Ravaged Land - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (16 page)

“What day with Dean?”

“The day you’d both come out of the bathroom,” he said taking a sudden interest in his feet.

At first I couldn’t think of what he was talking about but then, I remembered. It stuck out like a sore thumb. This whole time, this is what had been bothering him and why he mostly had been avoiding me. “Oh,” I said trying to find the right starting point to explain and assure him he was worrying about nothing.

“If you’re interested in him, you know, I’d get it, I’d back off. I can see how he looks at you, and ever since that day, he’s been different towards me, so I just want to know what happened… and where I stand?”

I shook my head and moved forward onto my knees, “No, no, no! It’s nothing like that! Dean and I… there’s nothing between Dean and I! He needed help getting cleaned up and he asked me.”

“No one else could help huh?” I could hear the smirk on his face through the words, “Or do it himself?”

“Sienna is his sister and Seth was out on the couch suffering from his heat stroke or whatever it was. It really wasn’t a big deal! You are totally wrong about how he feels about me, we are just friends. He’s never said anything or tried anything.”

He turned to face me, “That’s really all that happened?”

“Yep.” I’d seen maybe more than I should have, but it had been completely innocent. That’s all he needed to know, is that it was innocent and nothing happened.

“God Ros! My stomach has been tied in knots since that day and he’s been so smug.”

“You could have just asked sooner….”

He leaned closer to me, “How’s your head?”

“Mostly fine, I mean, it is throbbing like you wouldn’t believe, but the lump feels smaller. It’s nothing a few pain pills won’t fix.” I was suddenly embarrassed again about what had happened yesterday when those men came snooping, and what a big baby I had been. I shouldn’t be so weak. How could he even be interested in someone he’d have to worry about every second of the day if I couldn’t pull it together when I needed to?

“What’s wrong?” he asked noticing my mood change.

“Nothing, just thinking about yesterday.”

“Yeah.” Was all he mustered to say before he put his hand on my arm, “So, where do I stand with you? You are so hard to read.”

I laughed so hard I fell backwards onto the bed, “I am not! You’re the one with the poker face. I haven’t been able to read you since day one! I’m an open book, heart on my sleeve, all those sayings… that’s me!”

He was smiling at me when he came down on the bed beside me and propped his head up on his hand. His staring at me silenced my laughs and his gorgeous, mysterious blue eyes reeled me in. The whole mood in the room changed. It was more intense, and more sensual, that was until I opened my big mouth. “What about you?” I asked unabashedly.

“Huh?” he said startled out of the moment.

“That night, you and I, were, well, with the fireworks guys driving by shining the light. We were, very, umm… close and then Dean came down.”

“And?”

“You let go of me so fast I stumbled backwards, you were totally embarrassed being so close to me and being seen!” I said remembering how quickly he had let go of me.

“I was not! That’s not… he just startled me is all,” Ryan said his face serious. “The car driving by was intense, then being with you was, well, intense, then he just interrupted in the middle, umm, at the start I guess and it just caught me by surprise.”

“Really? That’s all it was?”

“Um. Yes. And then I was coming back to you but you’d went back into your room, and had your back to me, I figured you’d come to your senses or something. That I’d lost my chance.”

I laughed again, but this laugh was more of an uncomfortable one, thinking how things could have been had we just talked to each other instead of ignoring everything. “You haven’t,” I said, my voice less than a whisper, I had barely heard myself speak but I had felt my lips move.

He slid closer to me and rolled halfway so that his face was inches from mine. Ryan grabbed the back of my neck carefully avoiding the bump, his movement was smooth and swift. He seemed to be holding onto me tightly as if he feared I might just pull away or change my mind at the last second. I didn’t. He slowly put his lips against mine, letting them lightly touch as if I was a delicacy he was trying to savor. It was soft and amazing and when neither of us could stand it any longer, he pulled me harder to him and was actually kissing me. It was a real kiss, nothing like I’d ever experienced before. We were like soft magnets drawn to each other with force, our lips would attract and then slightly resist and then attract even more.

He pulled away and placed gentle kisses on my chin. Then he placed several little kisses down the side of my neck. I pushed into him as I arched my back. My body was on autopilot. It was doing its own thing, and I felt like I had little control over myself, but in a good way. He pulled the shoulder of the large T-shirt down exposing my shoulder and covered my skin with kisses. His other hand glided up the other side of my shirt. I could feel the warmth from his hand against my bare skin. His hand drifted further upwards until his thumb curved against the side of my breast.

In the time it took to blink my eye, I had become very self-conscious about laying there so exposed. My shirt all bunched up just below my breasts, my exposed shoulder, but more importantly the fact that I was in nothing more than a T-shirt and my underwear. I pulled my shirt down and the blanket up over my legs in one quick movement.

“I’m sorry!” Ryan said quickly pulling away.

“No! No… it’s OK.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking, I got carried away, I didn’t mean…” he rolled over onto his back, “Shit, shit, shit-shit! I screwed up!”

“No!” I turned to look at him. I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings or make him feel bad, it was me who got nervous and shy of my own body. To be completely honest, this was the first time I’d done anything more than just a silly passionless kiss that had no real feelings behind it. The kind you do because you feel like you should. Because everyone else was doing it and doing much more than that for that matter. I was just overwhelmed, the intensity of it, it all just overcame me, but all in a good way. “It’s me. I suddenly felt stupid and ugh, inexperienced,” I groaned wishing I could take that back.

“Why? What do you mean? You never need to feel stupid with me, you aren’t stupid,” he twisted his head to meet my eyes. He was lying there on his back, his body stiff.

“Well, OK, here I am, practically lying in my underwear, you’re fully clothed, and I’ve never really done anything like this before,” I said feeling like a complete moron.

