LovewithaChanceofZombies Read online

  Even without the intelligence and humor behind them, his storm-green eyes would be gorgeous. As it was, he seemed to look at her with some secret knowledge of her soul. It was arousing, which was distracting. The last thing she could afford. Her heart gave a flutter, a rapid double beat, and she admonished herself sternly to get back on her guard.

  “I missed a lot, growing up so fast,” Nye said after a tense few seconds. “I never did high school, I never did dating. I never went out and got stupid drunk and did things I’ll regret. It was all just thinking, all the time. I never had fun. I always thought I’d find a stopping place, when I’d get to take a break and do all that. But I never did.”

  He didn’t sound resentful, just resigned, or Lena might have taken offense. After all, she had never had those opportunities either, really, though for vastly different reasons. “Regrets? Isn’t it a little late for that? Is that really how you want to spend your last six weeks?”

  “You’re giving me six weeks? I’m flattered.”

  Lena rubbed the stock of her gun pointedly. “I’ll give you until you’re symptomatic. And then, if I have to, I’ll blow your head off.”

  Nye blinked a few times then smiled slowly.

  “Well, at least we know where we stand.”

  Chapter Three

  They had always called her weak, called her strange. Lena liked to read and spend time on the computer. But like all the other kids in the quasi-military compound where she grew up, Lena had also learned to shoot and track and survive in the woods for days at a time. “Homeschooling” consisted of the older kids helping the younger kids learn to read and do basic math, and listening to frequent lectures from the grownups about the evils of the government. It was no environment for a liberally minded bookworm.

  Lena had never bought the conspiracy theories, but she had learned very early on to keep her skepticism to herself. She spent her waking hours plotting her eventual escape from her father and everything he and his batshit-crazy followers held as true.

  They all said she put on airs, thought she was too good for them. Now they were all dead, because when the shit went down it was Lena who knew about zombies. The rest of them hadn’t listened to her, so within weeks they were all walking cadavers and she was finally free of them.

  It had taken her some time, of course, to think of those events in such cold, logical terms.

  In the flat fluorescence of Lucas Nye’s lab, anybody would have looked cadaverous. Lena sat on a long table against one cold cinderblock wall, picking at a chip in the cerise paint on her gun, thinking about where to find a better adhesion primer and fighting to stay awake. She would have to start bringing books to read. It had been three days of this, sitting and watching while Nye fiddled with petri dishes and stared at computer screens.

  “Don’t touch that,” Nye had said once when Lena bent too close to a piece of equipment while doing a tour of the room to stretch her legs. That was the first day. He had said little else to her since their brief conversation after her arrival. Lena wondered if it had something to do with telling him she was prepared to blow his head off. That might be the sort of thing, she considered after the fact, to put somebody right out of the conversational mood.

  Now she was getting fidgety. She hadn’t slept well, despite her eight hours off each night while Nye was safely padlocked in his room. The silence was getting to her. Aside from a daily visit from one of Nye’s research team, they were left entirely alone.

  “It’s so quiet in here,” she finally pointed out that afternoon. The room was windowless, deep in the bowels of the hospital building, and although the onetime patients’ rooms upstairs were mostly given over to housing, the labs and other working spaces nearby were deserted most of the time. “There’s nobody else around. I can’t even hear any other people.”

  “Usually I have a team in here.” He didn’t seem taken aback by her sudden decision to talk. Perhaps the quiet was grating on him too. “Not anymore, I guess.”

  “It’s a long time since I was alone, you know?”

  His eyes flickered away from the computer screen to scan her. Just a glance, skimming up and down her body. But it still gave Lena a tiny thrill to realize that Nye was checking her out.

  “Me too. Too many people in the compound. And if you’re out of the compound alone, you’re probably about to get eaten. Solitude is probably a thing of the past for humans. We’re all on the permanent buddy system now. Don’t you have a room to yourself though?”

  Was it his subtle way of finding out if she was attached? Or was she making assumptions that would come back to embarrass her later?

