AN…I am on my way to a doctor's appointment so, against my better judgement, I am going to post this now and fix it when I get home. It hasn't had a third read through, so if you pick anything up, please let me know. I promise to reply to reviews when I get back. Hope you all enjoy this and an ENORMOUS thank you to all of you, especially the new faces I've never seen with my other fics, for reviewing and following and faving. You make it all worthwhile and so much more fun than just writing for myself!
Chapter Four
They ran. They ran so fast that Carol's lungs hurt and her muscles screamed at her to stop. Daryl never let go of her hand, half dragging her when her pace slowed, and she kept quiet. Kept silent despite the gasps for air she couldn't control, refusing to cry out when branches whipped her face, when she slid precariously on the leaves of the forest floor and she felt the muscles in her ankle loosen. His grip was tight, non-negotiable and Carol at least was confident that he wasn't going to let go. No matter how this ended, he was going to be by her side. That made her heart ache. She didn't have time to think, only react, so even though the scenery flew past way too fast, she stumbled as swiftly after him as her body would allow.
The first walkers that they encountered they tore past, Daryl rasping a warning over his shoulder. "Don't kill 'em. Downed walkers'll lead the bastards right to us." The walkers stumbled after them, but Daryl had pulled her away from them and onward before they even got close.
Her lungs were burning, her arms and face raw and bloody when Daryl veered sharply to the right, dropped to his thigh without warning and slid down an incline, his arms braced to catch her as she fell after him. He rolled and dug his heels into the earth to stop their wild tumble, breathing heavily as he quickly surveyed the scene. A stump sprouting out of the earth beside a slab of slate hid a small alcove in the dirt and without speaking, Daryl shoved her beneath it, taking the bags and his crossbow and covering them the best he could with sticks and leaves before doing what he could to eradicate the obvious signs of their fall. He lifted a few downed, rotten tree branches and dragged them behind him, swishing the leafy section lightly to make the floor look as untouched by human boots as possible. Carol watched him in awe, momentarily forgetting how terrified she was, how horrified that her moment of weakness at the prison had led them to this. Led them to their likely deaths. Instead she saw a man who knew what to do, how to survive against such deadly odds and she was convinced he hadn't learnt it from some survivalist channel. He was confident, self-assured, lethal when he was forced to be and she loved him so deeply it almost wounded her. They were in this mess because of her, because of a panic attack over Ed. God, he should kill her, not protect her.
The crashing sounds of their pursuers were not too far away now and Daryl dived into the opening where Carol kneeled, waiting for him. It was a squeeze and the only way he could work it was to wiggle in underneath her and hold her braced against his chest. He covered the opening with the branches and Carol tried to block out the sounds outside and concentrate instead on his obvious struggle to control his breathing as he pressed her face against his heart. The heart that was thumping almost out of his chest.
Their enemy drew closer and Daryl seized her hand, seemingly absorbing Carol's quivering body into his own as he squeezed her tight. He'd get them out of this…somehow. She had a confidence in him that he'd never had in himself, a belief in his skills and his intelligence that he'd strived to hide from them with an unwillingness to ever step forward, to follow rather than lead, even after spending a year nearly living beneath each other's skin. It was hard to hide something like this, and mostly the group knew but allowed him to keep thinking he had them fooled. It probably wasn't a fair joke that the rest of them shared—he'd act crazy if he suspected that they knew exactly who and what he was—but it was one that had certainly brought him closer to them all in a shorter space of time than he'd have allowed if he'd stuck to being himself.
She felt sick.
Trying not to suck hysterical, ragged breaths into her aching lungs, Carol rode out the tight cramps and the heaving of her stomach. She wasn't used to this kind of activity on an empty belly—it had been a while since they'd been on the run and unable to put a sustaining breakfast into their stomachs before they'd properly started the day. God, they should be still at the prison, she should be preparing breakfast for the group and trying not to feel frantic at how much food was dwindling away since their newest Woodbury members had claimed a place within the prison walls.
She needed to think about something else, not the feet that were thundering above them, slowing, kicking around the foliage like they were looking for tracks. Like they knew how to find their tracks. Daryl put more pressure into his hold and her stomach squeezed spasmodically. The last thing she wanted to do right now was puke all over him, and so Carol willed her mind to divert its focus away from being sick to something else, something that didn't terrify the life out of her. Almost instantly she registered exactly where she was, her body fully pliant against Daryl's for the first time and, with a will of its own, her body wiggled. His hand clamped down hard on her hip and her stomach experienced another sensation, completely unrelated to the first. Butterflies and heat, and the distinct jabbing of an unfamiliar object. Unfamiliar…but contemplated. A finger slowly but insistently tapped against her chin and she looked up at him, careful to not jar anything or cause any noise.
