When He's Sinful (The Olympus Pride 3)

She put a finger to his lips. “I don’t need you to say the words, but I do want you to consider this. Just because what you feel doesn’t have the same … emotional tone as what I feel for you doesn’t mean it isn’t love. It might not be tender and warm and soppy. In fact, it’s raw and it’s dark and it bleeds. But it’s also unbelievably strong and deep, and so damn true it makes the backs of my eyes burn.”

“If it is love, then fuck I love you with everything in me. There’ll never be a time when I don’t.”

“Good, because I don’t need what you feel for me to be soft and sweet. I just need you to keep feeling it.”

“I will. Always. Easiest promise I’ll ever have to make.”

She smiled. “Then all is good.”

They lay there like that a little longer, talking about inconsequential things. She’d thought she’d eventually doze off, but … “I’m not tired yet. Do you feel like watching a movie or something? I brought my tablet.”

He swept his hand up her back. “What did you have in mind?”

She twisted her mouth. “There’s a war movie you might like. Overlord.”

“Overlord?”

“It’s set on the eve of D-Day, 1944. A squad that’s sent to take out a German radio jamming tower is shot down. The plane crashes, Nazi soldiers come along and start killing people, and the survivors have to get to the tower and … I’m saying too much. If you’re up for it, we could give it a whirl.”

“At what point do zombies enter the story?”

“It’s a war movie. Does it sound like something that would feature the walking dead?”

“No, but I’m betting it does.”

Well he’d be right. Ugh. She sighed. “How about a sci-fi horror, then? Like … ooh, The Last Days on Mars. There are these astronauts who discover evidence of bacterial life on Mars. Well, one guy finds it at first. He wants to be the only one who claims the glory, so he goes off on his own mission to get more samples. But then the ground collapses—”

“And he somehow becomes a zombie?”

Um, yeah. And she didn’t appreciate the humor in his tone.

She felt her lips flatten. “Is it really so bad that I want to prepare you for the upcoming apocalypse? Is it really so terrible that I want you to survive it?”

His mouth twitching, he rolled them again so that she was once more on her back. “You’re nuts. I like it.”

“I’m not nuts, I’m—”

“Seriously fucking nuts. But it’s okay because, as I said before, I like it. You’re baring your teeth again.” He licked at her lip. “You know what that does to me.”

“I also know what the zombies will do to you if you’re not educated on their biology, behavior, diet, and how best to kill them. It only takes one bite—one bite—and you’re done for. Infected. Beyond help. Cursed to eat your loved ones and smell like a rancid old ass. Is that really what you want? To condemn us both to a life of undead-ness? You want to waste precious time on crime syndicate movies and mobsters? Because I personally—”

He ended her tirade with a hard kiss. “How about this. I’ll fuck you again—probably from behind, and there’ll be breath-play involved. After that, well, I’m pretty sure there’s a movie called Gangsters, Guns, and Zombies. We could try that.”

“Dude, you had me at ‘probably from behind.’ I am all over this plan.”

His lips tipped up. “Exactly what I wanted to hear.”