Okay, this is the stuff I'm not very good at. Go easy on me! Be gentle, people! I hope this chapter isn't a total flop and if it is then I am totally sorry! But I did try. If nothing else at least it's another chapter to read =) See I'm an optimist! A very nervous optimist... Enjoy!

Chapter Thirty Seven

Daryl opened his eyes and then blinked in the darkness of the room. It wasn't completely black. It was nothing like the room they had stayed in at the CDC. The pills had worn off but that was alright. The pain hadn't been unbearable when Carol had forced him to take them to begin with and it was even less now. Just a dull throb that he could easily ignore. He figured that when he woke up it would hurt like hell after spending all day on the back of a damn horse. Hell, his ass hurt worse than his side did.

He knew, somehow, that it wasn't even near morning yet so he slipped out of the bed as quietly as he could and left the room. The rest of the house was as dark as the bedroom but he knew it well enough to get by without running into anything. He didn't realize he had a destination until he was standing outside of the door to Merle's room. Carol had given Sophia the okay to sleep in there so he hadn't said anything about it. But the truth was, he'd rather have had her closer.

He opened the door and it swung inward quietly. There was a small lamp on in the corner of the room and he was relieved to see the girl curled up on the couch asleep. Probably sleeping a lot better than she had the last few nights.

"Comin' to make sure I ain't done nothin' to the kid?" Merle's low raspy voice asked from the bed.

Daryl hadn't even looked at the man yet. But there he was, wide awake. "Thought you was suppose to be out till mornin'." Daryl said as he made his way further into the room.

Merle gave him a humorless smile. "I guess the good doctors didn't guess my tolerance would be so high."

Daryl just rolled his eyes and sat down in a chair a few feet away from the bed. "Yeah, guess they wouldn't have thought of that." His eyes flicked towards the couch. It was a quick movement but Merle was an observant man.

"What's goin' on here, little brother? You and that girl over there, ya'll actin' like she's yours or somethin'."

"Why? Cause I didn't let her die in the woods? You ain't gotta be a kids daddy to not want that for'em, Merle." his tone held a bitter edge that had Merle's eyes narrowing.

"I saw the way the kid looked at ya. You can stop playin' stupid with me. I know ya."

"You don't know shit, Merle." He said as he looked down at the floor.

"I saw you with her momma earlier. That lil lady's lookin' good now days. You got somethin' to do with that?"

"Why do you always gotta run your mouth about shit you know nothin' about?" Daryl growled. "You ain't never been able to just shut your fuckin' mouth."

"You forgettin' who the fuck yer talkin' that way too, boy?" Merle growled.

"No. How the fuck could I? I lived with you most of my life and you ain't stopped talkin' bout yourself once."

Merle must not have really been looking for a fight because he settled his head back down on the pillow and his face became smug. "So, tell me bout everything I missed. Been in here for hours bored outta my goddamn mind."

"You ain't missed much." Daryl said gruffly as he stared at his hands that were now clasped in front of him.

When he glanced up Merle was studying him with a mildly amused expression. "Looks to me like I missed a whole lot. I done heard all about what you did to ol' Ed. That's some pretty sick shit right there little brother."

"Told you somebody needed to do somethin' about that piece of shit puttin' his hands on her like that."

"And I told you to mind your own." Merle said quietly.

"Yeah, well you wasn't there, were you?"

"Well, did she at least give ya a reward for savin' her ass?" Merle smirked.

"Fuck you, Merle."

"You tellin' me you ain't knocked the bottom outta that yet? You kill her husband for her and then you save her kid and you ain't even got yer dick wet?"

Daryl felt his anger rising but he tried to breath through it. This was Merle. It's how he had always been. He just shook his head. "That ain't what it's about, dumb ass."

"So then you wont mind if I break it in for ya? If she ain't yours then it's all fair game baby brother. You know she ain't never had it the way a Dixon can give it to her." He studied Daryl's expression but Daryl wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how pissed off he was.

He stood up and walked calmly towards the door even though the only thing he wanted to do at the moment was grab that lamp and smash it into Merle's face. But that wouldn't do him any good so he left the room without looking at him again.

Even he couldn't believe that he had once put himself in the same category as that man. No one was as bad as him. Maybe their dad, at one time, was worse than Merle was but that dumb bastard had been dead for a long time. Now Merle held the trophy for biggest asshole alive.