His grip on her hip squeezed tight and Carol fought valiantly to keep her eyes on his instead of letting them fall shut. She wanted to move, to shuffle upwards so the hard part of him making itself known against the tender flesh of her abdomen could slot into a better spot, but the urgent flare of something in his eyes stopped everything, including her breath. His lips moved and she shifted focus.
"Don't. Move," he mouthed and the physical predicament they were in with each other fell from her mind as fear over the very real danger suspended above their heads kicked in. The finger that had tapped against her chin became a hand cupping her jaw as he encouraged her head back against his chest, and together, they waited.
"Shit," they heard from above and Carol's heart rate picked up triple time. "Can you hear anything? Which way you think they went?"
"They can't be too far ahead of us," said a voice and even though she'd never met him, never even laid eyes on him, Carol knew immediately this was the fearsome Governor. The man who wasn't a man, but pure evil incarnate for how he wanted to flush them out and kill them like diseased rats.
"We got no way of tracking them, though. They could be anywhere."
"Not anywhere," Phillip refuted calmly, and in her mind's eye Carol could picture him standing above them, his one eye scanning the woods and trying to think like a Dixon. She almost scoffed out loud. As if he ever could. This man might think himself a genius in warfare, in survival, but he had nothing on Daryl. And in this element, nothing on Merle, either.
"If we had Merle here we'd find them," someone joked, and Carol almost sobbed aloud at how Daryl's body tensed at the remorseless mention of his brother.
"Yes," drawled Phillip, a smile more than evident in his tone. "Merle definitely had his uses. I miss him."
Daryl's grip on her hip became excruciating and Carol inched her own hand over to cover his, trying to pry his fingers loose and take the pressure away, not liking so much the reality of the bruise that would probably be left there for later, but understanding it anyway. She needed to distract him before his temper broke beyond his bounds of control, and so she did exactly what he told her not to do; she moved. In fact, she wriggled, heat blasting through her system fast and furious as his erection hardened into her stomach and jabbed away all her earlier concerns about being sick. It was so thoroughly inappropriate but God, did it feel so good.
There was a sudden stillness to Daryl that Carol recognised as shock, but she'd achieved what she'd wanted—to distract him from the evil words uttered above them, words designed to draw a vengeance-bound brother out so that they could probably put him down in the same way they had Merle. Carol shuddered, wondering if the plan might be to leave Daryl to turn, and take her out like Andrea had been, locked in a room with a dead friend. Daryl took her shudder to mean something else, she guessed, when his hand slid away from her hip entirely, finding no resistance as it moved up inside her shirt and he traced a sensual line up the length of her spine. His fingers settled over her bra clasp and he applied a gentle pressure, pushing her chest into his as he deliberately bucked his hips.
Carol was shaking with the desire to move, to forget where she was and let sensation take her over. This was the most he'd ever given her, the first clue she had that he might feel something for her that matched her own emotions. His timing was deplorable.
"So, what do we do? Do we go back?"
"No!" The denial was spoken so harshly, effused with such hatred that Carol pushed herself up to catch Daryl's eyes, both of them sharing a fearful look. "We will search these woods until that redneck is found, and when we do find him, he's going to suffer the same way as his turn coat of a brother."
"And what about the woman who was with him?"
There was a pause, but Carol wasn't listening anymore. Her heart was pounding with desperate fear, filling with so much blind hatred she could taste it on her tongue. Anyone who threatened Daryl had just made her shit list. Daryl's finger settled against her lips, a subtle warning to not make a sound, but it moved to wipe away her tears as they flowed down her cheeks, her vision of him shimmering as she silently cried. She was going to make these sons of bitches pay—for killing Merle, for killing Andrea, and for making the seriously vital mistake of threatening the life of the one man she'd die for.
"In this world it's kill or be killed, and any woman stupid enough to hang out with a Dixon deserves to be killed by one. She can watch him die and then he can do the job for us."
The silence above them was loaded with uncertainty and Carol wondered if maybe this threat didn't exactly settle easily with the other two men accompanying the Governor.
