Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

panted
in between gasps of laughter. “In fact, maybe don’t ever attempt a
joke again.”
    I just looked at her. I didn’t know what to
say, or how to take this conversation back into territory where she
didn’t assume I was gay and I made her nervous. I’d
been living in the Zombie Apocalypse for two years and this was by
far the most horrifying moment so far.
    Well, maybe not. But it definitely made top
ten.
    I finished the dressing on her left hand and
then we tackled her shirt.
    “I’m wearing a tank top underneath; I can
just take this off.” She gestured at her long sleeved shirt and I
forgot how to swallow. “Uh, do you have a knife? You could just cut
it off,” she prompted.
    Some brain activity returned to my head but
the only thing that came out was an irritated question. “You trust
a stranger with a knife?” Because it irritated me that she did trust me. What if had wanted to rape her? Or hurt
her? I hated that she would put herself in danger like this
willingly. She needed someone to protect her; she needed someone to
fight these unseen battles for her.
    “You’ve had plenty of opportunity to do what
you want to me,” she reasoned knowingly. “I trust a stranger that
knows how to take care of open wounds.”
    She had a point so I went to work. I pulled a
knife from my pocket and set about cutting off her shirt. I was
careful not to come too close to her skin, or near the tight tank
top underneath.
    My blood seemed to heat hotter and hotter
with every slice of the knife and inch of skin I exposed. The whole
experience was starting to feel strangely erotic and I didn’t
exactly know how to handle this.
    That’s right, twenty-three years old and a
girl in her tank top was more than enough to make me embarrass
myself. I shifted on my barstool and worked to focus on the
clinical, medical aspect of my task.
    But, my god, her skin- perfect, milky and a
little pale. Her arms were well-defined, her collarbones so
elegantly arched across her chest. Her neck stretched in a long,
slender line. Her tank top was tight to her perfect body and low
cut over a swelling of perfect breasts.
    And it had been a very, very long time since
I’d seen a girl this beautiful so undressed.
    My entire body felt on fire from her
nearness. And it wasn’t just my male instincts stuttering to life.
It was her- everything about her that called to some buried, hidden
part of me.
    Until an hour ago, I hadn’t realized what a
state of undead I’d fallen into. Sure, I fought daily to kill real
Zombies; but somewhere along the way I’d become one myself.
    Reagan had awoken that decaying part of me
and brought me back to life. I’d been a corpse rotting away in the
crypt of my life and she breathed life into me, raised me from the
dead, reminded me that I was not just a person trying to protect
his family, but that I was a man trying to live in a world that
wanted me to die.
    Somehow able to think all of this through and
muddle through the task of cleaning her numerous wounds, I reached
for a clean towel and poured some bottled water on it. I pressed
the wet cloth to her forearm, intending to scrub away the dried
blood when she shivered. I looked up and caught her gaze- as deep
and intense as anything I’d ever been a part of- and waited. She
nodded her permission and I let my itching fingers go to work.
    I treated her with the utmost respect,
forcing my increasingly hungry body into submission. She was
precious, fragile… feminine. And I wanted to treat her like that.
My mission in life was to protect and I would give her that, too.
Even if I had to protect her from myself.
    Once I was finished, I looked her over and
let my gaze fall to her jeans. Self-control. I was a master at
self-control.
    “Uh, maybe we should cut those off too?” I
suggested because I couldn’t see another option to get at her
still-bleeding knees.
    “Yeah, that’s fine,” she agreed. “They were
going in the trash anyway.”
    “Do you have other