AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think.
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Daryl hadn't actually meant to kiss Carol like he'd kissed her. That thought pinballed around inside his brain the whole time that he walked with Merle to the cabin where Merle required his help taking care of a relatively minor plumbing problem that mostly required the used of more than one hand. Daryl's minor panic attack over the kiss occupied his mind so completely that he wasn't able to really listen to what his brother said. Somewhere, almost distant and outside of everything, he could hear his brother talking about Andrea. He could hear his brother talking about the community and plans and work and any number of things. But he couldn't hear it clearly because all his brain really wanted to talk to him about was the kiss.
Daryl had meant to peck her lips. He'd meant to kiss her just enough to satisfy Merle. That had been his intention. After all, what if she didn't want the kiss? What if it was forced on her and she had to pretend to like it? A peck could be easily forgotten and forgiven.
As soon as he leaned close to her, though, his brain was singing a different song. He'd watched her. He'd studied her. He knew so much about her that she'd probably be horrified to know that he'd gathered from watching her when he really should have given her some privacy.
For his entire life, Daryl had loved to taste things. He'd loved to bite things. He'd loved the sensation of pressure that came from biting. He'd loved to lick things. He'd had a fascination with imagining what things might taste like and how they might feel on his tongue and caught between his teeth. He'd always appreciated flavors and textures. He'd often felt a compulsion to taste things that he really had no business—knowing all that he knew about germs and toxins—introducing into his mouth.
If it wouldn't kill him, though, he often lacked the ability to overcome the compulsion.
How could he admit, though, how many times he'd dreamed about his mouth being on Carol's? He'd thought, at least a thousand times or more, about what it might be like to kiss her—to really kiss her. He'd daydreamed about how that kiss would somehow be so much more than a kiss.
By the time he leaned to kiss her—his brain feeling like it was firing off thoughts and wild scenarios at a thousand miles a minute—he'd decided to kiss her with at least a little more enthusiasm than a peck. He'd decided that this might be his only chance. It might be his only opportunity. Even if she didn't appreciate it, she'd forgive it to keep the secret, and at least he'd have the one kiss to keep in his memory and to use as fuel for his daydreams.
When their lips touched, though, he'd lost all control and all reason. Her lips were soft and sweet—literally sweet because he could taste the syrup of the French toast—and his whole body went wild with the desire to taste more of her. He wanted, in an instant, to taste every single square inch of her body. His brain started to fire even more rapidly than it had, and it stopped working all at the same time.
For just a moment, Carol had been everything. There had been nothing more.
And Daryl could barely breathe when he'd broken the kiss. He'd heard her soft little moan when he'd kissed her—a sound that was burned into his brain now to play, possibly forever, on repeat, when he could hear more than the sound of his own blood rushing past his ears. He'd tried to judge her expression when he'd straightened up from the kiss, but she'd mostly looked surprised and he'd been afraid to linger there too long and see that surprise take shape as a definitive response. He'd feared that he wouldn't care for the expression that came next. It wouldn't be what he desperately wanted it to be.
The walk over to the cabin had been excruciating. Daryl's body had cruelly reacted to the kiss with interest that he wasn't able to entertain. He was glad his brother was distracted with whatever the hell he was talking about and didn't notice Daryl's need to walk off the unrequited interest.
As soon as the plumbing job was done, though, and he could run away from Merle as fast as was possible, Daryl offered his brother a bullshit excuse of needing time to go and take a shit—something he preferred to do in the privacy of his own newly-minted home—and he promised to catch up with him in a bit to get started on some other jobs with which he could help. Merle had ribbed him a little about making sure he took the opportunity to swing by their storage cabin and stock up on reading material for what he called the daily constitutional, but he'd let Daryl go without much delay or discussion.
Daryl didn't need to shit. The only reading material that might have done him any good would have been a magazine or two like the ones that Merle used to keep tucked under his mattress. He didn't really need those, though. His mind had plenty to offer him at the moment, even if most of it was fantasy comprised of a few snatches of accidentally seen body.
Daryl was so happy to find the cabin abandoned that he almost couldn't stand it. His mind was already firing off fantasies and images. He had always had a very vivid imagination, and right now it had shifted into overdrive. He slipped directly into the bedroom, closed the door, and looked around. It took him less than a moment to find what he was searching for in the drawer—a handkerchief that he could use to clean up his mess. He would only hope that Carol, when she washed clothes, since she was the one who always did their laundry, didn't pay enough attention to notice what the cloth had been used to clean.
Grabbing her nightgown, tossed over the chair in the corner of the room, had been something that had just happened accidentally. Daryl hadn't been thinking about it. When he'd seen it, it had simply happened. It was soft, and when he put it to his face and inhaled, he thought he could smell her, however faintly.
He unfastened his pants, freed his dick, and got comfortable on the bed. He closed his eyes and smelled the nightgown again, immediately feeling a little ashamed of his choices. He almost felt like he should apologize to Carol for letting his mind use her in such a way, but to apologize to her would be to admit to her that he thought of her when he needed to relieve a little tension.
He took his time. He didn't want to rush things. He had bought himself some time and some quiet, and he wanted to enjoy the images that his brain offered him. He liked the sensation of the slow and drawn-out building up of feelings and desires. He liked the mind-blowing release that he knew it could lead up to if he didn't rush.
