Just a little together time for Caryl before I send him off with Carl and the others to search for Judith and Beth. Sigh. Smut warning.

Interlude

"Sweetheart? What're ya doin'?"

"Shhh."

"Uh-oh—um—oh shit..." Daryl groaned as he felt the heat of her mouth in the small of his back, her tongue sweeping out to lick a path down the line of his spine as her hands framed his hips. He lay sprawled on his belly, exhausted by the events of the day, knowing he'd be awoken in only a couple of hours when the boys demanded their midnight feeding.

"Mmm..." Carol made a happy yum sound as if she was savoring her favorite dessert.

"Is this another one a them hormone spike thingies?" Daryl asked in a tight voice. During the pregnancy he was at the mercy of a double dose of the things—one day she'd tell him his hair was breathing too loud and the next she'd send Rose over to Sara or Rosita and jump him as soon as he came across the threshold. He took to keeping pillows near the door to guarantee them a soft landing and going without underwear because she got cross when it took him too long to get naked.

"Sara said we ain't supposed to be doin' this yet." he reminded her, moaning low when her hands moved towards each other, gliding over the velvet soft skin covering the firm hard muscles of his ass, followed by her mouth, kissing, licking...and his hips shifted up and back, trying to relieve the pressure she was creating on the other side of them.

"I love this ass." she murmured, lifting her head as she moved from one cheek to the other. "It's like a sweet downy peach—I just want to bite it."

"The thangs you say with that smart mouth, woman..." Daryl choked back a laugh. "Unf!" he grunted when he felt her mouth open over the curve where ass met thigh and she bit down, sharp, fast and then tempered it with several soft licks. Now his cock was at full and pressing attention. "Care-roll!" he moaned and her mouth moved to his hip, pushing him onto his back with an insistent hand on his other hip. He tried to sit up, to catch her busy hands but she grabbed his wrists and pushed him down.

"Stay." she ordered.

"Can't." he shook his head at her, "Sara said."

"What I want to do isn't what Sara said we couldn't do." she told him, moving her hands up to his forearms and leaning forward to press her mouth to the soft place at the inside of his right elbow.

"What?"

"Don't you like my mouth on you?" she pouted up at him. "On all of you?"

"You gotta be kiddin' me..." he ground out and sighed, letting his head fall back to hit the mattress.

Carol smiled. After giving birth so recently, intercourse may be off the table for awhile, but there was nothing in Sara's orders saying they couldn't enjoy a variety of other more creative pursuits... She hoped tonight that she could coax him into something that he rarely let her do for him. She remembered the first time she had tried, and his almost violent reaction had puzzled her.

They'd been in the hay mow of the camp horse barns, part of the original lodge complex, fooling around soon after he'd moved in with her. They didn't have much time, but had snuck away when he'd spotted the soft loose piled newly cut tall grass and asked if she'd ever had a roll in the hay. He was being playful, which she loved to see in him, and she wanted to give him something special, something they'd never done.

She'd dropped to her knees and looked up at him with one eyebrow raised, her hands moving to the buttons of his fly to free his jutting hardness, licking her lips in anticipation of the taste of him, but he'd stumbled back, falling over the low wall behind him and into the soft hay below. She'd thought it had been an accident and after making sure he was ok, joined him in the hay, ready to get back to what she'd been doing, but he'd grabbed her hands tightly to stop her, pulling her up his body for a kiss instead. As wonderful as that was, she had her heart set on giving him the same sort of pleasure he gave her, using her mouth on him, showing him how much of him she could handle, craving the taste of him hot and hard on her tongue.

"Daryl..." she'd almost whined when he'd held her hands to keep them from working his fly open.

"You don't have to." he'd said with a frown, "I won't make you." he looked troubled and his voice was soft and low.

"Daryl, I want to...unless it's something you don't like, and then of course we don't have to." she told him carefully.

"Ya don't have to lie to me—don't ever lie to me Carol, especially about this kind of thing." he said with real pain in his voice. Carol looked confused—what was he talking about? She sat up and looked down at him. "I know women hate to do it...blow jobs." he whispered, embarrassed. "I know you prob'ly been forced to do it by... by him." meaning Ed, her first husband, "...n' ya think I need it too, but I don't."

