Carol put her hairbrush down on the vanity and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair did look better a little longer like this. She still hadn't cut it yet. Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd see if it could grow as long as it was twelve years ago, back when she had been Miss Murphy instead of Mrs. Peletier.

"I'm going to go over and guess Mr. Dixon's middle name, sweetheart," she told Sophia. "We might talk for a little bit, so I might be gone for up to an hour."

"Stay all night if you want. I'll be fine."

Carol turned sidewise in the chair and looked at Sophia, whose head was just above the bed because of where she sat on the lower trundle. "What? Why would I stay all night?"

"Isn't he your boyfriend now?"

"Uh…well…"

"Carl told me that his mother told him that Andrea told her that T-Dog told her that Daryl told him that you were his girlfriend."

"Is that so?"

"Yep. That's so."

"Well, yes, we are…seeing each other," Carol told her. "In a way. But there's no need for me to stay all night."

She didn't think Daryl was ready to have her stay all night. She suspected it was possible he might never have had a woman stay all night in the same bed with him. Whatever sex he'd had, it hadn't been typical. There'd been no buildup, and no relationship, unless you counted that one woman he had mentioned who may or may not have been his girlfriend when he was in his early twenties.

"So you two aren't having sex?"

"Sophia."

"What? Just asking. You told me it's a natural thing, all animals do it, but it's only for grown adults, and you should only do it if you're really ready and if you use protection so you don't get pregnant or get a disease."

"No, we're not having sex. We just talk and laugh together."

It was only a partial lie. They weren't having sex sex. They weren't going to, either, not anytime soon. Daryl had given all of those condoms to Shane, and she was not risking a pregnancy like Lori. But more to the point – she also wasn't sure she was ready for that level of intimacy, as much as she cared for Daryl. She hadn't exactly enjoyed sex the last several years – she'd avoided it as often as she could, and she was going to have to learn to enjoy it all over again, like a virgin working her way up to it.

"It doesn't bother you?" she asked. "That I'm seeing Mr. Dixon?"

"I like Daryl," Sophia said. "I don't know if you remember, but he saved my life."

"Trust me, I remember."

"And he makes you smile."

Carol smiled now. "Well, I'm glad you like him. But I want you to know – you're my first priority. Not keeping some man in my life." Those days were over. For good.

"Okay." Sophia flipped a page in her book. "Try Beelzebub. I'd be embarrassed by that."

[*]

Carol was horny when she walked through Daryl's open door, so she shut and locked it behind herself and decided to go straight to the naughty stuff this time.

Daryl had obviously been thinking about it, too, because he was already half hard when she straddled him where he sat against the headboard of his bed. He smiled when she did it, as if he were both excited and confused, probably because it broke the pattern of the previous three nights.

He was wearing those black sweatpants and that white muscle shirt that clung to his chest and revealed his tanned, muscular arms. Carol had her knees on either side of his hips, and she could feel his growing erection pressing against the burning between her legs as she kissed him, his head tilted up to meet her lips and her hand on his cheek.

In a breath between kisses, he asked, "Can I put m' hand up your shirt?"

Carol smiled, because it was the sort of thing a teenage boy might ask. She was glad he was being a little bolder than the last three nights, and she nodded. He smiled and slipped a hand beneath her flannel pajama top.

She had to teach him there, too. He was rough at first, squeezing and pinching while they kissed, so she pulled away from his lips and guided him, her hand over his, until he knew what she wanted.

His touch gentled. He put one hand on her hip to steady her and used the other to play and toy lightly with her breasts. He moved from one to the other, cupping them gently, as he caught her mouth in kisses. Daryl circled her nipples with his thumb one by one until they hardened to a peak. She whimpered and sighed and pressed into his erection. Soon she was grinding against it, desperately seeking a relief that seemed far from coming.

"Me first this time," she demanded and seized the hand that was under her shirt, dragged it down, and shoved it inside her waistband instead. She got him started with her fingers over his and then let go. With one hand down her pants, and the other bracing pressed against the small of her back to brace her, he brought her to a shivering orgasm.

Carol collapsed whimpering on top of him.

"Help!" he pleaded.

Carol chuckled, kissed his cheek, and slid off of him to the side. Then she slipped her hand inside his sweatpants and curled it around his shaft.

