Page 40 of Deader than Dead

Tilting my head to one side revealed a streak of dirt stretching all the way from my chin to my temple. I suspected I stank as well, but decided against lifting my arm and sniffing my armpit. There were some things it was better not to know. “I look like shit,” I said. I knew it was the least of my problems, but even exhausted and wrung out, I could apparently still muster up a modicum of vanity.

John came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder. “You look gorgeous.”

“I appreciate the lie.”

“You do.” He turned his head and kissed my cheek, the simple gesture sending a frisson of arousal through me. “You’ll always look gorgeous to me because you’re mine.”

I smiled as I studied our reflection. John had fared little better than I had in the appearance stakes. Worse, if you considered the arm he’d had buried in the soil, which still bore the effects of it, complete with dirt caked beneath his fingernails. He still looked gorgeous, though, so I could see his point. “We look good together,” I said. We did. Dark and light. Blue eyes and green. Two halves of a whole.

John’s gaze met mine in the mirror. “Does it bother you when I say things like that?”

My reflection frowned. “Like what?”

“That you’re mine?”

I shook my head. “Why would it bother me?”

“Too intense? Too soon? Too…”

“Too possessive?” I provided the third reason when he seemed to struggle for one.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“No, it doesn’t bother me. Why would it when it’s true?” I made a half-hearted attempt to move away as John kissed my neck. “I smell.”

His lips curved into a smile as they touched my neck. “So do I.”

“Shower,” I announced. “Shower, food, and then sleep.” I turned in John’s arms, pulling at his clothes.

“We should tidy up,” he said, even as he obediently lifted his arms so I could pull his T-shirt over his head.

“It’s not going anywhere. It can wait until tomorrow.”

John didn’t argue, his hands already on my clothes as we worked in tandem until we were both naked amidst a circle of discarded clothes I expected we’d burn when we got the chance. I certainly had no intention of wearing that damn T-shirt again, despite it being a gift from my sister. Even the mere mention of the slogan it had portrayed would no doubt bring me out in hives.

I led the way toward the bathroom, retrieving shower gel and shampoo from the mess on the floor before turning the shower on and letting it heat up. I was all too aware of the gorgeous—and naked—blond god by my side, but I was doing my best to play it cool. Either John didn’t feel the same way or he had less willpower than I did, his lips already on my neck barely seconds after we’d stepped beneath the water. “At least they didn’t break the door down,” I said, as his lips left a tingling path all the way to my jaw.

“What?” The single word vibrated against my skin.

“The door,” I said feebly. “They must have picked the lock. They didn’t break it down.”

John’s response was nothing more than a gentle sigh, one hand inching its way down my spine to curl around my ass and pull me close enough that the heat of his erection burned against my own. I gave up on playing it cool. God knows why I’d thought I needed to anyway, when we’d already acknowledged the intensity of our feelings for the other.

Yes, it wasn’t normal. But nothing that had happened to us in the last twenty-fours was normal. People didn’t die and then come back to life. Well, they did apparently, but not permanently. People didn’t have masks pick them as the chosen one and speak to them, the memory of it still unsettling despite everything else that had happened since. So, meeting the man I unequivocally knew I’d be with for the rest of my life was the least of the things I still needed to wrap my head around.

“We need to wash first,” I said.

Instead of an answer, John took the shower gel out of my hand, squeezing a generous blob into the center of his palm. Washing was as much a joint effort as stripping out of our clothes had been, each of us taking it in turns to shampoo the other’s hair with a mixture of gentleness and efficiency. We administered the shower gel in much the same way, but with far more eroticism. How could I not get worked up when I was running my hands over every inch of John?

His cock proved to be a lure I couldn’t resist for long, my hand straying that way to wrap around it. John leaned his head back as I stroked him, the sounds of pleasure that escaped his lips only feeding the urge to drive him crazy. Last night had been perfect in so many ways, but it had been distinctly lacking in foreplay. Exhaustion or no exhaustion, it was definitely time to remedy that. With that in mind, I dropped to my knees in the bath, John reading my intent and moving forward to facilitate me not getting pelted with water as I took my first taste of him.

He cradled my scalp as I set about learning the shape of him with lips and tongue, the prominent vein on his cock a good starting point for my exploration before I moved onto his balls and gave them just as much attention. Only when I’d learned everything I could did I slide my lips over the length of him, the noise John made this time more of a strangled gasp.

John proved to be the perfect size: not too big, not too small, as I treated him to the very best of my oral technique. I would have been happy to drive him to the point of orgasm. Who was I kidding? I would have been ecstatic. John had other ideas, though, stopping me at the point where the taste of pre-cum was stronger than shower gel, and his abdominal muscles quivered with the effort of holding back.

“Bed,” he announced in a tone which brooked no argument. “It’s too cramped in here to do what I want to you.”

“Yeah? I questioned with an unstoppable grin on my face. “Sounds promising.” John shut the shower off, the two of us stepping out of the bath and not stopping for towels as we made our way to the bedroom. “Good job, you turned the mattress over,” I managed as John pushed me back onto it and immediately straddled me.

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