The ringing silence in my head was forgotten, drowned out by the sounds our bodies made—skin sliding against skin, fingers rustling through hair, lips meeting and parting and meeting again. Becks kept moving steadily backward, forcing me to follow if I wanted to keep kissing her. I wanted to keep kissing her, and so I kept going until she pulled me onto the bed and slung one leg over mine, keeping me there. I didn’t resist. I didn’t want to. For the first time since George died, I really didn’t give a shit about anything but the present. It was a nice feeling. I’d missed it.

“Shaun.”

I started kissing her neck, tasting the slightly salty flavor of her skin. I’d missed that, too. The taste of a woman’s neck, the way it moved when she breathed—

“Shaun.”

It took a moment for the fact that Becks was talking to me to sink all the way into my brain. I stopped kissing her in order to push myself back and look at her face. Her hair was rumpled, making her look like she’d just finished running a marathon after holding off an entire horde of zombies with nothing but a shotgun. I was starting to understand why she kept it long. It might be impractical as hell, but it made views like this one possible, and that was worth a little inconvenience. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” She smiled, a little wryly. “I just wanted to let you know that I have condoms.”

I hadn’t even thought that far ahead. I blinked for a moment, and then nodded. “Cool, because if I have any, they’re downstairs.” Actually, I wasn’t sure whether I had condoms in my pack or not. I hadn’t needed that sort of thing in so long that I’d stopped thinking about it, since thinking about it didn’t do me a damn bit of good. Sex wasn’t a factor in this post-George world. There just wasn’t time.

Becks smiled a little more, looking surprisingly shy, considering that we were buck-ass naked and twisted around each other. “Will you let me up?” she asked.