"Ohhh….fuck yes…" he murmured as she began to please him. He bent his head, and with his lips against her ear, growled in that low voice that made her shiver, "That's a damn good girl. Stroke it just like…oh, fuck, Miss Murphy…" His words soon turned to raspy panting and satisfied grunts.

Despite the more extended foreplay, he actually lasted a bit longer this time, but it also took him longer to recover. He sat there against the headboard, breathing heavily. Carol sat next to him, with her head titled and resting on his shoulder and a hand on his knee.

"Beelezebub," she said.

"What?" he asked, breathing in.

"Your middle name."

"Ain't that a demon?"

"That's why it would be an embarrassing name."

"Nah." His breathing was leveling. "Ain't Beezelbub."

"Bilbo."

"Like the hobbit?" he asked, his breathing measured now.

"Like the hobbit."

"Nah."

"Bobby."

"Ain't Bobby."

"Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day." She raised her head from his shoulder and looked at him. "How many women have you had sex with it?"

He blinked at the bluntness of her question. "Ain't like I kept a little black book."

"Too many to remember the number?" she asked.

"Nah. Ain't like that. I'm clean. I swear. If that's what you're worried 'bout. And it's been…'least two years since the last time."

"Two years?" she asked.

"Yeah," he admitted, looking embarrassed by the fact.

"So…just one-night stands?" she asked. "Mostly?"

He bit his bottom lip. "More like ten-minute stands," he muttered. "Most of the time."

"How does that even happen?"

"Just…happens. Some women. 'S how they like it. Quick and rough. They ain't interested in a conversation."

I bet he likes it rough and raw, Andrea had said to provoke Shane. Might be fun. "Is that how you like it?" she asked.

"I like…" He rested his forehead against her hair and breathed in. "I like you."

"I like you, too." She smiled and trailed her fingertips over the muscles of his chest through his thin, white muscle shirt.

Carol had never seen him take off his shirt in front of anyone. For the first two weeks after she met him, she used to wonder if he even bathed, until that one time she'd stumbled on him alone in the lake at the quarry and made her hasty retreat, unseen. Maybe he'd never even take his shirt off in front of the women with whom he'd been rough and raw. Maybe there hadn't been time. Carol got the impression he wouldn't be comfortable completely naked. Maybe it was the lashes on his back. Maybe it was the need to always be ready for a fight. But whatever it was, it would be a while, she thought, before she got to see him in all his naked glory.

She shifted her head so he had to raise his and she could look into his eyes. "Did you tell T-Dog I was your girlfriend?"

"Uh…ain't ya? Said so yourself."

"I am. I just guess I wasn't expecting you to go around announcing it."

"Sorry," he muttered.

"It's okay. Now Sophia knows, and she seems fine with it. But I should probably be getting back to her."

As Carol began to pull away, he pulled her back in with one arm and hugged her close against his chest. "Stay a bit."

She settled her head in against his shoulder and lay resting there for a while longer. He draped his other arm around her, too, and held her tightly – and stiffly - against himself. After about two minutes, she started to feel smothered and pushed back, just enough that he let his grip fall free. She slid out of bed. "I should really go. Goodnight, Daryl." She leaned down and kissed his forehead and then his lips before stepping back.

He didn't say, Nite, Miss Murphy as he usually did. He asked, "I do somethin' wrong? Thought women like you liked cuddlin' after."

"Women like me?" she asked as she sat down on the second, made-up bed across from him.

He tuned to face her, his feet on the floor. "Mean…girlfriend-type women."

Carol put her hands down on either side of herself on the bed. "Daryl, have you ever spent all night in bed with a woman?"

"Couple times. When I was passed out from drinkin'."

"But not while you were conscious of it?"

He shook his head. "Not really."

"But you think you could?" she asked.

"With you? Yeah. If that's what you wanted. I could learn. If I wasn't doin' it right, if I was huggin' you wrong or somethin'…I could learn."

Her heart beat faster at his innocent desperation to please her, his sheer willingness to do so. "You weren't doing anything wrong," she assured him. "It's not you. It's me."

He gritted his teeth. His eyes got dark in the low glow of the light. "We breakin' up already?"

Carol snorted. "No, no, Pookie, no," she assured him. "We're not breaking up."

He looked up at her. "Pookie?"