  “I do,” she admitted, “but it’s not quiet. I can hear everybody in the rooms around me.” Their little enclave of humanity had settled on what had once been a college campus, adjacent to a teaching hospital, and Lena’s room was in an actual dormitory. It had been constructed for efficiency, not privacy.

  Nye quirked an eyebrow, a surprisingly sexy expression. “That could be either really torturous or really entertaining.”

  Despite herself, she chuckled. She knew what he meant, and he knew that she knew. It was one of those generally known things. Sex hadn’t really been private in years. “Most of the time it’s just annoying. I have enough trouble sleeping without listening to…people who aren’t sleeping. It’s the same few people too, so even if it had been interesting at first, it would just be boring by now.”

  “I used to feel the same way,” he said. “I had a room at the end of a hall, so only one neighbor…but it was Jip Chambliss.”

  “Ouch. Not much sleep for you then.”

  Jip Chambliss was a notorious womanizer, though Lena couldn’t deny that, in a sense, he was also a hero. In his way, the man who occupied the primary watchtower at the front gate was as big a celebrity as Nye. Women didn’t mind at all being pursued by the tall, rangy sniper who had scored so many legendary zombie kills. He had as many notches on his bedpost, she suspected, as on his gunstock.

  “He rarely sleeps alone,” Nye confirmed.

  “So you weren’t always in the room down here, that—”

  “No. They moved me after the bite. So I’d be closer to here, contained in one building. Also no windows, although it does have a shower and a toilet. I think it may have been the interns’ and residents’ break room at one point. Anyway, nobody will see me this way. It all supports the story that I’m spending a few weeks on a research project out at the big farm.”

  He didn’t even get to spend his remaining days sleeping in the room that had been his home for several of the last ten years. The reality of just how short a time Nye had left suddenly struck Lena in a way it hadn’t before. Their greatest hero. If it could happen to him…

  “Now I sort of miss old Jip and his lady parade,” Nye remarked. “He was always trying to fix me up too. If I’d realized how short my time was going to be, I probably would have taken him up on it a few times at least.”

  Lena listened to the regret in his voice and could tell from the way he was eyeing her that he was considering the obvious potential in their situation. She was considering it too.

  Lena was young, unattached, apparently healthy. She might well be the last woman Nye ever saw. Nye was a hero, and he had only a few weeks left. Time was short, babies were precious and Nye had never fathered one. They would be in no danger of contamination yet. The virus was known not to transmit sexually until the carrier showed symptoms. How people had discovered that little tidbit was a gruesome story in itself.

  She watched the idea play around Nye’s face, her gaze never leaving him. Lena knew she was blushing, could feel the heat rising in her face and in other places too. Had this been on Watson’s mind all along, when he assigned Lena to this task? He had hinted broadly over the past few years that she should find a partner. Women who could get pregnant were generally expected and encouraged to do so. It was one of the many usually unspoken assumptions of life post-apocalypse—repopulation was a priority. Lena
had never felt like the time was right, never met a man who felt right for more than a dalliance.

  Nye hadn’t done it, as far as she could tell, because he was always working, always busy, never taking time out to engage in social interaction. Lena knew a few girls he’d been with, but although they reported favorably for the most part, she got the impression Nye had remained distant, treating the process as a physical necessity more than a pleasure. He hadn’t wanted to get involved.

  “You can say it,” she finally blurted, tired of the staring contest that was making her feel wobbly in the knees despite being seated. “It’s okay.”

  Nye tipped his head to the side, a smile curving his lips. “What, no wooing? No seduction?”

  “From me? Or from you?”

  “Well, I meant from me. But if you’d rather…”

  “No, no,” Lena assured him. “That’s okay, I’m good.”

  He stepped around the table he’d been working at, approached the table where Lena still sat and stood a scant ten or twelve inches away from her dangling feet. “So do you think Watson was trying to play matchmaker?”

