Page 28 of Bitten By Zombie

Maneuvering off the bed, she did her best to saunter to where his legs dangled on the mattress and positioned herself between his knees.

Bending down ever so slowly, not breaking eye contact until the last possible second, she felt for the jeans that were still around his prosthesis and worked them all the way off. No easy feat with the boot attached.

She’d never dealt with a man-made limb attached to a person before. Her assumption was it just kind of slipped on, but there was fabric and a bit more to it than she expected.

Stuck between wanting to remove it for him and not wanting to mess up, she caught his eyes. The brown seemed to be swirling with an emotion she couldn’t exactly pin down, but there was definitely some challenge there, but a touch of insecurity too? She hated that because she knew that feeling intimately, and it was not something she’d wish on anyone.

“Are you more comfortable with it on?” she wondered since he seemed different after she saw it.

“Not really.” His voice was still rough but also timid. The latter took her aback. Nothing in their interactions since the second she woke up was even remotely timid.

She reached for it, determined to figure it out.

“But you don’t have to do that. I can…”

Her confidence in what she was trying to do—everything she was trying to do—flagged again, and she made to step away, but Zombie sat up and caught her by the wrist.

“Don’t. Don’t do that, Rabbit.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Run and hide inside yourself. The woman who came out of this same bed swinging at not only me but two big, tattooed fuckers like she could take on the world doesn’t run and hide.”

His words were like bullets hitting her insecurities square in the chest.

He was right. Heidi has had moments when people had stolen her confidence, no, when shegaveit to them, but all in all, she was comfortable in her own skin.

It wasn’t easy and didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen, so why was she all of the sudden a mouse who was afraid the cute guy wouldn’t like her?

That was bullshit, but she knew the answer,Stan.

That’s the only thing it could be. Once she’d spoken those words aloud, she felt a sense of shame wash over her. But it wasn’t her shame, damn it, it was his.

It had taken her years to realize the shame that had been holding her back in the beginning belonged to her mother, not her.

After Bobby fucking Wilson took her V card, then told her that fatties were only good for practice, she carried that shame for years. It took a man who taught her that her body was beautiful to stop carrying his shame around.

Now, she was letting Stan’s shame take root.

“I’m doing it again.” The words were meant for her and her alone, but she’d accidentally said them out loud.

“Doing what again, Rabbit?”

“Carrying something for someone else, they should be shouldering themselves.”

Heidi looked into intense brown eyes that understood exactly what she meant. It was a moment they shared, and somehow, deep in her soul, she knew Zombie understood. He sat up.

That heated look and the kisses he peppered along her collarbone brought her back to the woman she wanted to be.

She reached for his prosthesis once again. Rather than stop her, he talked her through taking it off.

Once that was done, she placed it on the couch and returned to the gorgeous man sprawled on the bed. Climbing up between his legs, she dropped kisses along the way, starting at his knee and traveling up. When she got to his inner thigh, he spoke.

“Tonight is supposed to be about you, Rabbit, not me. But I’ll be damned if I could stop this. You have no idea the healing power your lips hold right now.”

If there was a more perfect response to her ministrations, she couldn’t think of it.

Zombie said she was healing him, when in fact, his words were healing her. She was already dreading a resolution to her current situation. The end meant she’d go back to her life, and he’d go back to his.

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