Ben kept to his word, and I never heard a whisper about my breakdown from the Woodbury folks. He also kept his distance, and I was grateful for it. Daryl and I weren't particularly affectionate in pubic, but he didn't completely avoid touching me anymore and occasionally rested a hand on my hip or waist in a way that was undeniably intimate to anyone watching. I was pretty sure he had fully accepted our relationship and didn't care what people thought, and I was happier than I ever thought I could be in this new world.

Fall had come, and we were frantically preserving as much of the harvest as we could before things got too cold. Daryl was able to bring in a lot of meat, and we butchered the pigs and made jerky and canned meat from most of it. I fell into bed exhausted most days, but Daryl's touch never failed to wake my nerve endings up and he'd lick, suck, kiss, and fuck me until I was completely sated and content to slip into oblivion before another hectic day started.

When the really cold weather began, things slowed down at the prison. We still had fence duty, watch, and meals to prepare, but there were more hands to help since the gardens were lying fallow, and we all had breaks. We'd collected lots of yarn and fabric and I was knitting warm scarves, hats, and mittens for all the kids in the evenings, along with several other folks. We'd also raided the prison's small library and had a good stack of decent books that folks passed around.

I found myself in the empty library, looking for something new one day, and came upon the legal section. Prison libraries have a lot of shelf space devoted to case law and state statutes so prisoners can do their own legal research, and it brought me back to law school. I sat at one of the desks and began flipping through the first volume of the US Reporter, skimming the familiar early Supreme Court cases that had shaped our country. I glanced up when I felt someone watching me and saw Daryl leaning in the doorway.

I flushed slightly and closed the book as he shut the door behind him and walked closer to see what I was reading. "It's kinda silly," I said self-consciously, "but these old cases have always been fascinating to me," Daryl smirked and lifted me to sit on the desk, standing between my knees. "Ya spend a lotta time in the library when you were in school?" he asked, kissing along my jaw. "Mmmhmmm," I responded, angling my neck so he had better access. "That was pretty much all I did when I wasn't working - studied like crazy."

His hands slipped under my ass and he pulled me against him, rocking against my core so I could feel that he was already hard. "No study breaks, for stress release?" he asked, unbuttoning the first few buttons of my shirt so he could lick along the tops of my breasts. "No," I said breathlessly, "but if you were around I would have."

"Fuck yes, you would've," he groaned, kissing along my collarbone, and pulling my shirt and bra cups down further so my breasts spilled over the top. He scraped his teeth against my nipple, tugging so the tiniest thread of pain ran alongside the intense pleasure before swirling his tongue soothingly around it and then moving to the other side. Soon, I was arching my back and moaning, soaking wet and desperate for more.

He snapped open my jeans and tugged them down with my panties, the wood of the desk cold against my bare skin. "Daryl" I murmured, as his hands slipped between my legs, "what if someone comes in?" He pushed his fingers into me and out, running them up to circle my clit and I moaned, unable to hold it back. "Then they'll get a show," he whispered in my ear, and I shivered against him, half turned on at the idea and half mortified.

Daryl chucked at the look on my face and slid his fingers in me again. "Nobody was down this direction" he reassured me. "Though I think yer wetter now that yer thinkin' about someone watchin'." I blushed and shook my head, but he was pushing me back to lie on the desk, and tugging off my boots so he could pull off my jeans and spread my legs apart.

I lay there, somewhat self consciously, shirt half unbuttoned with my breasts spilling out, bare from the waist down, flushed and aroused, and he stepped back to look at me in the dim lamplight. "Jesus you're beautiful" he breathed, eyes dark with want. My feet rested on the edge of the table, knees bent, and he pushed my legs further apart, opening me up to him, and crouched down to lick the moisture from my center. I could see the glass doors of the library, and the dark hallway beyond them, and I felt both utterly exposed and completely safe.

My back arched thrusting my hard nipples, still wet from his earlier attention, into the cold air as he swirled his tongue around my clit and I couldn't help the whimpers that echoed in the empty room. He pulled his mouth away after a few minutes and kissed me so I could taste myself, then pulled me down from the table and turned me around, bending me over and unbuckling his belt. I pushed my hips back toward him, silently begging, and he slid into me from behind, filling me up tightly.

"Fuck," he grunted, biting down gently on my shoulder. "Jesus, I'm not gonna last this way." He was already thrusting roughly and slipped his hand down to circle my clit with his fingers. I felt the familiar tightening in my core and arched my neck back so I could kiss him. "Good," I said desperately, "I'm so close, Daryl." He grabbed my hips, speeding up his pace and fucking me hard, and I climaxed quickly, crying out despite my attempts to keep quiet. Daryl came shortly afterward, muffling his shout against my shoulder, and then stepped back, pressing a hand to my lower back so I stayed where I was.

"Look at me," he said gruffly, and I turned my head to look over my shoulder. "Yeah, I'll remember that" he whispered. "You bent over a desk, bare ass in the air, lookin' well fucked with my cum runnin' down yer legs." I bit my lip, already aroused again. I hadn't realized how much dirty talk excited me until Daryl, but things I'd normally find incredibly demeaning sounded sexy when he said them to me in that almost reverent tone.

He shook his head at my look, with a small smile. "Much as I'd like to stay here an make you scream again, we gotta get to dinner or someone'll come lookin' fer us." He pulled a clean rag from his back pocket and ran it up my legs gently, before pulling on my pants and tying my boots. He always cleaned me up afterward, no matter how rough and dirty it had been, taking care of me and earning my trust again and again, and I almost told him I loved him right there. I'd stopped myself several times already over the past few weeks, worried it would freak him out or make him feel like he had to say it too, so I held back.

We walked to the dining hall and joined the crowd lining up for stew. Daryl kept his hand resting on my thigh while we ate, and I laced my fingers through his. I was eager to be done with dinner and head to our cell to resume our previous activities, but a commotion by the doors pulled my attention away from Daryl. A few of the older kids had finished their dinner early and gone out to milk the goats but had come running back in, talking over each other excitedly.

Rick strode over to them and asked for the oldest to explain what was wrong. "A helicopter!" he gasped. "We saw a helicopter! It flew right over us!" Rick glanced at Daryl briefly, and Daryl shook his head slightly. Rick thought he'd seen a helicopter the day he met our group in Atlanta, but no one had seen anything since then. One of the Woodbury folks had confirmed that there was still a military presence at the border, as of a few months ago, but it had appeared the rest of the world was content to leave Georgia locked up while they fought their own battles.

The din picked up as folks began speculating about what it could mean. The kids said the helicopter had flown over us heading north, and they hadn't seen it come down anywhere before it got too far away to see. Eventually, Rick got everyone's attention and asked us to calm down. "We don't know what this means, and there's no point in speculating. Let's just continue on with what we're doing, and keep an eye out for anything else unusual."

Daryl wanted to talk to Rick about the latest development, but I didn't want to get too drawn into speculation about some kind of rescue. I'd learned to focus on what we had now, rather than dwelling on things that might never happen, and it kept me from being constantly sad about what I was missing back home, or whether they were even still there. I took my time getting washed up and tidying the room before climbing into bed.

I was getting sleepy by the time Daryl returned, and he was quiet as he got into bed. I curled into him and shivered a little at the cold he'd let in when he pulled back the blankets. "All good?" I asked drowsily, and he nodded, wrapping an arm around me. "Yah. Nothin' to worry about" he murmured, and I put my head on his chest and fell asleep.