  Lena nodded. Up close, she could see the strain around Nye’s lovely eyes. She could also see that his dark eyelashes were longer and thicker than hers. Her heart beat faster still, almost as fast as in the middle of a raid.

  “Yeah. I guess.” She wished she could think of something clever to say, something that might make her sound—and feel—smarter. Not as smart as Nye, maybe. But smarter than she felt right now, which was pretty damn stupid.

  “You’re okay with that?”

  What could she say? That it would be an honor? That it was her duty? That she’d been checking him out on the sly for the past three days anyway?

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then.”

  He leaned forward, bracing his fingers lightly against the table to either side of Lena’s lap. She had just enough time to think, You mean right now? before he followed through with the motion and landed a kiss.

  It was a little harder than she was expecting, maybe a little harder than he’d intended. There was a gasp, a click of tooth on tooth, an awkward shuffling of lips and head angles.

  And then Lena realized her legs had gotten wrapped around Nye’s waist, and he was cupping her ass and rocking against her as she returned his kiss. They had overcome awkwardness through sheer force of lust. Nye was already hard, and the rhythmic pressure of his cock was a straining, nagging frustration. The tough seam of Lena’s pants rubbed her clit almost painfully. She whined and clenched her legs around Nye’s trim hips anyway as his tongue swirled over hers.

  He was the first to back off a little, turning the kiss into a nibbling, teasing exploration. Lena had half expected a cursory, practical fuck with no prelude at all. She hadn’t been expecting this playful approach. It was more arousing than she could have dreamed. Nye kissed like a hero too, she decided. Whatever that meant.

  It was chilly in the basement, and Lena had on a plaid wool shirt, a t-shirt and a tank top. Nye peeled each layer off carefully, methodically, making only teasing brushes against her breasts as he worked. Lena was squirming and eager for a firmer touch by the time she sat before him topless. She arched her back shamelessly, hoping he would take the hint.

  Nye just shook his head and smiled, his eyes sleepy with want now as he traced his fingertips in featherlight circles around her nipples. “I want to savor this. I want to take enough time to appreciate it.”

  “We can do it more than once,” she pointed out, a little chagrined at her own neediness.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, almost as though just now noticing—as though he were surprised to realize it. “So beautiful.”

  His mouth on her nipple was a moment of sheer bliss. His flickering tongue was heaven, condensed down to a single point of pleasure that spread quickly throughout her body. Lena reached down between them and grasped Nye’s cock through the soft, worn twill of his trousers. Her fingers mapped the length of him, caressing the muscular contour of his erection where it bowed against its fabric confines. Groaning, Nye leaned into her touch and bit down lightly on her nipple, pulling an answering sound from Lena’s throat.

  “Take your pants off,” he ordered, and Lena slid off the table and started to comply before hesitating when she considered his tone. She was supposed to be in charge of the situation, in charge of Nye. Her perspective was out of whack, knocked askew by hormones on the rampage.

  “Maybe I should tie you to a chair or something first,” she suggested with a cockeyed grin. “Just while I’m unarmed, of course.”

  Nye’s smile was wicked. “Kinky. Maybe later. And it would be you tied up, not me. Now get your pants off.”

  She unfastened the oft-repaired button on her fatigues and slipped them off as smoothly as Lucas slipped from the “nerdy but hot” category in her mind to the “arrogant but hot” one. Nye wasted no time in shucking his own clothes, the button-down pulled off along with the t-shirt, and the well-weathered, loose khakis practically removing themselves once he unbuckled his belt.

  “You’re not wearing any underwear,” Lena pointed out. It seemed more polite than just gawking at his penis without speaking. The meaty column of his erection bobbed gently as he moved, pointing toward her like a divining rod.

  “That means you’re overdressed.”

  “Oh.” She plucked at the waistband of her panties, struck with sudden shyness. Was it worse to be naked, or worse to stand here in the decidedly unflattering cotton panties that had once been blue but were now only sort of bluish-gray?

