Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl (4 page)

“Obviously not, it’s just….” she trailed off
and I said a silent prayer of thanks. What in the world? And then
she asked, “So how did you guys meet?”

I was already annoyed that she had expected
me to rape her and surprised that she didn’t catch on to the fact
that we were brothers. I mean, we all looked alike. To be a
jackass, I answered, “Online dating.”

To my horror, she nodded her head like she
completely understood. “Oh, like before?” she asked. “That makes
sense then. It’s actually kind of sweet you still have each other
through all this craziness.”

“I was kidding.” Holy hell, King and Harrison
were like thirteen and fifteen when this thing started. What was
wrong with her worldview? Not that men couldn’t be gay in middle
school, but hopefully they hadn’t jumped into online dating before
they finished puberty.

“I’m not judging you,” she answered
sincerely. “I think it’s great. Seriously!”

As if she had to convince me of this.

“We’re not gay,” I bit out defensively.
“We’re brothers.”

She snorted a surprised laugh and then
continued on until she had to drop her head and tears pooled in her
eyes, making them glossy and bright.

“Don’t ever try to be a comedian,” she panted
in between gasps of laughter. “In fact, maybe don’t ever attempt a
joke again.”

I just looked at her. I didn’t know what to
say, or how to take this conversation back into territory where she
didn’t assume I was gay and
I
made
her
nervous. I’d
been living in the Zombie Apocalypse for two years and this was by
far the most horrifying moment so far.

Well, maybe not. But it definitely made top
ten.

I finished the dressing on her left hand and
then we tackled her shirt.

“I’m wearing a tank top underneath; I can
just take this off.” She gestured at her long sleeved shirt and I
forgot how to swallow. “Uh, do you have a knife? You could just cut
it off,” she prompted.

Some brain activity returned to my head but
the only thing that came out was an irritated question. “You trust
a stranger with a knife?” Because it irritated me that she
did
trust me. What if
had
wanted to rape her? Or hurt
her? I hated that she would put herself in danger like this
willingly. She needed someone to protect her; she needed someone to
fight these unseen battles for her.

“You’ve had plenty of opportunity to do what
you want to me,” she reasoned knowingly. “I trust a stranger that
knows how to take care of open wounds.”

She had a point so I went to work. I pulled a
knife from my pocket and set about cutting off her shirt. I was
careful not to come too close to her skin, or near the tight tank
top underneath.

My blood seemed to heat hotter and hotter
with every slice of the knife and inch of skin I exposed. The whole
experience was starting to feel strangely erotic and I didn’t
exactly know how to handle this.

That’s right, twenty-three years old and a
girl in her tank top was more than enough to make me embarrass
myself. I shifted on my barstool and worked to focus on the
clinical, medical aspect of my task.

But, my god, her skin- perfect, milky and a
little pale. Her arms were well-defined, her collarbones so
elegantly arched across her chest. Her neck stretched in a long,
slender line. Her tank top was tight to her perfect body and low
cut over a swelling of perfect breasts.

And it had been a very, very long time since
I’d seen a girl this beautiful so undressed.

My entire body felt on fire from her
nearness. And it wasn’t just my male instincts stuttering to life.
It was her- everything about her that called to some buried, hidden
part of me.

Until an hour ago, I hadn’t realized what a
state of undead I’d fallen into. Sure, I fought daily to kill real
Zombies; but somewhere along the way I’d become one myself.

Reagan had awoken that decaying part of me
and brought me back to life. I’d been a corpse rotting away in the
crypt of my life and she breathed life into me, raised me from the
dead, reminded me that I was not just a person trying to protect
his family, but that I was a man trying to live in a world that
wanted me to die.

Somehow able to think all of this through and
muddle through the task of cleaning her numerous wounds, I reached
for a clean towel and poured some bottled water on it. I pressed
the wet cloth to her forearm, intending to scrub away the dried
blood when she shivered. I looked up and caught her gaze- as deep
and intense as anything I’d ever been a part of- and waited. She
nodded her permission and I let my itching fingers go to work.

