Blood Soaked and Contagious (46 page)

“Long afternoons with nothing in them but you. Waking up with you every morning and knowing that the incredible curves underneath my hands belong to you. The laughter. I’m addicted to laughing with you.” She hugged me a little closer and I asked her to loosen her grip so I could hug her back. When we were in the proper hugging position, I lowered my head to her ear. “I want a place in your life. I’ve never wanted that with anyone like I do with you. It’s almost as if we were designed as a set but only knew it when we saw one another.”

“Yeah. What else do you want with me that you’ve never wanted before?”

“Woo,” I took a deep breath, “that treads on some really personal and private stuff, Charles.” The Charles got me a slap on the ass.

“Like what, Frankie the Frog?” Her eyes were back to being sparkly with humor and that made me really happy.

“You’re not going to like it, but it is something Chunhua said to me, that I realized was true.”

“This is gonna be good. Spill it, Mister.”

Deep breathing. I wasn’t at all kidding about the treading on private things, but then I tend to make jokes out of serious matters. I answered her with, “Strong babies.”

She blinked a couple of times but said nothing, and I could feel the tension oozing down my legs as I tried to predict what was going through her head. I might have said too much, and that worried me.

“Strong babies, huh?”

“Um. Yes. Strong babies.” At least she was speaking!

“How many?” Her facial expression was all seriousness, without a touch of the luminous humor I loved too much.

“Well, siblings are important, so two for sure. I could wrap my brain around more, but two for sure.”

“I come from a pretty large family, you know,” she said, very seriously. “Shawn, me, Jimmy, Sharon, Lisa, Gordon, and little Shelley.”

“Wow. I never knew you guys had that many siblings.” I had no idea where the conversation was going, but the only way to learn anything was to participate, so I did.

“Yeah. Sometimes, because our whole extended family lived in the same town, it felt like we ran the place.”

“I bet so!”

That got her to crack a smile and some of the tension left my legs. At least her arms were still around me and didn’t feel as though they were going anywhere. I had a measure of hope things weren’t about to fall apart thanks to that contact.

“I would like to be married before the kids start showing up,” she said, thoughtfully but with a measure of serious sincerity, “and you had better be prepared for a number like five.”

“Five?”

“Yes. Five. I think the seven of us was a little much, but five might be just right for the modern, post-zombie apocalypse family. Stagger the births by two years, if we can, so the little one is mobile by the time their little brother or sister comes along.”

I found myself nodding my head as if I was in agreement or that I felt what she was saying made sense. At that point in the conversation, I was lost enough in my own thoughts and feelings I wouldn’t have noticed if some little gnome ran up and pierced my nipple. On second thought, I probably would notice something like that, so I’ll amend it to a little gnome running up and nuzzling my behind.

“Have I lost you, Frank? You’re looking a little dazed.” Again, she looked at me with such a serious and probing expression I didn’t know quite what to do with it.

“No, not really.” I spoke slowly, deliberately, trying not to convey my sense of sloshing around in the unknown sea of fate. “I’m surprised with the candor of our conversation.” That was certainly the case!

“I feel you ought to know where I’m coming from about all this since you brought up strong babies. Candor is pretty important, don’t you think?”

“Oh, absolutely, yes!”

“I’m glad we agree. Can I be candid about something else?” Her eyes twinkled a little and more of my brain started to focus, probably because it didn’t want to miss anything interesting she might say.

“I’d love to hear anything that you want to share with me.” It was a true statement.

“I’m from the South, so bear with me. Some things are easier for us to say than others,” she said, pulling my face down to hers. “Frank Hightower, I have wanted you from the moment I met you.” Her voice dropped into a range that promised passion and intensity in honey-covered tones. “You’ve been a gentleman, and I love that about you, but it has felt like a long, slow, teasing kiss that has been driving me out of my mind. I don’t just want you, Frank; you’ve made me need you.” Charlie’s hands slid up the back of my neck and laced themselves in my hair. “I want you to make love to me. I want you to fuck me blind. I need us to be together before we go out there and face something that might be a carnival of horror.”

She kissed me and I felt every word she said echoing in the touch of her lips. We fought ourselves to keep composure for just a little longer before we would end up gnawing on one another with hungry abandon. I knew what I wanted and what she wanted, and I was absolutely willing to follow her lead. If there had been a doubt in my mind, she erased it with what she said next.

“Please, Frank?”

There is a passage in the Sexual Geneva Convention that defines that sort of question, issued in a seductive yet vulnerable tone of voice as a Weapon of Mass Wardrobe Destruction. There was no way an armistice could be negotiated or signed after such gauntlets were thrown down. She sank my battleship.

I answered her with the ferocious kiss we had denied ourselves moments before, growling against her lips and hearing her answer in wordless sounds. When we parted, gasping, she looked at me with a smile on her lips and asked, “Does that mean we’re going to fuck first and make love later on?”

“Rrrrrrrrrryeah!”

“Race you upstairs?” She was laughing, but her nipples were so crinkled they were poking me in the chest.

“YAR!!!!” We took off. We took my room door off the hinges.

I backed her up against my desk and learned how just how strong nanotechnology can make you when you’re eager to get your partner out of her clothes. Snarling, I tore her shirt, bra, and shoulder-holster rig apart with a single pull, leaving her gasping and bare from the waist up. She exploded toward me, kissing me and whispering things that I could barely register as I kissed and licked my way from her ear to her shoulder. Her teeth found my earlobe and I lost the war.

I groaned against the firm smoothness of her shoulder, my mouth open and wordless against her skin. There was a whisper in my ear, urging me to bite her, so I did. Days before, when I bit her shoulder, I was unprepared for her response. That wasn’t the case this time, and I held her arms to her sides with every bit of strength I had while she gyrated madly against me.

