The making out is going well. Daryl thinks so anyway.
They're sitting on top of a sleeping bag spread out over the bear skin rug. At least, Daryl is. Carol sits sideways on his lap, her thin white tank top clinging tightly to her breasts while her fingertips toy with his left ear. The fire warms the arm he's wrapped around her waist to steady her, but it's her kisses that warm his face.
She did this thing a minute ago where she raked her teeth gently over his earlobe, and it made him moan, which was damn embarrassing, because he doesn't make sounds like that. Usually.
He's got a hard-on again. It's tenting his soft sweatpants like a damn pole, and he's afraid if she shifts just slightly on his lap. She's going to feel it and want to stop.
She's back on his lips now. They kiss for a long time, and still it doesn't seem like enough. He thrusts his tongue into her mouth for a moment, and then back out. He buries his hand in her hair to push her deeper into another kiss.
Carol suddenly pulls away.
"Sorry," he mutters. He's never kissed on a girl like this before – for this long, this many times in a row, this deeply. There was never much making out before the fucking when it came to the kind of women he picked up (or that, more often, Merle picked up for him). What little kissing there was he pulled away from as quickly as he could, so he could get to the less personal fucking. It certainly never excited him, not the way kissing Carol does. He has no idea what he's doing, and he thinks she pulled away because it wasn't good. "I can try n' fix it."
"Fix what?"
"The kissin'. Could learn."
She smiles. "There's nothing to fix. I just needed some air."
"Ya'd tell me though? If there was?" He doesn't want to be another one of her mediocre experiences. "Look, Carol…don't want ya pretendin' to like shit ya don't. Not with me. Ya want me to do somethin' diff'rn, just tell me."
In the light glow of the fireplace, her face grows pink. "I like the way you suck your fingers."
Lines of confusion crinkle Daryl's brow. "What?"
"When you get food on them. The way you suck them, it's…I don't know. It turns me on a little."
What? That turns her on? He thought she was always looking at him when he did that because she thought it was disgusting. "I…ya want me to suck my fingers?" He'll do just about anything for her, but that's ridiculous. He'd feel like a damn fool, sucking his own fingers without a reason. "Now?"
She laughs. "No. I want you to maybe…" She trails off.
"Maybe what?"
Carol picks at a loose thread on his muscle shirt, near his shoulder. "Suck my tongue like that. When we're kissing. I mean, not too hard, and not the entire time, just - "
Daryl moves in and silences her with his mouth.
He's guessing she likes it because she gasps a few times between tongue-sucking kisses and starts to squirm on his lap. When she shifts, she hits his erection with her ass, and he freezes. "Sorry," he mutters. "Know we're just kissin'. Dunno why it's doin' that."
Carol laughs. "Well, I think maybe it likes me." Daryl flushes, and she shifts herself so that she's straddling his lap with her knees on the sleeping bag. It's torture, having his erection pressed right up against her like that. She pushes his shoulder, like she wants him to lie down on his back, so he does.
Her blue eyes flash in the firelight as she puts her palms down flat on either side of his shoulders and bends to kiss him, her lower body still pressed torturously to his. He tries sucking her tongue again, and she must really like it, because she starts rubbing her lower half against his, riding his erection through their sweat pants.
She rubs slowly at first, but then harder and faster while their lips smack and their tongues tangle. Going commando seems like an especially good choice to him now. "Damn," he hisses between kisses.
He thinks it might kill him, the way she's dry humping him like a teenage girl in the backseat of her boyfriend's first car. Through her tank top, he touches a breast, and he can feel her nipple erect against the fabric. She kisses him harder and humps faster, whimpering against his lips. Daryl snakes a hand underneath the shirt and cups her bare breast. He squeezes gently, and then slides his calloused thumb over her hardened nipple. Carol suddenly freezes.
Shit. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. Maybe he should have asked before going under her shirt.
He's about to apologize when she says, "Oh" like she's surprised. But then her oh becomes an "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" and she shivers before collapsing on him. She slides half off of him and buries her face in the crook of his neck.
Did she just cum?
He's pretty sure she did.
It wasn't loud, and it wasn't hard, but it was definitely an orgasm of some kind - and one she didn't seem to be expecting. "Ya a'ight?" he asks.
"Mhmhm." She shivers a little more, cuddles in, and lodges one of her legs between both his.
Goddamn but his balls hurt. And his dick is still at full attention. He wants to ask her to give him some relief, but he also doesn't want her to think that he expects her to just do things for him and pretend to like it. He thinks maybe he's just going to have to ride this one out, just let her be the one to feel good this time, so she doesn't feel pressure and isn't shy about asking for what she wants. "Ya feel good?" he asks.
