Reawakening by Charlotte Stein Read Free Book Online

you mad?
    Maybe. After all they were definitely going to die in here. There was no food, weirdly, and no water—even though the zombies never just let up. She couldn’t think why Blake and Jamie had organized all of this as their last resort.
    It seemed so unlike them.
    “Okay, June. So what we’re going to have to do now is check. We’re going to have to check that you haven’t been bitten.”
    But then so did words like those. Though even stranger was this feeling inside her, this almost-compulsion that said— yeah, they definitely need to check . Because, well…why? Blake had seen her the whole time and he knew she hadn’t been bitten or contaminated in any way. If anything, he was the one who needed to be checked.
    Only when he put a hand on her arm and urged her to turn, she found herself going all the same. She had absolutely no idea why he wanted her to face the love heart couch, but it felt like the right thing to do. Everything felt suddenly so syrupy and nice, and he had very gentle hands.
    Especially when he placed them on her shoulders and pressed fingers to the twin knots where her collarbone began. That felt extremely gentle and sort of…deliberate. Then Jamie said, lift your arms up , and it was kind of easy to. He had such a good, drawling voice. Not even drawling, really. More like…a swaying sort of voice.
    And Blake’s was good, too. He made it faint and dipped it in a little butter before he next spoke, so that when he did she felt perfectly okay about having her arms above her head.
    Like I’m going to be frisked , she thought, shortly before he did just that. His hands simply slid right down, all along her sides and over her ribcage, to her hips.
    It was almost unbearably intimate. Far worse than any sort of ruder touch—maybe because she couldn’t remember any other man making such a strange move. The other men laser-ed in on the obvious areas—tits, cunt, ass—and ignored anything that didn’t get them anywhere.
    Not that Blake was trying to get anywhere, though, of course. If he really wanted to get somewhere he could just force her, after all. He didn’t have to make up some strange pretext then run his hands down her sides. Then back up again. Then down, down, then…oh. Oh.
    She thought about her arms and legs turning to noodles, back there by the fence. Had they actually re-established solidity? It was hard to say when he had his hands on her hips and Jamie said somewhere behind her, kind of breathlessly, “Yeah check underneath—check underneath the shirt. You know, ‘cause they could have gotten underneath.”
    There was a brief moment of feeling like a science project, then custard invaded her brain and made her think something patently ridiculous, like— yeah, they could have definitely crawled inside my shirt and nibbled on whatever Blake’s touching right now. Definitely. He should probably touch it more.
    Of course, she tried to focus. Zombies were outside! They were going to die! But it was getting kind of hard to remember that stuff when he had his hands right. Underneath. Her breasts.
    He had them there, but he didn’t move upwards and touch them. Instead he let his hands glide down over her bare stomach—she was actually able to watch them go beneath the material, like something crawling and creeping that she should be afraid of.
    Only she wasn’t, she wasn’t. He was standing very close—so close she could feel his hot breath on the nape of her neck—but there wasn’t anything threatening about it. Tense, yes. But not threatening.
    And maybe it was only tense because she couldn’t bear to move. If she moved he might go away, and Jamie would go away, and she couldn’t bear that. No, no—she had to stay still and let him slide her sweatpants over her hips.
    They went very slowly to the ground and once they were gone a million threads inside her went slack. It was kind of like letting go of everything—even the things outside—and that was okay by