He wasn't tired but he had no where else to go and Merle had gotten to him a bit and he knew that if anyone could sooth his nerves it was Carol, so he slipped back into the room and crawled in next to her again. The aggravation he had been feeling over what his brother had said started to evaporate as soon as his arm slid around her warm waist.

"Where were you?" She asked sleepily.

"Went to check on Sophia. Merle's stupid ass was awake so I sat with him for a while. Till I realized he wasn't gonna shut up so I left."

"Was she awake?" She asked as she rolled over to face him. She tucked her head under his chin.

"No."

"What's wrong?" She lifted her head and looked at him with eyes that were still half closed.

"Nothin'. You should go back to sleep."

She pulled back and looked at him in the dim light that was coming in through the windows. "You think it's gonna be hard with him here?"

He smiled as he let his hand roam down to her hip. "I'm startin' to think ain't nothin' spose to be easy for you and me. This is just one more thing to get through I guess."

"Some stuff is easy." She said as she trailed her fingers over his jaw. She leaned in and kissed him lightly. "See? Easy."

His heart lurched just by that light touch of her lips on his. That was how it always was though. He had had woman before. If you could even call them that. But he'd never had this. Not someone who could make his head spin just by touching his face and make him weak in the knees by kissing him. No, she wasn't like anyone else he'd ever known. She didn't flaunt herself around like other women did. She didn't need too. And she didn't have too. She wasn't the type to seek out attention from men. Hers was a kind of subtle beauty. She kept quiet and further back than most women but if you were lucky enough to really see her, you got to see something amazing. The way her wide blue eyes took in every single thing you ever tried to hide, or the way her soft voice held a quiet strength that was easy to miss until she was whispering in your ear that she loved you.

He couldn't make out the blue of her eyes in the dark even though her eyes were wide open now. He was kind of glad that that meant that she wasn't able to see his own. If she could see them then she would know everything he was thinking and the things he was thinking were things he would rather keep to himself. Even though those thoughts of her kept him awake some nights. They were still his alone.

For some reason thinking about her like that always left a dull ache in his chest. It almost, but not quite, felt like sadness at times. Life had always been a fragile thing. But having someone to actually want to live for was the scariest thing in the world to him and sometimes he was overwhelmed by the intensity of it. Kind of like he was right now.

And the very worst part about feeling all of those things was the fact that it went against everything he thought he knew. Everything his brother had taught him. But he didn't try to fight it. Not anymore. It felt good. She wasn't something Merle Dixon had ever come across before so he would never understand things like this.

He didn't know whether it was all these thoughts running through his head, or if it was spurred on because of what Merle had said earlier, or if it was just because he really was flat out tired of waiting, or it could have had everything to do with the fact that she hadn't even bothered to go anywhere else to change her clothe earlier, but he found himself kissing her again. Nothing like that light kiss she had given him. He felt hungry for her mouth. And so he fed. His teeth grazing her lip just enough to cause her to cry out a bit and then she was right on board. Matching him with an intensity of her own.

He ran his hand from her hip down to her thigh and then moved it so it was draped over his own hip and then he rolled until she was under him. Her fingers quickly worked the buttons on his shirt and then her soft hands were pushing it down his shoulders. He pulled away just long enough to shrug it off and tossed it to the floor and then his mouth was on hers once more. Her hands traveled over him and everywhere her hands touched left his skin tingling in their wake. He felt like he was still drugged. His mind was spinning and his heart was pounding and he was filled with a need so intense he was sure it would kill him.

He tried to slow himself down. Kept telling himself that she wasn't going anywhere and that he needed to calm down but it was useless. He pulled away from her and came up on his knees. When he looked at her he could see that her chest was heaving with every breath and her legs were still parted before him. His hands went for the waistband of the thin pants she had worn to bed and in one deft motion he tore them away and was on top of her once more. His hands slid under her tank top and she dug her fingernails into his back, causing him to groan into her ear. She moved her hands away from him just long enough for him to slip the shirt over her head and then they came right back to him. She gripped the sides of his face as he kissed her roughly but her hands didn't stay there. She moved them slowly down his neck, palms pressing flat against the muscles of his chest and further still, grazing the sensitive skin of his stomach until finally she had the button of his pants undone.

