“Don’t stop,” I managed, and kissed her again.
Somehow we made it out of the bathroom and down the hall to the guest room where she’d been sleeping. I managed to keep the towel on until the door was closed behind us, when Becks resolved the question of what I was supposed to do with it by removing it from my waist and throwing it to one side. She untied her bathrobe and pressed herself hard against me before resuming her frantic kisses. The feeling of her skin touching mine was almost more than I could handle. I groaned. She moaned appreciatively, the sound of a living woman desiring and being desired, rather than the sound of the dead. God, I needed to hear that. I didn’t spend nearly enough time among the living.
The ringing silence in my head was forgotten, drowned out by the sounds our bodies made—skin sliding against skin, fingers rustling through hair, lips meeting and parting and meeting again. Becks kept moving steadily backward, forcing me to follow if I wanted to keep kissing her. I wanted to keep kissing her, and so I kept going until she pulled me onto the bed and slung one leg over mine, keeping me there. I didn’t resist. I didn’t want to. For the first time since George died, I really didn’t give a shit about anything but the present. It was a nice feeling. I’d missed it.
“Shaun.”
I started kissing her neck, tasting the slightly salty flavor of her skin. I’d missed that, too. The taste of a woman’s neck, the way it moved when she breathed—
“Shaun.”
It took a moment for the fact that Becks was talking to me to sink all the way into my brain. I stopped kissing her in order to push myself back and look at her face. Her hair was rumpled, making her look like she’d just finished running a marathon after holding off an entire horde of zombies with nothing but a shotgun. I was starting to understand why she kept it long. It might be impractical as hell, but it made views like this one possible, and that was worth a little inconvenience. “What? Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She smiled, a little wryly. “I just wanted to let you know that I have condoms.”
I hadn’t even thought that far ahead. I blinked for a moment, and then nodded. “Cool, because if I have any, they’re downstairs.” Actually, I wasn’t sure whether I had condoms in my pack or not. I hadn’t needed that sort of thing in so long that I’d stopped thinking about it, since thinking about it didn’t do me a damn bit of good. Sex wasn’t a factor in this post-George world. There just wasn’t time.
Becks smiled a little more, looking surprisingly shy, considering that we were buck-ass naked and twisted around each other. “Will you let me up?” she asked.
“Um, right.” It took some effort to untangle our limbs. She stood, stretching to give me the best possible view of her body—and I had to admit, the girl was stacked—before crossing to her pack and bending to rummage through one of the inside pockets. I stayed on the bed, feeling suddenly awkward and not exactly sure where I was supposed to put my hands. That was another thing I never had to worry about before. I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to be looking at her when she wasn’t in the bed. I settled for sitting up with my hands resting loosely between my thighs, looking in her direction, but trying to keep myself from really looking. She might get upset if I looked away. She might decide I didn’t like the way she looked or something.
Jesus. When did life get so damn complicated?
“Here we go.” Becks turned, a foil-wrapped condom held between her thumb and forefinger, and walked back toward the bed. “I’ve got a birth control implant, but you can’t be too careful, right?”
“Right,” I echoed, faintly. The pause had given me time to think, which wasn’t such a good thing. My body was still voting in favor of going through with things, but now my brain was trying to weigh in on the topic, and it wasn’t convinced that this was a good idea. It was reasonably sure that this was a really bad idea, and if there was any time to stop, this was it.
Becks tore the foil.