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“Hey!”

“—and damn if I can’t explain why, but you want me. You want me, and I can't have you.” His eyes blanked on the dark landscape. “It's unfair.”

I felt the apology in his voice as painfully as the inches separating us. “Jesse—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Life isn't fair. But why couldn't you be asexual and bitchy and not so goddamned beautiful?”

“Give me a few more hard years of malnutrition, harmful UV rays, and life on the battlefield. You’ll be stuck with a shriveled old lady covered in scars.”

Without warning, he yanked me into his lap, circled his arms around my hip, and cradled me against the beat of his heart.

His mouth brushed my ear, the protective affection emphasizing his words. “No more scars.”

The richness of his voice wrapped around me. I hugged his neck and softened against the hard ridges of his shoulders. His embrace felt surreal. Safe. Perfect.

I didn’t want to lose it, lose him. “We could look for condoms during our next supply run.”

“Condoms that have been sitting in a hundred degree heat for two years?” He made a noise in his throat. “I trust that about as much as I trust the pull-out method.”

“A generator then.” Seated on his groin, I wanted to wriggle my hips, seeking his arousal, to feel him for the first time. “If we could power the ultrasound, we could check the IUD.”

His palm slid over my thigh and squeezed my leg through the yoga pants. “Maybe.”

That wasn’t a no. My fingers dug into his shoulders, and for a moment, I almost believed if I didn’t let go, he wouldn’t either.

But his hands dropped away, falling to his sides. “You’ve explained how the IUD works, but I need to learn more about it, understand its weaknesses. Seeing it on a sonogram would go a long way in helping me trust it.”

I brought my face to his, watching his dark eyes. They were hypnotic, the way they snagged mine, bold and arresting. And they calmed me, the way they waited, patient and discerning.

The layers between us thinned, replaced with a hopeful kind of electricity. My lips tingled with it. “So it’s an option. We have options. I’m not giving up.”

“We can’t…I can’t ignore this feeling.” He slipped his hand between our chests and rubbed his sternum. “It’s a foreboding feeling, telling me there’s a very real, inescapable finality attached to us. Like the little piece of plastic in your cervix is a trivial precaution against fate. Because fate always wins.” He let his weight sink into the wall, reclining lower to the ground and taking me with him. “This is going to sound nuts…”

Curled against the warm skin of his chest, I played with the hair on his nape. “Tell me anyway.”

“I don’t jerk off.” He laughed, mirthlessly. “Because I’m fucking paranoid the powers-that-be are going to somehow transfer my sperm to you. Like a trace of it will land somewhere, and you’ll inadvertently sit on it or some shit.”

Seriously? I stroked the hair around his ear, watching the strands curl around my fingers. “Come on, Jesse. You know I can’t get pregnant that way.”

“Humans don’t grow fangs and run at the speed of light, either.”

He had me there.

Distant lightning flashed behind a wall of clouds, and the sky pulsed in bursts of electricity. The storm was too far away now to hear thunder, which left the peaceful rhythm of tapping rain.

I adjusted my weight in his lap to better see his face. “Will you tell me about the last time you had sex?”

One sexy eyebrow lifted, shadowed beneath the protection of the eave. “You don’t want to hear about that.”

No, I didn’t. But as long as he was talking, I’d listen to every painful detail. “Please?”

Cradled in Jesse’s arms, I raised my eyes and cleared my expression. This was it. A glimpse into his mysterious past.

“She was a French woman.” He stared off into the rain. “A couple nights before the outbreak, I picked her up in a bar and took her back to my hotel room.” He let out a self-depreciating laugh. “She smelled like mothballs and fruitcake. Big ol’ nasty bush. And her moans…Good God, they were horrendous.”

That was his last sexual experience? The memory he carried with him into the apocalypse? He was so damned attractive he could’ve had his pick of women.

“She fucked like a wildcat.” His timbre rasped, grating across my skin. “I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness.”

“Oh.” My mouth dried, and my stomach twisted. The urge to crawl off his lap and cuddle my jealous heart was jabbing, but I’d asked for it.

He shifted, and his hand rested on my jaw, tilting my head upward. “She wasn't you.”

I closed my eyes. “You don’t have to say that.”

“Love your jealousy, darlin’.” He brushed a kiss over my eyelid, stuttering my breath. “Shows me you care.”