Deadline

Becks was on the other side. She looked at me with wide, solemn eyes, and said, “I hoped you would be.” Then, before I had a chance to react or say anything, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind herself.

She stayed there for a moment, one hand behind her back and clutching the doorknob, the other hand resting against her uppet, agh. It was somewhere between a pose and a pause, and I had no idea what it meant.

“Uh.” I took a step backward, making room for her to do, well, whatever it was she was getting ready to do. “Hey, Becks, are you okay? I was just about to clear out, so if you need the bathroom—”

“Shut up, Shaun.” She let go of the doorknob and walked toward me. Once she reached me, she took the towel from my shoulders and tossed it carelessly to one side. “For once in your life, just once, why don’t you. Just. Shut. Up.” She stepped a little closer, leaning up onto her toes, and kissed me.

I wasn’t expecting the kiss. I didn’t have a chance to step aside or deflect it. So, no, I couldn’t have prevented it from starting… but I could have pulled away from her. I could have stopped it right there.

Instead, I kissed her back.

Becks pressed herself hard against me as soon as I started to respond to her kiss, arms tightening around my shoulders and holding me where I was. I wrapped my arms around her waist, as much to have a place to put them as anything else, and almost involuntarily pulled her closer. The heat coming off her skin felt like it would steam the remaining dampness from the shower right off me. Through it all, she kept on kissing me, the urgency in her movement growing with every second. Suddenly exquisitely aware of how close to naked I was, I raised my hands and took hold of her forearms, pushing her gently away. She fought to maintain the kiss for another few seconds before the distance between us made it impossible.

Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed. She was still wearing the bathrobe she’d borrowed from Maggie, and the belt was half-untied, letting the top gape open enough to give me a really good view of her cle**age. I swallowed. Hard. Tired or not, I was still male, and it had been a long damn time since I’d had a look at that particular vista. Parts of my anatomy that I’d been willing to write off completely were waking up and announcing their interest in the situation. Loudly.

“Becks, I don’t know if—”

“Do you want me to stop?” She twisted out of my grasp, moving with a simple grace that made my breath catch in my throat. Then she reached up to take my hands, sliding her fingers into mine. “I’ll be totally honest. I don’t want to stop. But I will, if that’s what you want.”

“I… I don’t know, I just…” I looked at our joined hands, studying the short, practical shape of her nails. She had the nails of an Irwin. That made me feel better, oddly enough. I was just another hazard zone for her to explore. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

“Hey. Look at me.” I raised my head. Becks met my eyes and said, “I’m not going to ask you for a commitment. I don’t want to go steady. You’re my boss, and you’re my colleague, and I respect that. But we almost died today, and I’d like to remind myself that we didn’t.” She stepped back, still holding my hands. “I’m lonely. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Every damn night,” I said, and closed the distance between us with a step, yanking my hands free before wrapping my arms arounwaist again. This time, I was the one initiating the kiss; this time, I was the one pressing with increasing urgency as she kissed me back, bringing one hand up so she could curl her fingers through my hair and pull my head a little farther down. We kissed until my lips felt bruised and my chest hurt with the effort of continuing to breathe.

Becks pulled back, fingers still knotted in my hair. “Does that mean you don’t want me to stop?”

“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?”