yeah, I’m just having a lot of funky feelings about having things altering my body and forcing me to ingest... stuff.”

“I’m trying not to think about it. Besides, there are other things I’d rather do.” She leaned down and whispered a few of them in my ear. My shudders started again, but for very different reasons.

“Let’s use the tub,” I said. “If we don’t do that, then we’re going to end up doing other stuff before... oh dear.”

“What?”

“Did you mean what you said just then? The bit about screaming while your mouth is full?”

“Uh huh.”

“We need to start soaking right now.”

Charlie laughed at me, sauntered over to the tub, and lifted her leg to get in, and I got a brief glimpse of the Holy Land. There was a dainty metal ring above the door to the Holy Land. It derailed my train of thought.

It was a good soak, full of quiet, peace, hot water, and our toes wrestling underneath the surface. We both stopped moving at the same moment. I knew there were three people with lower than normal body temperatures approaching the outside loading door to my store. That loading door is the same one that opens the Spa to the world.

Ten meters. Approximately 60 seconds to reach the door at their current speed. They were moving stealthily, slowly, and within range to hear any noise Charlie or I made. That gave us two choices: we could make no noise and ambush them from our watery alcove, or we could make enough noise that they’d want to approach in order to “surprise us.”

Charlie winked at me. She’d made her decision.

“Oh my GOD, Frank! Oh, you are so hard! God! Mmmmm!” Hearing that would have been insanely stimulating if she hadn’t been rolling her eyes and doing her best to sneak out of the tub at the same time.

My turn. “Charlie... oh, girl, you are so nasty. Yeah. Nasty! That’s what I like. Yeah,” I started creeping out of the tub while I did my best to ad-lib without sounding too trite. “Damn. Yeah.”

“Oh baby! Oh baby! Spank it, please! I need you to spank it.” She slapped her damp thigh and went on, “Oh, honey! That’s what I like!” She pointed out the door, brought up three fingers, and headed toward her pants. She’d snagged my Taurus pistols earlier.

My Glock and scythe were right beside my shoes.

“Yeah, slut! I’m gonna spank it again. Yeah!” She obliged me by slapping her thigh about five times. “Take it. Yeah. I’m gonna give it to you in that tight little hole. Mmm, take that!” Five more slaps.

Three meters from the door, 20 degrees staggered, and approximately two meters between each target, lead target approaching the center of the door. I made it out of the tub, snagged my pistol, and was surprised to see Charlie on all fours, facing the door. The revolvers were on the floor in front of her.

She gestured for me to get behind her, then started moaning like a professional and grinding her ass against the air. It took me a minute, but I got it. I got down on my knees behind her, Glock in hand.

“Oh God! You are so nasty! Take my cock! Yeah! Nasty, tight bitch!”

“Ohhhhh! Ohhhhh! You’re so mean, stuffing my ass with that! Spank me, you bastard!”

I smelled our targets. Zombies. Extra data point: they’d avoided the IEDs.

I tapped Charlie’s left thigh, the one nearest to the center of the door, where the primary target would be coming through. She nodded, went flat to the floor, and had a gun in each hand.

“Yeah! I’ll spank you, dirty bitch! Take it! Take it!”

“Ohhhhh! Ohhhhh! I’m gonna! I’m gonna!” She did a very, very credible faux-gasm, and the rolling door was flung open.

Target 1 moved into the room in a tactical crouch, AR-15 tracking from side to side. Pro. Targets 2 and 3 scampered in, sweeping the room as well. Then they saw us.

Door Zombie did not have time to acquire a target before Charlie put a slug between the lenses of his ultra-black shades. How she shot Target 3 with the same precision, at the same instant, I don’t know.

Target 2 had just long enough to get a shot off at me before I gave him a classic Cranial Double Tap.

I will say this about modern body armor. Kevlar helmets do a great job at containing the spray of exploding skulls. I managed to get that thought out before I realized that Target 2 had actually shot me.

“That was a damned fine double tap,” Charlie said as she rolled over, lightly freckled with bloody spatter, and looked up at me. “FRANK!”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been shot! Oh... oh, God.”

“What?” I had no idea what she was so upset about. I didn’t really feel anything and was strangely unconcerned. If anything, I felt fabulous!

“That is so, so gross.” She pointed at my right shoulder.

I looked down and got to see the bullet finish emerging from my skin and the few drops of blood on my chest dissolve in front of my eyes. It was, as she said, “gross.”