Tess chokes down a moan as she grinds against his leg.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
It's not serious, it's not, it's not. Joel isn't her type. They're partners. He's a simple hire; someone who she pays in cards and booze to stand behind her and look intimidating, just as she did with all the others that came before him. She's into guys closer to her age, anyway, someone who can match her dry humor and maybe trade a few stories. Not scruffy, silent men in plaid who seem to brood more than they share.
But there's another side to him; one she didn't fully realize until the first time he slid his tongue in her mouth, in a small alleyway just inside the wall after outrunning a horde of clickers. Her flashlight fell out of her hand and she didn't hear the curfew announcement (and neither did he) and when a supplier of theirs happened to walk by, she was sucking the hammering pulse under the thin skin of his neck and his hands were under her shirt, palming at her breasts. She shoved him off of her, Joel swore the guy to secrecy, and they met each other's eyes - a silent, mutual agreement that it would never happen again.
An hour later they were fucking in her empty apartment.
It wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't. But something snapped; her place was dark and cold and she was able to jam a broken table leg to lock it from the inside, and he shoved her down onto the lumpy, stained mattress and then he was inside her and he was big, fuck, all those stupid quips she made in her head about his big hands and feet and the hammer, and his dick was as girthy and massive as she'd ever seen.
It happened once and they never talked about it. She sort of started seeing someone, some guy down near the slums who matched her dry humor and told her stories over the shitty, rotgut moonshine he made and didn't hear or didn't care that she almost moaned Joel when they had sex.
But then he disappeared one day, probably bitten while on outside work duty, and then it was someone else, it was always someone else, and she's sure Joel must have had someone else too and it was fine. It wasn't a thing. It never happened.
But though they don't fuck anymore, they have - this.
This is something different. They don't talk. They don't kiss. She keeps her eyes closed. But some days, when their conversation is rife with innuendo, or when their eyes meet just the right way, or they patch each other's wounds and are forced to touch too much, something snaps. He pulls her into the nearest abandoned space - sometimes an alleyway, sometimes an old, collapsed tunnel, sometimes either of their apartments - and shoves her up against the wall and grinds.
She curls one arm around his neck, pulling him into her, the tight denim of her ill-fitting jeans pressing hard against her clit. He's rocking into her, his mouth pressing into the divot of her neck, the bulge in his jeans growing, hard and hot and she knows that one of these days she's going to undo his zipper and slip her hand inside.
She bites down on his shoulder as he pulls her hips up into him and thrusts against her hard, his solid thigh building hot friction between her legs, her body tightening. She grips his shoulders, wraps both of her legs around his waist, letting the brute force of his body hold her up and the wet, throbbing ache is unbearable as her clit presses against his enormous erection, even through all the layers of clothes. The clothes make it worse. It's wrong and dirty and it needs to stop, either of them could die tomorrow, but for some reason she never can, this weird thing they do - she's not sleeping with him. She's not - and his hips rock into hers one last time and she lets go, coming hard, her teeth sinking into his shoulder and her nails breaking skin as he grunts and growls and releases.
She leaves first, like always, and that night under the covers, she presses her fingers against her soaked panties and wonders how much longer their clothes are going to stay on.