Free Dead Sexy by Aleah Barley Page B

start losing fine motor control, and then I’d lose my mind.
    I wouldn’t remember my name, my family, or my job. In a few hours, I’d turn into a meat-seeking missile and try to stuff any old Tom, Dick, or Harry into my mouth.
    The bloodier the better.
    The dress came off over my head and drifted to the floor. I was wearing a strawberry bra and a pair of combed cotton panties in mint green. Nothing else. A few hours earlier I would have laughed at the idea of being half-naked in front of any man—let alone Tall, Dead, and Sexy—but for the moment I didn’t care.
    I checked my reflection in the shining metal door of the nearest crypt. The bite marks on my shoulder were unmistakable; dark bruises and fresh blood in the shape of a formerly human mouth.
    “It’s just a scratch,” I said. “He bit me through the dress. I’ll be fine. It has to be a real bite: penetration, saliva, the whole nine yards. Biting through a dress doesn’t count.”
    Denial was one of the five stages of grief, according to my mother’s yearly sensitivity training. My body shivered.
    Was I about to take my last breath as a living woman?
    Or, was I just reacting to the cold?
    “It’s going to be okay,” D.S. promised. His hand reached out to rest on my shoulder. “I’ll take good care of you,” he promised. “You’ll come out. Of. This. Fine—” Emotion made his speech stilted. Infirm.
    For the first time since I’d met him, the man sounded like a Biter. A zombie. A monster.
    Oh, god! Was I going to sound like that? I looked down at my body. The soft skin and familiar curves seemed suddenly foreign. I’d wandered into uncharted territory.
    “Few. Years,” D.S. said. “You. Won’t. Even. Remember.”
    Like Donny.
    “I don’t want to forget.”
    All the people I’d known. All the people I loved. Cindy. Donny. My mother. I swallowed hard. Martina Matthews-Sinclair drove me crazy. I didn’t want to live with her, but I didn’t want to forget her either. Not this way.
    I’d only just met D.S. The man made my bones melt and my panties go wet just looking at him. Would that be enough for me to remember him? Even just the way he made me feel?
    It hadn’t been a real bite. There was still a chance that I could come out of this thing alive.
    Still, I didn’t want to die a virgin.
    I kissed D.S. Hard. My lips pressed against his mouth. My fingers tugged at his button down shirt—no longer white after being splattered in blood and gore during the fight—I clawed at his skin and teased his lips with my tongue.
    I was only twenty-one years old, damn it! I needed to touch him, to feel him, to really live before I died.
    Then D.S. was kissing me back, and I forgot all about other motives.
    I wanted him hot and heavy, here on the mortuary table.
    I tore at the tiny buttons holding his shirt in place. One hand stretched out across his bare chest—no need for an undershirt when dead people don’t sweat—while the other moved down to tangle with the waistband of his jeans.
    “Damn it, Gemma.” His mouth was cool against my lips. He clung to me like a drowning man reaching out for his salvation.
    Lust and life mingled like electricity in my veins. The sensation of flying was back, urged on by his long limbs draped effortlessly across my body. One hand cupped my chin while the other dipped to cup my behind and massage my ass. His calloused fingers were rough through the thin fabric of my green panties.
    He reached between my legs and cupped my mound. Making me moan out against him. I’d never been touched like that by another person. I’d touched myself—late at night on my narrow single bed or the red draped couch in my office—bringing myself to shuddering completion while music pounded away in the background.
    This was something else entirely. It was uncontrollable. Unpredictable.
    I whimpered eagerly, desperate to draw him closer and feel him stroke me. Hard. He refused to move. Instead, I found my hips bucking wildly, trying