So help me God, it wasn’t enough! She was chanting, howling, moaning for me to take her, but I wanted more than that. Instead of giving in to that heat, I threw her to the desktop, climbed on top of her, and held her down. I bit her shoulders, neck, collarbone, and down the curves of her breasts. She was a feral creature underneath me, unselfconscious about the noises she made, demands she issued at the top of her lungs, or how hard she was thrusting her hips up to meet me.

When my lips found her nipple, she forced her arms out of my grip and wrapped them around my head, panting against the top of my skull. I bit, sucked, and found a fierce joy in the power of her reactions. My hands were free, and I ruined her jeans the same way I ruined her shirt and bra. She screamed out a ragged, “Oh my God!”

Snarling, I let go of her breast and pushed her back down on the desktop, and she gave me the universal look that said that she really wanted what was coming next. Her hips slid downward and she spread her legs, anticipating the disappearance of my pants. I looked and saw the flash of metal that I’d seen once before. The pants were going to wait... for as long as it would take.

I didn’t just move fast; I struck like a rattlesnake on amphetamines, wrapping my arms around her legs from the bottom so that I could keep them open. My mouth greeted the flashing metal and I felt like a rook pecking at a glimmering treasure. Charlie screamed in a way that had nothing to do with pain and ground herself against my face.

She lost control, which was just what I wanted, and bucked against my tongue as she orgasmed. I didn’t stop, and neither did she. It wasn’t until I heard her saying things like “Please! Frank! Please! In!” that I remembered we both wanted something very specific. I let her up, and she stayed on her back for a few minutes, panting to catch her breath.

“You... weren’t planning to kill me... but if you were, could you do it just like that?” She was laughing, and I couldn’t help but do the same.

She got up from the desk and frowned mightily when she saw that my pants were still on. “That ain’t right.” She tore mine off, belt included, just as easily as I had hers.

“Good. Can I please have this now?” Her fingers closed around the length of me and I lost my voice. All I could do was nod like a mute idiot. “Good.”

I followed her down onto my sleeping bags and she never lost her grip on me; if anything, she held on tighter. As if I could run away or even wanted to! She settled down, much like she had on my desk and tugged me to her.

We kissed, and we discovered the ferocity had changed to something else in the minute it had taken us to go from the desk to the floor.

“Do you really want me, Frank?” she asked me in a very quiet voice and was rewarded with a quiver that rattled me from head to toe.

Her hand loosened enough that I could move away without leaving it behind, and I lifted my other leg so that I was between hers. I kissed her, told her I wanted her, and then I proved it.

Somewhere in the aching, soaring pleasure, I thanked God for her. We both cried out, and she lost control underneath me. Her arms pulled me tight against her as her lower half danced to a tune of its own. I heard every noise, every iota of gratitude to the Almighty, and every single time she told me that she loved me.

“Do you really want me?” I don’t know where the question came from, or why I asked it, buried inside her as I was, but I did.

She blinked, and then she shrieked, “Oh, God! Yes, Frank, please! So much! Yes!”

I lost my control, feeling the push that was as old as time. You know, the one that sends your civilized behavior over the brink, leaving behind nothing but an animal in the throes of ecstasy? I wasn’t alone. Charlie was there, making inarticulate noises underneath me, and meeting every single thrust until I lay shattered and spent in her arms.

Charlie and I were cuddling and periodically giggling. I learned that her floating ribs are insanely ticklish. She suggested I stop tickling her by poking one of my testicles. I stopped.

“You know,” said a voice from my open doorway, “if I had known I would get a show, I would have brought a chair and some munchies!”

We squeaked like frightened mice and tried to pull the sleeping bag around ourselves from the opposite directions. Charlie caught on first and changed the direction that she was pulling in, managing to cover herself but leaving me buck naked on the other side.

I looked up, covered my three-piece set with both hands, and tried to look demure and defenseless.

“How long have you been standing there?” Charlie asked, squeaking from underneath the sleeping bag.

“Oh, a little while now,” Chunhua said, grinning from ear to ear. “All I was expecting was a hug for bringing you both some dumplings for dinner,” she lifted up the stacked steel containers that she was holding, “but I got a very hot show instead!”

“I am so embarrassed!” Charlie was blushing from the top of her shoulders to the roots of her hair. I just sat there, feeling very, very exposed.

“Don’t be! Do you know how long it has been since I’ve seen any porn?” Chunhua put the container down on my desk, carefully stepping over the door on the floor to do so. “That was very hot, let me tell you! Woo!” She fanned herself with both hands. “I know you won’t let me borrow him, but if you find out that he has a brother who isn’t a zombie, let me know! Woo!”

“Oh my God. I’m gonna die.” Charlie slipped behind the sleeping bag all the way.

“By the way, did you guys forget to use a condom, or did you have other things on your mind?” Her eyes were sparkling with something, it might have been mirth or it might have been a certain amount of sadistic glee, but she blew us a kiss and hopped back down the stairs.

We just sat there, looking at one another, wondering just how much we’d jumped the gun on starting a family.

“I think, really,” Charlie began, ducking her head slightly, “I’m going to put that issue aside for the time being, for two major... No, three major reasons. Number one: I need to pee. Number two: we need to gear up. Number three: we are so going to eat those dumplings.”

“But…,” I tried to say something responsible and appropriately macho, but she shushed me.

“I’m serious, Frank. We can worry about that,” she struggled for a word that fit, “possible consequence if we come back alive tonight. Even better, we can worry tomorrow morning, after we’ve come back alive, fucked like the Devil, and slept tangled together all night. Don’t disagree with me, now. I feel really strongly about this.” She took a pose that looked like the figurehead on a particularly busty sailing vessel.