“We can do this at whatever speed you’re comfortable with,” he said, “and you’re beautiful. You don’t have to hide yourself from me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You have two people who are crazy about you, in this house alone.”

“Well, I am one of the few girls left in the world, that isn’t saying much,” I said only half joking.

He laughed, “Guys liked you before all this. The end of the world has nothing to do with it.”

“Listen, if I do something wrong, let me know,” I said, as I rolled over resting against his warmth and placing my hand on his solid chest. I planted a soft single kiss on his cheek.

“You won’t.” He copied me and placed a kiss on my cheek smiling that amazing Ryan smile at me.

“Don’t be so sure about that,” I said kneeling on the bed so I could look at him stretched out on my bed, smiling and relaxed.

“I’m positive you won’t,” he said.

He sat up and took my hand into his. Right now we were on some magical cloud where the only things that existed were Ryan, me and this bed. The heat wasn’t there, and in the outside world there was grass and it was green. The trees were back to normal, and there were flowers everywhere. Right now it was a fairytale instead of a nightmare.

I leaned towards him for another kiss and he met me halfway. This was officially happening and actually real. I didn’t know what the others would think, but at this moment I didn’t really care either.

We spent some time just enjoying this and each other. It was perfect. I never wanted to leave this room.

“What will they think if anyone sees you leaving my room?” I asked, curious to hear his response.

“What? You’re embarrassed of me?” he teased.

“Of course I’m not, but I’m not sure I want the whole house knowing our business just yet either. Or wondering what we are doing at any given time,” I said moving over to sit next to him. “What will they think?” I asked nervous about how this was going to change the whole dynamic of everyone in the house.

“I’ll go out and get your headache pills. Sienna knew I was staying in the chair all night anyway they won’t think anything new, at least not today.” He opened the door slowly so the hinges wouldn’t creak and slipped out. Sometimes he’s so present in the moment and other times he seems so lost in himself. He came back after a minute or two, “Seth is snoring on the couch and the others are still upstairs.”

There he was at the foot of the bed looking absolutely amazing. His eyes sparkled crystal blue and hair all messed up as if he had just been fooling around with someone, and the most unbelievable part of it all was that that person was me. Standing in front of me was the guy I just had a make-out session with. I had run my hands over his solid chest and his perfect stomach. I could still imagine what he felt like, smelled like and tasted like.

He moved within inches of me as if he could read my mind. I tugged at the bottom of his shirt, he smiled down at me. I slid one of my hands inside to feel his warm skin under my palm. He leaned down to kiss me.

“We should probably get ready for the day,” he said, “not that I want to, but the others will be up soon. We have to run to town… more gas, food, you know, the usual.”

“Right,” I said pulling my hand back as I stood up. Our bodies were so close to one another you couldn’t have fit more than a piece of paper between us. He let out a little sigh like he didn’t want to go, like he wanted to stay in this room all day. So did I. But that wasn’t an option for us, we had things to do. We had a responsibility to the other people with us who were stuck in all of this too.

“Tonight? Can I spend time with you again tonight?” he asked holding me tight against him and kissing my neck.

I shivered and pushed into him, “I suppose,” I said playfully, of course I wanted to spend time with him again. I didn’t want this moment to end because I wasn’t sure it would ever happen again. Ryan could be very fickle. I worried by tonight he’d forget all about me.

He left tearing off his shirt as he did so, either because he was hot or maybe he was leaving me something to think about. I heard the door to his room close, and I flopped down on my bed smiling. We hadn’t really done anything, I mean we had, but not what the others would have imagined went on if left to their own devices. No one needed to know how far it did or didn’t go. That was my business, and Ryan’s too. I giggled thinking how maybe now it was officially Ryan and me, and that we were a thing.

Chapter fourteen.

After lounging around on my bed for far too long daydreaming about Ryan, I got up and changed my clothes. I popped the pain pills — although I didn’t think I needed them anymore now that my pain problem had lessened due to Ryan’s kiss — and went in search of food. Seth and Owen were in the living room playing chess and Ryan was at the table drinking a bottle of water. Sienna sat across from him writing in her notebook. Dean hadn’t come down yet.

“Good morning,” I said cheerfully, realizing as the words left my mouth how out of character it was for me to be this lively in the morning but no one seemed to notice. They all grunted their good mornings to me and it made me smile. I searched around for something I wanted to eat and decided on a packaged muffin. I washed it down with a big gulp of bottled water. Ryan caught my eye and raised his eyebrow at me, I guess he noticed the hop in my step. The eyebrow seemed to say “play it cool man” but I shrugged it off, whatever, it was a good day… for once.

“What’s that noise?” Sienna asked.

It sounded like rushing water, then I saw the flash of light followed by a boom of thunder that made me jump, it was real thunder this time. “It’s rain!” I announced running to the back door window. It was coming down so hard a foggy mist was forming low to the ground. There was another bolt of lightning that struck so close the whole house shook. “And I was just about to say I was going outside to dance in it,” I said moving away from the window.

“Ryan! Owen!” Dean shouted from upstairs. “Get up here!”

They both rushed up so fast they almost tripped over each other. I followed at a more reasonable pace. When I got up there Ryan was putting a pail down under a ferocious leak. There were six leaks and so far only one pail.

“Run down and look for buckets,” Ryan ordered. Owen and I dashed down the stairs. He continued down to the basement, and I looked under the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, the closets, the pantry, anywhere I could think of where a bucket might be. I found a large mixing bowl in one of the kitchen cabinets and brought that up. They put that under the smallest leak. Owen came up with two buckets that looked to have been used for mopping. We had four of the leaks taken care of, “There’s gotta be something we can use!”