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This is my fourteenth week on this blog hop. This week’s piece comes from my current romance WIP, Resistant. Resistant is a romance set in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. This scene follows shortly after the previous.
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“Hungry,” he asked, watching my entree with intensity. He noticed my slight limp and yawn. My right leg and ankle ached were Marcus had cuffed me, but the more I moved around the loser and better it would feel.
“Yes, but you don’t have to cook for me.” That was the most absurd thing I have ever said to him, considering we’ve been sharing meals since the day we meet, and he has cooked nearly every one of them. He gave me an odd look before turning back to stir the noodles.
I stepped around the wall of blankets separating his area from mine to see that my pallet was missing. I looked around the room and noticed my area was much smaller than it used to be. There had been so much in his area that I hadn’t noticed that it was bigger than it had been. What the hell? Was this his not so subtle way of telling me he wanted me out? If so, why were my clothes and things still where I had left them?
“Where is my bed?” I asked with more fear than anger in my voice as I stepped back to Daniel’s area. I scanned his section, looking for my things and noticing the slight differences. There was more room than there had been. The bed had more pillows and blankets, and he had created a small seating area.
Before he could answer and say things that would break my heart, I moved back to my area, forcing the fear down and calling up the anger. “All you’ve given me is enough room store my clothing and gear. I can barely change clothes in here. What is going on?”
“Don’t be mad…” he started.
Anger and fear that he was trying to force me to find another sleeping area overwhelmed me, and I started to panic. I shoved the wall of curtains down to the back wall, opening the area wide and making it one large area.
“Where is my bed?” I tried to shout, but the question came out as a plea.
“Your bed is right there.” He pointed down at his bed. His voice suggested that this fact should be obvious. “I left the curtains up to give you privacy when you needed it.”
“Excuse me. That is your bed.” The fear evaporated, hope rose, but I masked it with confusion.
“Now it is yours. You’ve slept on that pallet long enough.”
“I know. I’ve been meaning to get my own mattress, I just…”
“You don’t need a mattress. That one is big enough for the both of us.” He wasn’t wrong, but damn it, he was never going to find himself a companion if people found out we are sleeping together.
“Daniel, I…”
“Don’t argue. Food will be done in a moment. We have Ramon’s and Beanie weenies. Not the most nutritious, but our meals never are. We need to add canned vegetables to the supply list. We never have enough vegetables. We also need to the look into planting some if we decided to stay here much longer.”
Too tired and headachy to argue or follow his train of thought, I turned to the closet—that is all the area was big enough to be now—and changed. I didn’t even bother pulling the curtains together to do so. We were going to be sharing a bed after all. Also, I wasn’t getting completely naked and my back was to him.
I pulled off my t-shirt and under shirt and threw them into the basket that held my dirty clothes, making a mental note to wash my clothes the next day. Normally, to conserve clothing, time, water, cleaning supplies, I would have worn the shirt to bed even after wearing it all day, but I had gotten a bit sweaty, and I wasn’t about to crawl into bed with him smelling like sweat.
With that thought in mind, I changed out sports bras and heard something metal hit something else metal. “You all right,” I asked, slipping on a new one.
“Yeah,” he said in a hoarse voice.
I reapplied my deodorant, noticed that I needed to shave again, then prayed he hadn’t seen my armpits. At this point, I was quickly wishing I had pulled the curtain closed. I pulled another t-shirt on and turned to face him.
He was looking hard down at the bowls into which he had poured the noodles. He seemed to be holding his breath and concentrating hard on what he was doing. His posture made me wonder if he looked that way because my disrobing affected him or if he was annoyed that I would do such a thing in front of him. I was sure it was the latter, and didn’t care. It is what he gets for being so high handed.
Gleeful at his annoyance, I took a bowl of noodles from him and sat down cross-legged on his bed…on the side nearest my closet. The side that I was claiming for myself, despite the fact that I’ve seen him sleeping on that side every time I’ve gotten up before him or gotten back after him. This was his side of the bed but tough shit. He didn’t say anything just sat down opposite me. We ate in silence.
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I hoped you enjoyed that.
Don’t forget that HIM, my suspense/thriller, is now on sale. The novel has already received some amazing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Most of the reviews forewarn people that this novel is graphic and is not for those who love beautiful Hollywood endings. So far, all have given it four and five stars, despite the content because of how moving and powerful the story is.
Here are the novels links if you would like to know more about it:
