Chapter 17
SIXTEEN
Jen
The next time I wake, I lift my head only to realize it’s been in Adam’s lap and he’s stroking my hair. OK, so he’s officially cute now.
What the hell?
I drift into consciousness as I take in the enormous bulge right beside my face. My pussy gives a feeble flutter, but he wrung me out so well I honestly don’t know if I’ve got another orgasm in me just yet.
“You’re awake.”
Feeling a little guilty, I run my hand up his thigh. “You sure you don’t want me to help you out with that?”
He sucks in a breath as my fingers skate the crease of his thigh, brushing his balls beneath the briefs he must have put on before he got back into bed. “Fuck! You’re making it hard to say no. I’m just going off a hunch here that this is gonna be good for me.”
I’m a little mesmerized by his fingers in my hair, not gonna lie, so I don’t complain.
The next thing he says takes me completely off guard. “If you’re not working today, I thought we could ring that therapist back and see if she has time to meet with us.”
I raise my head again to look at him carefully. “Ah, why?”
“Well, things have been going well, but I think you were right when you said I’ve got some stuff to work on. And you’re worth it, Jen.”
I look up at his hopeful puppy dog expression and wince.
How have I turned into the asshole here?
I thought Adam was all about sex with no strings.
I sit and pull up the duvet to cover my chest. “Adam, don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need to be clear with you.
This,” I gesture between us with a finger, “doesn’t mean we’re getting back together. You know that, right?”
“Oh.” His face falls. “I thought…”
It feels a little hard to breathe. I place a hand on his arm. “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m having a good time, and I’m glad you seem to have…” I search for a way to say grown up without being mean.
Adam frowns. “You said it yourself. I belong inside you, Jen. That has to mean something.”
I gape at him. “That’s just talk. Filthy-hot dirty talk, but just talk, Adam. Just words.”
All of a sudden he pushes me back against the pillows and his hips are over mine, hard cock grinding against my oversensitive pussy.
I gasp.
“Is this just talk, Jen? The way I’m only hard for you. What about the way it feels inside you, hmm?”
I shudder, and despite myself I’m wet all over again and my legs long to wrap around his hips.
I push him off, climbing out of bed, hot and flustered and frustrated.
“That’s just physical, Adam. We might be good in bed, but have you forgotten how much we fight all the time?
I can’t do that again.” Throwing on some tights and a sports bra, I pull my hair into a knot at the top of my head.
“I’m going out for a walk to clear my head.
Please don’t keep pushing. You’ll only ruin the next three days.
I was looking forward to being friends.”
He rolls onto his back, cock still jutting up like a fucking elephant in the room. “So maybe that’s why we need therapy,” he murmurs.
God damn it, he’s all cute and sad and his straining cock is calling me like I’m Batman and the city needs saving. Again.
I turn away and shove my feet into my sneakers so I don’t give in to him. “I can’t do this.”
Even after walking for ten minutes I’m still trying to push aside images of the way his dick twitched inside his briefs and concentrate on why I really, really shouldn’t be giving my zombie ex-boyfriend another chance.
We fight all the time, and I mean all the time. And I watched what that did to us. He might think it’s fun now, but toward the end of our relationship, he was avoiding me as much as I was avoiding him.
Maybe he has a point about therapy, but the therapist would have to be a miracle worker.
A little voice inside my head whispers that a lot of the things I used to get angry about are things he seems to have changed, like the fact that he never used to do anything around the house, or the fact that he never used to notice when I did.
Chances are that once he goes back to work and we fall into the routine of life that would all start creeping back again, though.
He’s suffered a big shock. No wonder he’s reeling. I can’t expect these changes to last.
And then there’s the whole zombie thing. Though, when I think about it, I am only seeing advantages to that.
The corners of my mouth threaten to curve into a smile when I remember the heady feeling of having his stolen cock stashed in my handbag all day and his increasingly cute and desperate messages.
Yeah, OK. There are definitely advantages to his new situation. It still bothers me that we both know so little about it. What if the curse only lasts a month and then…
What if we cure it and he’s not a zombie anymore, he’s just dead?
I’m not walking all that fast, but I suddenly have to stop and brace myself against the corner of Costa Coffee while I try to suck in enough oxygen. I’m breathing fine, but it doesn’t seem like any of it is getting into my lungs.
When the world stops spinning, I right myself. A harpie clutching a giant latte in her claws looks at me through the window and mouths, “Are you OK?”
I give her a smile and wave off her concern, but the thought that Adam might be on some kind of gruesome countdown is a sobering one. I might not want to date him, but I don’t like the idea of him just dropping dead. For real this time.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to find the zombie responsible for my spiraling thoughts calling, so I swipe to accept, launching straight into my stream of worries without saying hello.
“What if the curse is only a short-time thing? What if it ends tomorrow, and you’re just dead instead of undead, hmm? What then?”
He breaks off in the act of greeting me, and there’s a pause on the other end of the line.
“Are you… are you worried about me? Is that what this is?”
“No! That’s not what this is! I’m mad at you for dick-matizing me. Again!”
A tall minotaur in a business suit walking past gives me a strange look and a little more space than necessary.
“Is my dick the only thing you enjoyed?” Adam’s tone is playful, but there’s a hard edge to it I know all too well how to interpret. And isn’t he right to be upset? Aren’t I essentially doing the same thing to him as he did to me—using him for sex or short-term fun only to move on when I’m done?
I open my mouth to yes, be a jerk, but that’s not fair. It’s not even true. My pussy is still trembling at the memory of how well he licked me this morning and neither of those two things would have done much for me without the… what? The connection I feel this time.
That’s different. I sigh. “No.”
“Being inside your pussy was probably the thing I enjoyed least about everything we did this week.”
My footsteps falter, and a business woman in a rush nearly bowls me over, grunting and stepping around me just in time with a curse. “Excuse me?” I rasp into the phone.
“I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean everything has been so fucking good. Every single thing. OK, I’m probably exaggerating because I liked it better than cleaning your oven, but I think I just liked holding you again most of all. That, and eating your pussy.”
Oh not fair! My heart is doing odd twisty things inside my chest at the memory of his fingers in my hair this morning. I let out a growl I can’t keep in. “Do you really think it could work if we tried again?”
“Yeah. I do. We’re good together, Jen. There has to be a reason we have so much chemistry in bed.”
I’ve been walking without really thinking about where I’m going, but I round a corner and find myself at the gate to Postman’s Park.
I’m drawn in, something inside me seeking the grounding serenity of being surrounded by nature at least for a moment.
I’m quiet until I find a spot beneath a large tree where a bench is tucked in the shade.
“You still there, Jen?”
“Yeah.”
There’s another pause. Finally I say, “You really want to do therapy?”
“Yeah.”
I run my hand over my face. Is this something I want to commit to? Not really, but the longer I spend with this new, improved version of Adam, the more things between us have started to feel like an unanswered question. He’s right. “Fine, but you have to take it seriously.”
“Course. What about you?”
“What about me?” I bristle.
“Jen, you heard what that therapist said. If we’re going to make it work, we both have work to do.”
I know it makes logical sense in theory, but I’m not sure the therapist has ever tried to live with someone as annoying as Adam. Still, if he can change and if he’s really going to do this properly… “Yeah. OK. I remember.”
“So… you coming home now?”
I look up into the swaying leaves of the tree and sigh when the rest of my anger drains away as he says the word home. “Yeah.”