"That's not true, Daryl—I mean probably there are some women who don't—some men too—" and he snorted at that, "and yes, it wasn't something that I ever really liked doing for him, but that's why I want to with you..." she looked at him, tilting her head to the side and giving him back one of his tiny side of the mouth smiles, and then her voice went all gravelly and harsh, telling him what she wanted to do to him, "I want to lick you like the best lolly ever until you can't see straight...dig my fingernails into your ass to hold you still...while I take you deep in my throat and make you come with my mouth and hand on you and then swallow every drop..."

Daryl started to sweat.

"Fuck." he whispered, mesmerized, releasing her hands.

It had been quite a memorable afternoon.

And now he was leaving the day after next with Carl and Michonne and Rick. She wanted to brand him, imprint him as hers, leave him with a sensual memory he could live on for months if need be, but she'd been forestalled by the realities of her body's need to recover from its ordeal.

That Daryl preferred to sleep buck naked meant that all she had to do was be a bit stealthy about how she approached him. She'd spooned in behind him and started her seduction by trailing fingertip light caresses on his shoulders and back and he'd relaxed back against her in his sleep and she'd been able to ease him on to his belly so she could enjoy the sight and then the feel of his muscular back and bottom. He'd come awake only when she'd opened her mouth over his spine, hot and wet, and she did what she'd been craving to do for days—taste him—his skin salty smoky warm and remarkably soft on the places the sun seldom reached.

That had surprised her the first time she'd touched him there, how his hands could be so rough and calloused but his ass and hips and cock so amazingly tender. He had one livid purple scar that ran from his left hip over the meat of that cheek marring the perfect flesh and she wondered how he'd gotten it. Most of the others, on his back and chest, were straight lines ranging from three or four to eight or ten inches, the marks made by a brutal rod or quirt, but this one curved with the line of the muscle and had the marks from stitches, small tiny round holes that ran down both sides; it had been vicious and deep.

Carol knew every inch of his body now, could replay him in her head like her favorite series, each plot point and climax memorized, each response anticipated but always a welcome surprise when her efforts yielded a new one, as if he could rewrite the script as easily as she, keeping the next episode as thrilling as the last.

She loved how his voice would rise in pitch right before he came, whimpering and babbling incoherent endearments interlaced with profanity, how his hands shook with need when she drove him to the edge and kept him there, refusing to release him until the exact right instant. She supposed she got off on it—knowing that she could make him feel like that—that his pleasure was literally in her hands, in her mouth, in her body...the rush she felt when he fell apart, moaning and writhing in ecstasy from what she was doing to...for...with him. Yes. She got off on getting him off; that simple.

Getting him to lie back and enjoy it, though, was sometimes the most difficult part.

Daryl had learned early on that women expected reciprocation in sex. That it was considered good sexual manners to give as good as you got. The first woman he'd been with had been one of his father's waitresses—he'd meet them at all night diners after coming off a bender and usually hole up in a motel somewhere, but sometimes the nicer ones he'd bring home to cook and clean and warm his bed for a few weeks or months. Daryl had been sixteen, awkward, but all broad shoulders, narrow hips and big blue eyes with a shock of dark blonde hair falling into them. His beardless narrow face was still softer, more rounded out with the remnants of baby fat, and he had only recently acquired his first tattoo, the small devil on his inner bicep, which hurt like hell, the skin under it red and swollen.

His daddy had left for work and Daryl and 'Marlene' (that's what the badge on her uniform said anyhow), were alone in the kitchen. She was dishing out a second helping of scrambled eggs laced with peppers, onions, ham and cheese, leaning close, asking him what kind of toast he wanted, when he'd accidentally knocked his coffee cup onto the floor, shattering it. He'd ducked from the blow he expected, raising his arm to protect himself and she'd seen the swollen angry place on his upper arm.

After calmly cleaning up the broken cup and spilled coffee Marlene had quietly asked if she could take a look at his arm. He'd only agreed because it hurt like hell and he'd been having visions of infected needles and amputations or worse. She'd cleaned it with alcohol, telling him it didn't look infected, that it was the natural healing process after a tat, and then unbuttoned her blouse to show him the leaping blue dolphin she had tattooed on the inner curve of her breast. Sixteen year old Daryl Dixon had never been that close to a grown woman's naked breast before...she watched him staring at her chest and smiled, leaning forward to brush her lips over his small devil, telling him everything would be ok as her hand moved to close over his cock.

Every morning after his father left for work and before he had to be at school, he and Marlene would have a lesson of their own. Inevitably he wracked up too many slips for tardiness, late for class when his enthusiasm for Marlene's private sessions became excessive, and a call was made to his father, who came looking for him and found Daryl in his bed, with his woman. He threw his naked son backwards through a plate glass window when Daryl tried to stop him from attacking Marlene. It had taken 18 stitches to seal the jagged wound. Threatened with statutory rape charges, Marlene vanished from Daryl's life, which became even more harsh and isolated after that...