His mind was busier than it had been before. Now it remembered how she tasted. It remembered how he'd felt when her lips had been on his. It remembered the feeling of her hair and the soft skin on the back of her neck when his fingers had found their purchase there. It remembered the softness of her lips and the way she opened them to him, just slightly, and how she kissed him back softly and caught his bottom lip between her lips. He remembered the dampness she'd left behind on his lips. His mind remembered the hunger that had surged up in him—the almost uncontrollable desire to keep kissing her lips like that and, then, maybe to kiss the rest of her.
He remembered when he'd caught a glimpse of her breast one time—just enough to make out the profile of it. He remembered her nipple and how it had stood at attention because the water she'd been bathing with was cold. It had been his job to make sure that Walkers didn't disturb her bath. It hadn't been his job to memorize the curve of her breast or the shape of her nipple. He hadn't meant to do it. He'd meant to look away. But they'd been the most beautiful breasts he'd ever seen.
He imagined being given permission to run his tongue over the peaks of her nipples. To suck them. To kiss her breasts. He imagined how soft their skin would feel against his lips—perhaps even softer than her lips. He imagined being aware of her breathing as he lingered there at her chest.
His own breathing was erratic. He panted at the thought alone, and he wondered if she might react the same way to the attention he'd like to give her.
He remembered the way that her clothes hugged her belly now that she wasn't hiding it. He felt a twinge of shame at imagining it, but he imagined what her belly would look like bared to him. He remembered the glance he'd caught of it when she'd bared it to Michonne as proof that all she carried in was a baby and nothing more. He imagined kissing her belly. Tasting the saltiness of her skin with his tongue.
He was ashamed over the strange sensation that it brought up in him when he thought about it. It wasn't right that he should feel turned on by a woman who was doing little more than carrying her child, but he was absolutely fascinated to think that life was growing inside of her. She was doing that. She was creating another person.
He felt like it was wrong to find that attractive—and he swore to himself that he'd have a talk with himself some other time about the things that turned him on, and he'd try to fix himself, somehow, from the ways in which he must surely be broken—but at the moment his brain didn't want to hear anything about it. His brain only wanted to run the gamut of everything it found desirable about the woman before it forgot the feeling of her soft lips, the feeling of her warm breath, and the taste of sugar that they'd shared.
He remembered her bare legs in the gown that he held in his hand—the hand that wasn't designated to do the work of relieving his frustrations—and he thought about the curve of her calf muscles and the strength of her thighs. He thought about how he'd watched her—though he shouldn't have—as she walked from the bed to the bathroom in the little cabin just that morning. He thought about how the light had just almost made the gown translucent. How he could see her figure through the fabric—the point where her thighs met. A point where he wished he could taste her with the same open permission that he'd been given to taste her lips that morning.
Daryl's mind imagined tasting other lips. He'd never done such a thing before. He'd never even seen a woman that made him desire to do so. But he'd heard his brother talk about it since he'd been a kid eating fruit flavored cereal and watching Saturday morning cartoons while Merle talked about eating pussy and watching women display their bodies for him for singles.
Daryl imagined his face being allowed at that point between Carol's thighs. He imagined everything there he might taste and suck on. He imagined how soft the skin would be. He imagined how she might taste—earthy and salty and like something that he would never find anywhere else. There had to be, he was sure, something about the way she would taste that would be purely an essence of her—something that would simply belong to her. He had no idea what it might taste like—what she might taste like—but he wanted to know.
He remembered her soft moan from the morning and he wondered if she might make the same sounds as he explored her body with his tongue and teeth and lips. He wondered if she might offer him different moans as he slipped inside her.
Daryl could hardly stand it any longer. He kept his eyes closed, and he finally curled his fingers around himself. He could imagine her wrapped around him in place of his hand. He could imagine her opening herself up to him entirely—physically and emotionally. If she were truly his wife, he would appreciate her offering herself to him. He could imagine that, together, they could somehow ceremonially accept that his release inside of her could make the child she carried as much his as it could possibly be.
They would become a family and, in that way, Daryl would have permission to think of her like this without feeling shame. He would have permission to enjoy her body without feeling apologetic.
Daryl was only as apologetic as he could be when his brain stopped thinking about anything beyond the feeling of his hand working himself toward climax—it closed itself off to any image beyond the two he'd created entirely from imagination. The two he liked best at this particular moment. He imagined himself driving into Carol with the rhythm that felt best to him, and he imagined her face twisted up in pleasure as she gladly accepted what he had to offer her because, in his daydreams, he could please her beyond words.
Daryl didn't mean to come as hard as he did. He didn't mean to create such a mess for himself to clean up—cursing a little at the fact that he hoped Carol didn't notice the addition of any new stains to the bedspread.
When he was done, he was utterly physically exhausted. He was mentally exhausted. He wanted to curl up in bed with his pillow, the soft nightgown, and the lingering snatches of a dream that would never come true.
Instead he had to work.
Later they would talk about the kiss. He was sure of it. It was one of the many reasons he knew he'd needed to relieve the tension that he had.
He could only hope that Carol wouldn't be so angry about it that she would decide to reveal their secret to the group right away. He wasn't ready to give her up, even in fantasy.
And he could only dream that, perhaps, she wanted even another kiss from the likes of him.