Her teasing made me crack a smile. “I won’t pretend to know everything.”
“Oh my God!?” Emery’s eyes widened in horror as she looked around. Her reaction had me looking around as well, expecting to see a threat to deal with. “What do you mean you don’t know everything!” Emery’s laughter echoed around the room when she realized she’d gotten me.
“Such a brat!” I growled, tackling her to the bed and tickling her. “I thought something was actually wrong!”
“I know,” she gasped as she tried to wiggle away from me. “That’s what made it so funny.”
I shook my head as I rolled to my back and pulled her with me so that she was lying across my chest. “You’re insufferable sometimes, you know that?”
“Yep!” Emery said proudly.
I tipped my head back to check on the others and saw they were all sleeping. With a sly grin, I turned my attention back to the beauty in my arms. I cupped Emery’s face and tilted it up so that I could kiss her. While we kissed, I slid my hand down topalm her breast. Her quiet moan spurred me on, and once her nipple had stiffened, I continued my path across her stomach. When I got to the waistband of her jeans, I pushed my hand inside.
“Nico!” Emery scolded quietly, nervously glancing toward her parents.
“What?” I whispered back as I rubbed her pussy over her panties.
Emery gasped quietly as her eyes fell closed. I felt her hips rotate slightly against my hand, seeking more friction, a stark contradiction to her words. “I don’t think now is the time for this.”
“I’ll never pass up the chance to get handsy with my girl,” I replied, rolling her to her back and nipping her shoulder. “You’re just going to have to learn to keep quiet. Do you think you can do that, Princess?”
Emery immediately shook her head no, making me chuckle. No, I wasn’t sure she could, if last night and this morning were any indication. I slipped a finger through her folds to probe her entrance and felt the arousal already pooling there. Fucking hell, turning her on was its own turn on. I positioned my hand down further, preparing to enter her, when the familiar sound of a zombie growl reached us.
We froze, looked through the glass, and saw a zombie stumbling past. Beyond him in the street were a couple more. I sighed and slowly removed my hand. Even if she could stay mostly quiet to keep from waking the others, the risk from outside was too great. One stray moan could catch the wrong attention, and then we’d be in trouble. It just wasn’t worth it. We cuddled up together on the bed, watching the zombies pass by quietly.
“What do you think her story was?” I asked quietly as a female zombie trudged by. She was an older woman with bright red,frizzy hair, dressed in an off-the-shoulder shirt over black pants, artfully ripped and adorned with chains.
Emery observed her for a moment before answering. “Her favorite thing to tell people was that age is just a number and that she was young at heart. That translated to the much younger clothes she wore and the friends she kept. She surrounded herself with younger people to convince herself she was still young, too.”
“Like the mom from that movie where they only wore pink on Wednesdays,” I agreed. “She lived vicariously through her children.”
“And they let her because she bankrolled all of their desires without question. She was probably in their prom pictures,” Emery giggled. “Oh, check out that guy. Even dead, you can tell he was a little dumb. Not like, debilitatingly, but just enough that it caused people around him to wonder if anyone was home upstairs on occasion.”
I looked at the man she was referring to. He had a buzz cut and a hat with his favorite sports team’s logo. “He looks like the kind of man who abused his wife and then was confused when she’d had enough and left with the kids.”
“He became a part-time father at best, blaming her for his lack of involvement in their lives because she broke up the family, not him. He probably stalked her whenever she went out, all while begging her to come home with promises that he’d changed.”
“Three years later, and he is still accusing her of cheating on him because she found someone new and moved on,” I laughed. “Fucking pathetic loser.”
“We’re a cynical pair, aren’t we?” Emery commented. “Those people were probably lovely.”
“Meh, who cares?” I replied. “Coming up with the worst story possible is what makes the game fun. Otherwise, it would just be depressing.”
“That’s true,” Emery conceded. “What the hell was that?” We both sat up and listened to the series of explosions in the distance. “You don’t think they started bombing early, do you?”
I shook my head. “Not loud enough for that,” I assured her.
The zombies near us all turned and headed toward the explosions, clearing the street. Understanding dawned on me. “Luis and Miguel. They set up a distraction to clear a path for them to come back.”
“That was smart.”
“We’re more than just pretty faces and sexy bodies, Princess,” I teased. I went to the door to look out for them, and a few minutes later, I saw them coming from the opposite direction, loaded down with bags. I unlocked and pushed the door open for them, and they ran inside. “Smart move with the explosions. What was that?”
“Firecrackers,” Miguel grinned, holding up an entire plastic bag full of them.
“We hit the jackpot,” Luis said. “We’ve got headlamps, flashlights, flares. We found a survival shop that somehow hadn’t been looted.”
“It probably had something to do with the shotgun-wielding owner,” Miguel commented. “We found what was left of him behind the counter.”
