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I tipped my head up to look at him. Well, wasn’t he just an observant smarty pants? “It’s not that I don’tdolove. I love Matty. It’s just that… well, the first lesson the apocalypse taught me was that love makes you do stupid shit, so where possible, decisions should be made without factoring love into them.”
“I’d have to agree to disagree with you on that. In my experience, sometimes love is the most important factor.”
“I’d have to see it to believe it,” I said honestly.
“You’ve lived it though, haven’t you?” I was confused by his question until he asked another. “What was the second lesson the apocalypse taught you?”
I looked down at my lap and swallowed several times before answering. “There’s no such thing as a good deed. Everything comes with a price,” I whispered. He pulled me even closer, tucking my head under his chin.
“And you selflessly paid that price for seven years to keep Matty safe because you loved him. That was the most important factor. If you took that out of the equation, you would have left to save yourself, but you didn’t. You stayed because you loved Matty and couldn’t take care of him alone yet,” he said softly.
“Well, of course I love him!” I argued, pushing away from him to look at him better. “I did what I had to because I loved him and could never have turned my back on him. Are you saying I was stupid for letting that vile man touch me every night?” I started breathing heavier as my anger rose.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” Boone replied evenly. “That’s the conclusion according to your rule. I’m saying that I disagree with it.” He gently pulled me back into his arms, soothingly running a hand up and down my back. “Why did you decide to leave?” he asked.
“Scott was starting to pay more attention to Matty, and I knew I had to get him out of there before he started abusing him, too,” I replied. Was he right? Was my rule the problem?
“Another decision made based on love,” Boone pointed out. “If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t have cared what happened to him and might have welcomed the potential reprieve as Scott set his sights on Matty, but that’s not what you did. Instead, you devised a plan to get you and Matty away from them.”
The thought of standing by while Scott hurt Matty and feeling relieved about it made me nauseous. “Well, that… that was some really annoying logic you just laid out,” I finally said. “You’ve given me something to think about.”
Boone chuckled lightly. “You’re welcome. Thank you for sharing with me. You didn’t want to talk about your parents yesterday, so I appreciate you doing so today. I’m going to assume that you haven’t talked to anybody about the things you’ve gone through over the years, especially not Matty, so if you ever want to talk about it, the guys and I are more than willing to lend an ear. We’re here for you, whatever you need,” he assured me.
“Yeah, but for how long?” I questioned, more to myself than to him.
“As long as you’ll let us, I imagine,” he said. He placed a finger under my chin and tipped it to look at him. The sky was light enough now to make out his features in the dark. My stomach flip-flopped as he looked down at my lips; the only warning I had that he was going to kiss me. Before his lips could land on mine, the sounds of distress reached us from the barn. The animals were usually quiet at night. There was only one thing that would cause them to be restless.
I jumped off the swing and ran into the house, Boone hot on my heels. I slid my feet into my boots and grabbed my bow, arrows, and knife. I was ready before him and didn’t bother waiting as I ran back out toward the barn. I heard the screen door slap shut behind me as he followed me out.
“Bailey! Wait up!” He whisper-yelled. I hated to stop, but I slowed my pace so he could catch up to me. As we approached the barn, I scanned it for zombies and didn’t see any. They must be on the other side.
We stopped at the corner of the barn, and I cautiously peeked around the corner. Only one zombie bounced along the barn wall, searching for an entry point. I scanned the rest of the yard between the barn and the fence line and saw no others. “Must be a rogue that didn’t make it through the gate with the rest of the pack,” I whispered to Boone.
I loaded an arrow into my crossbow and stepped around the corner. “Hey,” I said so that it could hear me. Once I had his full attention, I pulled the trigger and let the arrow fly. It hit its target, making a gross squishing sound as it went through the eye socket. The zombie fell with a thud, and I wrinkled my nose at it with disgust as I approached.
“Dammit,” I grumbled.
“What?” Boone asked, standing beside me.
“The fucker landed on my arrow and broke it,” I replied with a sigh. We checked the rest of the yard and located the place in the fence where the zombie had come through. It would need to be repaired in the morning with more daylight. As we walked back to the house, I mentally checked my supplies. I was pretty sure that I had what we would need on hand to fix the fence. I thought back to Ethan’s suggestion to make a run to that town they came through. It was beginning to look like a necessity now.
We climbed back onto the porch, and Boone collapsed dramatically onto the swing, pulling me down with him. I laughed lightly as I set my weapons aside and kicked my boots off. We didn’t exert much energy, but your adrenaline tended to spike whenever you faced a zombie. I brought my lukewarm tea to my lips with a slightly trembling hand, the effects of the adrenaline still pumping through my veins.
“Me and the guys will take care of the zombie and the hole in the morning,” Boone said.
I nodded. “Supplies to fix the fence should be in the shed,” I replied. I looked up at him and found myself trapped in his gaze as I remembered the almost kiss before we had to kill a zombie.
Boone seemed to remember as well when suddenly his mouth covered mine. He had moved fast, but his touch was soft as his lips brushed lightly against mine. I wasn’t sure you could even classify it as a kiss, but it wasn’t not a kiss either.
The thud of my tea cup hitting the wood planks of the porch was ignored as I suddenly climbed into Boone’s lap. He moaned into my mouth as my tongue darted out to taste him. His hands gripped my hips tightly, holding me in place as I deepened our kiss. It was like a switch had been flipped inside me, and I suddenly found myself… needing.
Boone let me take the lead as our tongues danced together. When my hips began to move, seeking friction to satiate my desire, his hands slid up my body, making me moan. His hands gripped my shoulders and applied a small amount of pressure to move me backward, breaking our kiss. “Hey, hey, slow down. There’s no need to rush, baby.”
Embarrassment was like a cold bucket of water being dumped over my head. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I thought… never mind.” I went to get off his lap, but his hands moved back down to my hips. A whimper escaped my throat as Boone pulled our bodies together, grinding my pussy on his very hard, very large dick.
“Understand one thing, Honey Bee,” he growled lightly as he continued to grind me against him. “Me wanting to take things slowly has zero reflection on how much I want you. You have no idea how badly I want to bury myself inside you. Or how I’ve wanted to from the moment you came into the kitchen and pointed a shotgun in Gray’s face. Understand, Bailey?”
“Yes,” I moaned as my nails dug into his shoulders. I began to move faster as my hips moved on their own accord with him. I could feel my orgasm building when panic suddenly shot through me like a bullet, and I launched myself out of his arms to the porch railing. “No,” I croaked as tears flooded my eyes, and I started to hyperventilate. I crouched down, clinging to the railing, trying to get ahold of myself.