He was about to let her slip her hand inside, it wasn't like she hadn't already done that before, but right before she could he moved back, grabbed her hands and pushed them away. It was going to take everything in him to prolong this, for as long as he could, as it was. It was going to make it a lot more difficult if he let her have her way. So he trapped her hands above her head with one of his own and then left a wet trail from the hollow behind her ear all the way down to her hip bone, lingering on areas that caused her to squirm, and then followed a different rout on his way back up. He had the overwhelming urge to taste every bit of her so, after kissing her mouth once more he trailed his head down again, grazing his teeth across the hipbone he had just seconds ago abandoned. She let out a pitiful sound when his teeth touched her skin then he felt her hands in his hair when he didn't move back up, but down further.

This wasn't something he had ever done before, or something he thought he ever would do but he owed her some payback for the stunt she had pulled at the CDC and he wasn't sure how long he'd end up lasting. Considering the painful throbbing in his pants, it wasn't going to take him long and he wasn't going to cheat her.

To his amazement he had a knack for it because the very first time his mouth made contact with the heat between her legs she cried out loudly and clamped her hand over her mouth. Her other hand fisted into his hair. He stayed right where he was, and the noises she was making behind that hand were driving him mad. It couldn't have been a full minute later when he felt her digging her heels into the mattress and started making sobbing sounds behind her hand, and he just kept going until she arched her back and trapped his head between her thighs.

When she was finally finished she moved her thighs and then roughly jerked him upward by the hair that she still had a hold of. It would have probably hurt if he wasn't so consumed by other things at the moment. He was already working his pants off as she was pulling him to her. He braced himself on his arms and looked down at her face. The darkness in the room wasn't enough to hide how impossibly wide her eyes were as she looked up at him. Her hands gripped his forearms and then he hesitated for a second.

"Daryl, please." She breathed.

That was too much. She was actually begging for it. He adjusted his hips a bit and then finally, after all the waiting and the torment, he pushed himself inside of her. And then he stopped moving as her eyes widened even more and her lips parted. She fit him like a glove and he had to repress a shudder. She wrapped her legs around him as he started moving into her and then it was all lips teeth and fire once more. He wasn't at all gentle. He thought he could be but he wasn't and she matched every movement he made with the same untamed enthusiasm. She wasn't obnoxiously loud but she wasn't quiet and every sound she made had him gritting his teeth to keep himself from just letting go.

He was almost dumbstruck at how impossibly good she felt. He didn't think anything could feel as good as this but then suddenly, it started feeling even better. She was tightening around him even more, which he didn't think was possible, and then there she was, clamping her hand down over her mouth again just as he felt the muscles inside her clamp around him followed by a rush of heat. And that was too much, it felt like she was vibrating on the inside, causing him to feel sensations he had never felt before, and he stopped holding back. He picked up his pace, not caring if he lost it now.

"Jesus, Carol." He growled into her ear as he felt her starting to come again and this time he joined her with an agonized groan. His whole body seemed to convulse as he waited for her to drain him, her body doing most of the work without either of them having to hardly move. He didn't move away yet. He kept his head buried in her shoulder as he waited for their breathing to return to normal. He was really just too stunned to move.

He finally eased away from her and pulled the blanket over both of them. They were both on their backs now, both still panting a little. Neither one of them said anything for a while, both lost in their own thoughts. After a while she turned her head towards him.

"Daryl?" She whispered.

He looked at her and he could feel the smug expression on his face but he couldn't do anything about it.

"Do you think anybody heard me?" She asked, her expression was quite mortified so he did the only thing he could do at that expression. He laughed.

She covered her face with her hands, causing him to laugh even louder.

"Are you seriously laughing at me right now?" She pulled her hands away from her face and slapped him in the arm. "This isn't funny, Daryl. There's a house full of people and you were making me..." Her voice trailed off and she covered her face again. "That's never happened to me before."

"What? You never got loud before?" He snorted, "I met your husband, Carol. Can't say I'm all that surprised. Or you talkin' about how you never got off like that before, cause that's what it felt like to me." He chuckled when she raised her head up and glared at him.

"Daryl, just shut your mouth." She groaned but he knew that she wasn't mad because she rolled over and curled up next to him with her head on his chest.

He felt exhausted all of a sudden and he felt his eyes slipping shut. "I don't think anybody heard you, Carol." He mumbled. "The only one that was awake was Merle." He chucked again but then he cracked one eye open when he felt her move away from him. "Where you goin'?

She reached down and grabbed something off the floor. It was her shirt and she slipped it over her head quickly then she reached down and again and came back up holding her underwear. She slipped them on also and then curled back up in her usual spot. "Aren't you gonna put your clothes back on?"

He closed his eyes and grinned. "Nope."

"What if someone comes in?" She asked worriedly.

"Then they'll learn to knock, I suppose."