I treated her with the utmost respect,
forcing my increasingly hungry body into submission. She was
precious, fragile… feminine. And I wanted to treat her like that.
My mission in life was to protect and I would give her that, too.
Even if I had to protect her from myself.

Once I was finished, I looked her over and
let my gaze fall to her jeans. Self-control. I was a master at
self-control.

“Uh, maybe we should cut those off too?” I
suggested because I couldn’t see another option to get at her
still-bleeding knees.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she agreed. “They were
going in the trash anyway.”

“Do you have other clothes?” I asked out of
true concern. I didn’t want to cut apart her only clothes. Although
I was sure we could find her something around here if she was
desperate.

“Sure thing.” She grinned devilishly at me.
“From our
shopping spree
.”

I was too nervous about the cutting her jeans
apart portion of the evening to respond to her snide comment,
although I did find her amusing. I liked that- a sense of
humor.

“Alright, I’m going to cut around your thigh,
and then I’ll deal with your knees. Do they feel as bad as your
palms?”

She shook her head, “No, actually. I think my
jeans protected them to some extent.”

I toyed with the knife in my hand for a
minute before working up the courage to attack her pants. I worked
methodically and efficiently, but I couldn’t ignore the feel of her
warm thigh beneath my fingertips. Finally, after agonizing moments
the majority of her jeans were gone and her wounded knees were
ready for my ministrations.

I looked up to take in her face and decide if
she could tell what she was doing to me; but instead of horror and
rage, she blushed bright red, staring at her legs in an undiluted
terror. I glanced down, too, and bit back a smile at the admirable
length of hair growing from ankle to where her thighs disappeared
in the part of her jeans not discarded.

She had no idea how fascinating she was just
then. She stared at her legs with embarrassment, that same peculiar
vanity jumping to light. But all I could think was that the
unshaven mess only made her more attractive.

Because now she was real.

Only moments ago she was an otherworldly
creature that descended upon Earth to torture me, to haunt my
dreams from this day forward and occupy my lonely thoughts. No real
girl was this beautiful. No real girl this laid back… this witty….
this sexy.

But she was real. Maybe the last of her
kind.

And she was sitting right in front of me.

Her head dropped to her hands so she didn’t
have to face me, and I resisted against one of the strongest urges
I’d ever had in my life- to slowly peel her hands away from that
lovely face and kiss her senseless.

“It’s not that bad,” I promised her in a
voice that practically cracked from all my surging desire and
confusion

“It’s really bad,” she groaned. She peeked
out from behind a wall of fingers and I couldn’t help but smile
while I examined the remaining shards of glass in her knees.

“It could be worse,” I shrugged a casual
shoulder, hoping to make her feel at ease. “It could be a
mustache.”

“Was that a joke?” she looked up at me,
distracted suddenly.

“So what?”

She laughed a light-hearted, happy sound that
made my chest swell and ego inflate.
I did that. I made her
laugh like that.

“So,” she said still laughing. “It was almost
funny.”

My head snapped up and I met her gaze again.
She was teasing me, but all I could think about was how much she
was making me fall for her. And I had known her
an hour
. I
felt out of my mind with this thing.

I felt dumbstruck.

I felt like a child seeing the infinity of
the stars for the first time.

But I wasn’t a child. I was a man. And I’d
seen the stars lots of times. I should be able to hold my shit
together.

And then she winked at me and I knew I was
seconds from doing something I regretted. Like, kissing her after
all. So I just went back to work on her knees, focusing on what was
causing her pain and taking great strides to make the experience as
painless and comfortable as I could.

As soon as the last bandage was on, she
jumped up and moved away from me. I did the same thing. I had to. I
needed to think straight again. I needed to get my head right.

That didn’t stop me from watching her walk
away though. She still hobbled a little, but seemed much better
than when she tried to walk up the stairs.