"Sorry…it just came out. It's what I call cute little animals. And you're so damn adorable sometimes. By saying it's not you, it's me, that wasn't a breakup line. I mean the cuddling."

Carol sighed. She'd told herself Daryl wasn't ready for it, but that may have involved a bit of projection. The truth was, she wasn't ready for it. She was used to being trapped with Ed, a prisoner of their shared home and shared bed. She liked the freedom of leaving after her playtime with Daryl was over…for now.

"Ed would hold me really tightly sometimes when I wanted to get away," she explained. "Really tightly, close in. And he wouldn't…" Her voice cracked. She sighed out and continued. "He wouldn't take any hint that I wanted him to let go. And even if I pushed away, he wouldn't let me go. Sometimes he'd hold me like that so he could keep hissing in my ear about how useless or worthless and stupid I was, how no one else would ever want me, when I just wanted to run away and not hear it anymore."

Daryl's hands curled angrily around the edge of the mattress.

"And sometimes it would be at night. I'd tried to leave the bed…and he would drag me back, hold me in, say I needed to be available if he wanted me in the middle of the night. And I just…I came to associate it, the hugging, with possession. With not having a choice. And I know that's not what you're doing. I know that. I know you're trying to be affectionate. And I want your affection. I just…" She swallowed. "I think maybe I'm not ready to have a man hold me for a long period of time."

"Don't have to be," he said. "Don't have to be ready for anything. Whatever you are ready for, 's what we'll do. Anything else, ain't gotta."

"And you're really okay with that?" she asked.

"Look, I ain't boyfriend material. Don't have a clue how this shit is done. I know how to pop and stop and that's all I damn know. But I also know…don't want it to be like that with you. 'S why I wanted you to stay. Just to know we ain't just…stoppin'."

"We're not stopping," Carol assured him. She came back, sat beside him on his bed, and took his hand in hers. She squeezed it. "We're just starting." He raised his eyes to hers. "But we're both kind of broken. Aren't we?"

"Yeah."

"We've both been abused," she said, "and the effects of that aren't just going to go away overnight. But we'll figure it out. Together. If you want to."

"Want that," he said.

She put a hand on his cheek, leaned in, and kissed him softly. "I'm going to go now," she whispered. "But I'm not stopping. This. Us. I'm not stopping. I'll be back tomorrow night."

He nodded and smiled. "Nite, Miss Murphy," he said, and she trailed a hand down his arm as she rose. When her hand was on the doorknob, he said, "Hey," and she turned back. "Don't call me Pookie in front of no one."

Carol smiled. "I won't," she promised before slipping from the room.

[*]

Rick climbed into the driver's side of Daryl's old beater pickup, while Glenn took shotgun. Since the pick-up truck was only a two-seater, that meant they were also taking Merle's motorcycle, the one that had fallen to Daryl upon his brother's disappearance.

Carol lay her AR-15 and backpack in the bed of the pickup but kept her handgun and two knives clipped to her belt. Daryl put his crossbow and mostly empty pack on the luggage rack of the motorcycle. He wore a long-sleeve, dark charcoal shirt that probably had a Fun Kingdom logo on it somewhere she couldn't see, because his black leather angel wings vest was draped over it. Despite the cooling weather, his gray sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing his muscular arms.

Daryl saddled the motorcycle. "Hop on, Miss Murphy."

Carol was secretly thrilled with the thought of riding with him. She liked the idea of being the one behind him, with her arms wrapped around him – the one in control of how tightly or loosely she wanted to hold him. And she liked the look of him on a bike – natural, relaxed, and decidedly masculine.

She climbed on behind him and pressed her knees against his strong outer thighs. He kick started the bike and puttered out through the exit gate of Fun Kingdom after the pick-up. Shane closed the gate behind them, waving.

Once they were out of the parking lot, the truck and motorcycle both picked up speed. Carol enjoyed the thrill of the wind in the strands of her hair, the smell of Daryl's now broken-in leather jacket, the strength of his muscular back, the roar of the engine, and the vibration between her legs. She held on tighter, arms wrapped around his waist. He let one arm fall briefly from the handlebars, across hers, and gave her an affectionate squeeze, but he didn't linger long there.

She put her chin on his shoulder and cried, "Faster!" into his ear.

Daryl kicked up the bike, swerved around the pick-up, and took the lead.