Then he looks at me, and his gaze is amused. “Zombie . . . apocalypse?”
“Yeah,” I say. “So? I like horror movies. They’re under-appreciated gems of filmography.”
Daniel shakes his head, grinning. He doesn’t say anything else because Pereya has returned with a sulky woman in tow. They give us several pillows, a few blankets, and some questionable-looking sheets. Doesn’t matter to me. I’ve slept on worse recently. I take them from her and begin to make a bed in the corner of our little fortress room while Daniel and Pereya talk for a moment more. A bag of junk food and some sodas are exchanged.
Then, the door closes behind us, and Daniel throws the lock and pushes the squat wooden table in front of the door to make a clumsy barricade. He returns to my side and sits next to me on the makeshift pallet.
He nudges me with his elbow. “I wasn’t giving you shit back there,” he says. “It’s actually pretty smart to suggest we stay here. I was surprised, is all.”
I nudge him back with my elbow, a shadow of my playful old self returning at his compliment. “When in doubt, look to the zombie apocalypse.”
Daniel chuckles, and it turns into a yawn. I suddenly remember how tired he was before I started getting crazy on him. He’s exhausted, and I need him healthy and on his feet in case we have to mow down any other bad guys, get into gunfights, or whatever assassins do. “Why don’t you sleep?”
“I can take watch,” Daniel says. “I sleep light anyhow.”
“I can watch, too,” I tell him. “I have guns. And a knife. And apparently a grenade for shits and giggles.” I elbow him again playfully.
“You think you could shoot someone if they came through that door, sweetheart?” No more “baby doll” now. Daniel’s done teasing me into irritation. I can hear the exhaustion in his voice.
“Sure,” I say blithely and pat one of the dirty pillows, inviting him to lay his head down there. “I’ll pretend that whoever comes through has been infected with a virus that turns them into a brains-eating monster.”
Still, he hesitates, clearly torn.
“There’s a crack under the door,” I say, pointing at it. It’s about an inch high. “I’m going to be watching that all night anyhow. And I’ll scream ‘Zombies!’ if I think there’s any trouble. All right?”
He rubs his face slowly, his eyes hollow. “All right. But if you get tired, wake me up.”
“Get some sleep,” I tell him. Strangely, being bossy to him is making me feel a bit more like my old self, too. Give a girl an ounce of power and all that. But I pat the bed again. “I’ll even tuck you in.”
“How can I resist that?” Daniel says and climbs into the bed fully dressed. Within two minutes, he’s asleep, despite the constant noise outside. There are people talking and walking around upstairs, and I tense at every creak of the boards. Daniel went to sleep with his hand on his gun, so I’m guessing he still doesn’t feel a hundred percent safe. But he’s got to sleep at some point.
I take my sandals off and pick up my gun, making sure the safety is on. Then I creep toward the door and lay down flat so I can watch through the crack underneath.
Twelve
Daniel
WHEN I WAKE UP FOUR HOURS later, I have a raging boner and an armful of warm woman. Regan has once again rolled over and plastered herself all over me. It’d be nice if it’s because she wants me, but her subconscious is probably screaming for her to hold on tight to the buoy in the water. I’ve got something to hold onto, sweetheart, my sleepy, subconscious self mumbles. Just like earlier, I slide out from under her, but this time she stirs and grips me harder, her knee sliding up my legs to rest under my balls, which are straining toward her flesh. A little rub, Danny boy, they beg.
I can’t give my package the good slap that it needs, and I’m a little afraid that if I even come close to touching it, my wood won’t go down until I find some place to jack off. Lusting after this girl is thirty kinds of wrong. If she had any idea about the thoughts that ran around in my monkey brain, she’d bash me across the face with the chair leg. And I’d let her.
Because I can’t stop thinking about how her plush lips form a perfect “O” when she’s thinking—or how her legs seem to be endless acres of smooth flesh. When we walked up the steep path to Pereya’s, my gaze wandered to her ass, the firm globes pressing against the fabric of the knit skirt as she climbed. I finally took the lead because I wasn’t going to be able to walk if I kept looking at her.
The puzzle of Mr. Freeze concerns me. He obviously wants Regan back, and Gomes was a greedy fuck for letting her out of his sight. Even for twenty-five grand. Sick people get fixated on things sometimes with no good explanation for it. In her late stages of Alzheimer’s, my Grandma would only drink out of a certain plastic cup. She’d throw a fit if someone offered her some other container. Apparently Regan was that plastic cup to Gomes’ rich patron.
Thinking about Regan being mistreated by Gomes and his pals is as deflating as a pin in a balloon, but I’m grateful. The last thing I need is for Regan to encounter the rod in my pants and then look at me for the rest of our time together like I’m one breath away from throwing her down. The last of my erection wanes away, and I’m left feeling awkward and anxious. Twin emotions I haven’t experienced since I was fourteen and about to take Marybeth’s virginity in the back of my Ford pickup. Even then I was more excited than anything.
I pull back her fingers that are wrapped around my waist, and she whimpers in her sleep. “Hey, sweetheart,” I say. This only causes her to snuggle closer, putting her nose and soft cheek in that angle between my shoulder and neck, fitting perfectly, as if I was made for her. And that erection I thought I’d killed off comes raging back. From a fucking nose rub. I swear to God, the minute I am done here, I’m going to find a willing woman at a bar in Dallas, and we are going to fuck until I’m so raw my dick is red for a week.
Needing her off of me, I use the nickname she hates the most and inject as much asshole into it as I can. “Baby doll, I’m all for a morning fondle, but I prefer the hand to the knee.” Then I lightly slap her butt for emphasis. She jumps off me like a cat doused in water.
“What was that all about?” she asks, brushing hair out of her eyes with one hand and rubbing the spot on her ass where I slapped her with the other.