Once she reached her friend, I walked over to
Vaughan. We needed to talk. And he stood with all my other brothers
who probably had a say in all this too.

“Hey, we need to talk,” I echoed my thoughts
as soon as he was in mumbling range.

He looked up at me with curious eyes and
nodded. “Yes, we do. I thought we had a strict no outsider’s
policy, Hendrix. What the hell?”

“Come on,” I grunted. “I couldn’t leave them
down there.”

Vaughan thought that over, but he knew I was
right. “Fine, but now what? What if they want something?”

“Well?” I gestured over at the girls perched
on a register counter, laughing and talking freely. “They might
want something. But they should. Look at them, they need a whole
lot of somethings.”

“You want to let them have access to our
supplies?”

“And I’m thinking we let them stay the night
here.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Nelson commented
dryly.

“No, I think he’s found his heart,” Vaughan
joked but then grew serious. “You’re serious about this?”

I shrugged. “I can’t send them back out
there. I would never forgive myself.”
For more reasons than
one
.

“Fine, then they can stay, yeah?” Vaughan
stated but left it in a question- as was his way. Sure, he was our
supreme leader, but he always gave us a chance to speak up. “For
just tonight.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” I agreed. “They
look like they haven’t slept in a while. At least not straight
through the night.”

“Sure, it’s fine with me,” Nelson nodded.
“Anyone have anything against that?”

Nobody said anything.

“Alright, go tell them,” Vaughan ordered me
with an amused raise of his eyebrows.

“That’s probably not a good idea,” I tried to
remain casual. “She’s a little weirded out by me.”

“She?” Nelson picked up immediately on my
slip. “Not they?”

“They,” I growled back. “
They’re
a
little weirded out by me.”

“Why is that?” Harrison asked
suspiciously.

“They have this fear of being raped,” I
admitted dryly.

“By you?” King barked out a laugh and
Harrison joined him.

“What so funny about that?” I demanded. Not
that I wanted to be considered a rapist or anything, but I didn’t
think the concept was
funny
.

“Because you’re like…. you’re like…. asexual.
You wouldn’t rape them! You wouldn’t know how!” King explained.

What the hell? Bastards. All of them.

“You don’t even know what that word means,” I
growled causing them to howl with more laughter. I wasn’t asexual.
At least not anymore.

“I can tell them,” Vaughan cut in. He turned
around but not before throwing out, “Since they obviously make
Hendrix nervous.”

I let out a frustrated sigh but followed my
idiot brothers over to talk to them.

Vaughan led with a question, “When’s the last
time you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”

Reagan bit her lip and looked at her friend.
“Define
good night
,” she challenged.

“When was the last time you slept the entire
night through?” he clarified.

Neither of them responded. They looked at
each other and then back at us with blank, lost expressions. And
that’s when I knew they hadn’t had a good night sleep since this
whole thing began.

Vaughan drew the same conclusion. “That’s
what I thought. You can’t stay with us permanently.” That part was
for me, I thought. “But you can spend the night. We will give you a
full night’s rest before you move on in the morning.”

They just kept staring at us and I wondered
if their fear of strangers went deeper than they appeared.

“Explain the raping thing, Vaughan.” I told
him.

A knowing smile stretched across Vaughan’s
face and I bristled with irritation. He was going to lord this over
my head until the end of time. I knew it. And it was because I was
really pushing for the girls to stay. Ever since we embarked on
this survival journey, I’d let Vaughan take the lead- for the most
part- kept my opinions to myself and gone with the flow as much as
I could. Standing up for something, especially something involving
outsiders and girls for that matter, was completely out of
character for me.

Even I had to wonder what was going on in my
head.

“Oh, and my little brother would like to
assure you that you will not be raped.” And I could have punched
him in the face right then. Little brother? Really? Asshole.
Vaughan continued, “This happens to be a rape-free zone.”

Reagan’s friend whispered something in her
ear and they both looked down, trying to hide their smiles. Were
they making fun of us? Or just happy to have some place safe for
the night?