  Lucas Nye’s hero doctor penis is staring at me.

  After a second, Lena realized she had it backward, and in fact she was staring at Lucas Nye’s penis. Why it should fascinate her so much more than the phalluses of less famous men, she wasn’t sure. It was a nice-looking penis, however, and certainly worth admiring. She had just never expected to see it.

  “Shit,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She reached for the waist of her panties again with trembling hands then shoved them down and off.

  “Hey, wait,” Lucas said, stepping close and taking her hands in his. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go too fast.”

  “No, it wasn’t that,” Lena squeaked. The dauntingly famous penis was brushing against her hip and lower belly, grazing her pubic hair. She wrenched her gaze up to meet Lucas’ eyes. “I just got a head full of how strange this all is, all of a sudden. I’m okay now, really.”

  I’m okay with standing naked in Lucas Nye’s laboratory. About to have sex with him, hoping to catch pregnant with his only child before he dies or goes zombie. They’ll write stories about it one day. “The Hero Doctor’s Lady” if I live a good, respectable life after this, or “The Hero Doctor’s Whore” if I screw up. Crap, what are the odds I won’t screw up?

  “You know what would be really sexy?” Nye asked, squeezing her hands as if they were walking in the park. “Next time we should take our boots off.”

  They both looked down at their feet, still firmly and safely clad in socks and sturdy laced-up boots. Like cowboys in the Old West, folks now tended to keep their boots on whenever possible, just in case.

  Lena bit her lip and shook her head. “Let’s not go crazy, Nye. I never said I was okay with casual sex.”

  It took him a few seconds to process it and start laughing. Lena held her straight face for about twice that long before bursting out in howls. They finished the laugh in a kiss, still giggling and snickering, until Nye’s hands were caught up in Lena’s hair and her nails were scraping a slow set of lines down his back.

  “Next time,” he insisted, “no boots and we find a bed. But this time, I’m fucking you right on this table.”

  Not giving her time to think, he picked Lena up and settled her on the table again, stepping between her knees to spread them. Lena was geared up already, but the sight of Nye palming his cock, stroking himself even harder, made her pussy tingle and grow slick with anticipation. Whe
n he brought the tip of his cock to her opening, teasing the sensitive skin, Lena gasped and spread her legs even wider.

  She braced her hands behind her and arched her back, pleased when Nye hummed in appreciation and raised his free hand to one of her breasts.

  “Hard or soft?” he asked, teasing her nipple with his thumb.

  Lena moaned. “Hard,” she said, before she could think to temper her answer.

  Nye liked the answer he got, apparently, because he smiled as he pinched the tight little knot of flesh hard enough to make Lena whimper, even as she squirmed against his teasing erection. “Good. I like hard too.”

  Then he proved it, bringing his cock flush against Lena’s pussy and grabbing her thighs for leverage as he plunged into her.

  After the first few nearly brutal thrusts, however, Nye slowed his pace and brought his thumb to her clit. Lena thought he would stroke her, bring her off. She waited eagerly for the sensation and was disappointed when his thumb didn’t move. She made a noise, trying to express her need without whining for it.

  “Do you want me to touch you here, Lena?”

  “Y-yeah,” she panted.

  Please please please!

  The rat bastard pulled his hand away. “Gonna have to ask for it then.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Nye!”

  He just chuckled and gave her a few more firm thrusts, until Lena was working her hips against him again. Then he said, “Lucas.”

  “What? Oh…”

  “Call me Lucas,” he clarified.

  “Fuck you, Lucas,” Lena corrected herself.

  “If you don’t ask for it, you’ll just have to do it yourself.”

  Before she could move her hand, though, he pinned both of hers to the table, his superior weight and leverage enough to combat her token struggle to free them. Lena didn’t want to be free. She wanted to be touched, and she liked the unexpected twist of Nye’s apparent control fetish. Lena canted her hips, trying to get more stimulation against her clit, and Nye just smirked at her.