"I didn't know…" She raises her face from its hiding spot and kisses his cheek. Her breath is warm in his ear. "I didn't know that could happen just by doing that. I mean, that's just as good as the best one. And we weren't even…you know."
Just as good as the best one? He's not exactly a skilled lover, but he's made women cum before. They screamed. He's pretty sure that the little pop and shiver she just experienced is far from the best one. "'S gonna be better 'n that when we…ya know. Should be. Better."
She kisses his cheek again. "The fire's going to die later. Will you get your sleeping bag for a cover?"
"Mhmh." He tries to ignore his aching hard-on while he sits up and reaches for the other sleeping bag. He supposes this signals the end of the make-out session, and now they're going to sleep. He's still hard when he unzips the bag and drapes it over them. He lies down on his back, wondering how long this painful erection is going to last, and if he can discretely take care of it after she falls asleep.
Carol puts her head on his shoulder and her hand on his bare abdomen where his t-shirt has ridden up. But then her hand shifts. Down. Under the waistband of his sweat pants.
He hisses in surprised pleasure when she grasps him, and shudders when she circles the tip with her thumb and spreads the pre-crum up his shaft. But it's when she starts to stroke that he groans, "Oh fuuuuuuuuck yes!"
Either she's damn practiced at this, or it's been way, way too long since a woman's touched him there, or maybe a bit of both, because it doesn't take long at all. His whole body trembles afterward, and he lies there, half stunned, licking his lips and catching his breath while she slides her hand out and grabs a washcloth from her nearby pack to wipe up.
The fire has died down to a gentle lapping, and without any crackling, his breathing sounds extremely loud in his own ears.
"Do you want to clean yourself up?" she asks.
Clean himself up? He can barely move. Or breathe. Or think. "Later."
She tosses the washcloth she's wiped her hand with somewhere and settles back down against him with her head on his chest.
His left arm falls loosely across her. Eventually, his mind begins to form thoughts again – Why is she so damn good at that? Is that something she just got really good at so she could avoid mediocre sex she didn't much want? Or is he just that bad at lasting? Is he going to last when they finally do it? Or is he just going to be another one of her mediocre sex stories?
Shut up, he tells that old, nagging voice of self-doubt. He's already given her an orgasm that's as good as her best one. "'S only up from here," he murmurs, and closes his eyes. Damn but he feels good. It's like there's not a single tense muscle anywhere in his body.
The feel of her small hand coming to rest against his hip is the last thing he remembers before he falls asleep.
[*]
The whining of the horses downstairs awakens Daryl. The sun has not quite risen. Carol's sound asleep, but her backpack has been moved and the crumpled washcloth is gone. There's a stack of clean towels on the end table between the arm chairs she must have scrounged up from one of the lodge rooms, and the map is open on the table next to a now dead oil lamp. He wonders how late she stayed up studying it and feels a little guilty that her orgasm was apparently not as sleep-inducing as his was.
He goes down to the basement of the lodge to check on the animals and narrowly dodges a pile of horseshit. A thud-thud-thud sounds from the direction of the furniture-blocked glass door, followed by the dampened sound of growling. The horses have moved as far away from the door as they can, given the length of their tethers. He scratches Freckles's mane. "Don't worry, boy. 'M gonna take care of 'em."
Daryl peers over the furniture to judge how many there are, loads his bow, and goes through a dark hallway in the basement to the emergency exit. Cautiously, he pushes open the heavy door, and when nothing reaches inside, he emerges. He lets the door close with a softly click and then strolls all the way around the porch under the deck above. He stops at the edge of the lodge and peeks around.
One of the walkers, clad in torn-up snow boots, stops slamming against the glass door and sniffs the air. It turns its face toward Daryl and is met with an arrow between the eyes.
Daryl reloads and picks off a second walker. He reloads again and shoots a third before they get too close and he has to toss his bow and draw both knives. He strides forward between two walkers, throws out his arms, and drives the blades into the sides of their heads at once. As he jerks the blades out of the decaying flesh, he kicks back an approaching walker, and then he does the same thing again with the next two walkers until all nine are dead.
Daryl surveys his handy work while catching his breath, and then scans the slopes for more. He has to shield his eyes against the rising sun, but all seems quiet beyond the lodge.
He looks down at one of the walkers and nudges it with his foot because he thinks he sees a flash of metal that might be a knife strapped to its belt, but its only the silver clip of a crumpled and fades ski pass.
He strolls back inside, feeling like a man who has just chivalrously killed a cockroach for his woman. Not that Carol wouldn't have cleaned up just as easily, but after that hand job he got last night, she damn well deserves her rest.