Carol knew bits and pieces of this—they'd traded 'how I lost my virginity' stories one night not long after their interlude in the haymow, but he'd been vague on the details, telling her only that he'd been sixteen and the woman had been older and kind to him. She'd quirked a smile at him and said that maybe he did have a type. They'd been having a light argument over the issue of reciprocation. He loved going down on her—it was one of his favorite things to do—but rarely would he let her do the same, and the idea that she would even if he didn't just seemed to upset his notion of sexual ethics.

"But don't you see?" Carol implored him, "It should go both ways then. How many times have you driven me insane with...you know...that...and I haven't done it back? Tit for tat, ying and yang? Bread and butter? Abbott and Costello?"

"Abbott and Costello?" he'd laughed, "What the hell do they have to do with it?"

"Can't have one without the other?" she tried.

"You lettin' me into yer life s'all I need," Daryl said, and he'd hugged her close.

"You like it don't you?" she'd pushed, knowing he had. He'd just about passed out in the haymow he'd come so hard.

"We're done talkin' 'bout this." he'd growled.

Daryl should've known it would, pardon the pun, come up again. The woman never would let well enough alone. Of course he loved it. The sight of her willingly taking him in her mouth was enough to make him come all by itself, and when she lavished her loving tender care on his cock until his balls drew up and he exploded into her soft hot heat, taking everything he gave her, he just about lost his need to breathe. But then he'd flash on the waitress, who'd been sucking him like there was no tomorrow when his daddy had burst in on them, on the poor methed out girls in the back of Merles' car, blowing him for a dime rock, throwing up after; and after the Turn, the man whose head he'd blown off with a shotgun when he and Merle had found him forcing a boy to do it, holding a gun to his head.

"Don't you like my mouth on you?" she said. "On all of you?"

"You gotta be kiddin' me..." he ground out and sighed, letting his head fall back to hit the mattress. "Don't start this again Carol," and to her dismay, he reached down and pulled the covers up over himself, hiding his body from her, closing her out. She frowned at him, waiting, but he stonewalled her.

"I need to know, Daryl, why this is such an issue for you." Carol finally said with a sigh. "I've told you I want to—that I enjoy it—why won't you believe me? If I told anyone else I was having to talk you into a blow job, they'd think I was nuts!"

"Don't call it that—ain't like you." Daryl winced at the crude slang for the act and then pulled the sheet up over his head, not wanting to see the hurt look on her face.

"Daryl, you're leaving." Carol began evenly, but her voice became more strident as she continued. "You're going to be gone for god knows how long and I want to be with you now...and I can't be with you in the usual ways we are because of our sons being pushed out of my ho-ha about a week ago, so unless you tell me what the fuck is wrong with it, I'm going to list every euphemism for oral sex I know and then do it to you!" He didn't move, so she began: "Tickle your pickle, go down on you, suck you off, fellatiate yer piece (she'd overheard Merle use that one), choke on your python—"

"Jesus Carol!" Daryl snorted, dragging the sheet down off of his reddened face and looking at her like she'd lost her mind.

"God, I love a man that blushes." she purred and leaned over him, bringing her mouth close to his ear, "give you head, play your flute, slap the monkey—"

"Thas not–thas...thas jerking off," he interrupted as she uttered the last one, stuttering in confusion, craning his head back and squinting at her.

"I thought so—slapping sounded more like just a hand thing." she said with the contemplative nod of a scholar.

"Yer crazy, ya know that, dontcha, woman?" he marveled, tentatively leaning towards her, bringing his hands out from under the sheet to take hold of her shoulders, looking at her mouth. She met him halfway, and the healing kiss was good, leaving them both a little breathless.

"Talk to me Daryl." she said gently, "Tell me what's wrong. Why this bothers you so much."

Daryl sighed; he should've known he wouldn't be able to keep anything like this from her forever. He pulled her down and tucked her in close to his body and with another deep sigh, cleared his throat.

"So s'pose you noticed I gotta scar on my ass?" he began.

I like that even though Daryl still has his hang ups from his damaged life, (Carol does too), she knows how to deal with him—basically the same way she always has, with love, humor, patience and a push at just the right time.

Let's hope she gets the chance on the show-Caryl reunion people! We must have it!