"Is there a problem with my decision, gentleman?" His tone was icy now, measured and Carol's tears dried up instantly, feeling the shift in the air as if it was descending into a whole new level of terror. She'd known it all along that this man was a psychopath, but now she felt it deep in her marrow.
"No. No, of course not. Just thought you might consider taking her with us. It's been a while, you know…"
"Would you really want to sully yourselves with a woman who obviously thinks nothing of sharing her bed with the likes of Merle and his brother?" He paused, his voice cocky and dripping in revulsion. "I didn't think so." They didn't answer out loud, so Carol imagined their heads shaking the denial and she screwed her face up in distaste. She looked at him in time to see Daryl's eyes narrowed at her and straight away worried he thought she was disgusted at the implication she'd lower herself to being a Dixon bed warmer when what she was really turned off by were the subservient idiots making this Governor believe he was more than he was. Being careful to not move too fast, carefully trying to not jostle their surrounds enough to make any noise, Carol lifted her hand to Daryl's face. She stroked his lips with her thumb and smiled, hoping he got her message loud and clear.
"Let's move on," said their leader, now that his power had been re-established. "No point giving them a bigger lead than we already have."
Heavy footsteps crunched down on the carpet of leaves above them, their pace moving off at a jog. Daryl held her still, shaking his head in warning that she was still not to move and she understood easily that one of them might have remained behind. Daryl was being careful, watching out for them, keeping them safe. It just made her love him more.
He was going to get them out of this, one way or another. He hadn't the first clue how he'd do it, but he wasn't going to let those fuckers do shit to her, not after what he'd seen them do to Merle. He didn't much care about himself, about the threats to gut him and leave him a walker like they'd done to his brother, but if any of the fuckers laid one filthy finger on her, he'd tear off their skin with his bare hands.
Insecurity almost crushed him when they started talking about her, about wanting to take her with them so they could use her up and throw her away. He hadn't cared what they'd implied about her being with him, had even felt a little buzz of pleasure that someone outside of himself would acknowledge the possibility she'd share his bed, but then he'd caught her expression and it was one infused with repugnance. He'd felt shame and self-disgust in an instant, cursing his wayward dick as it responded to her soft body learning the contours of his, knowing that she was too good for him and not in a million years would ever consider being with him like that. And then it had all changed. Her eyes had gone soft, shimmering brightly with that glimmer of affection she always shared when she watched him, and her thumb had caressed his bottom lip. His dick throbbed uncomfortably with renewed confidence and attraction for her, and it hadn't helped that when he looked down between them he could see the distinct curves of her breasts. They looked mouth-wateringly delicious.
He couldn't believe it had taken something like this, being on the run for their lives, to be the most intimate he'd ever been with a woman. It was nothing to fuck some faceless bitch at the end of a night of excessive drinking, but it was another to stare into a set of gorgeous eyes the colour of the sky while his dick said what he'd so far failed to do all year. He was a little disappointed he hadn't got to kiss her first, but the cat was out of the bag now. No point getting all pissy about it. No point being all shy. If she hadn't felt the same, if she'd not been on the same page as him, she'd never have done that little wiggle to keep him excited. At least, he didn't think she would have. Unless…was she deliberately trying to turn him on to distract him so he didn't haul his ass out of their hidey hole so he could drive his knife into that asshole's throat? The other two would have killed him before he'd probably even reached the Governor, so maybe he couldn't blame her if that had been her plan all along, but he sure hoped it weren't.
He'd distinctly heard three sets of footsteps moving away from the area and was reasonably confident the threat was gone for the moment, but Carol didn't. It was smarter to stay put for a while anyway, just to make sure the bastards didn't change their minds and double back.
It wasn't any trouble having her body stretched out above his, her every curve melting into him. She settled back over him, her cheek pressed to his chest and through the pressure his body reverberated with his quickened heartbeats. Their bodies trapped heat between them and Daryl decided he was in no hurry to move. He didn't know how far into the woods the Governor would venture, whether he'd go only so far and give up. He didn't know whether they should head back to the car and get back to the prison, or if they'd expect that and circle back to lay in wait for them to show. Maybe they should just lie up here all night. He didn't think he'd suffer too much having Carol within arm's reach—until he heard her stomach gurgle and he was reminded they hadn't eaten breakfast before they'd had to run. He wanted to wait it out for another half hour at least before he tried to retrieve his pack. For now, without an audience up above, he figured it was time to change positions. Carol wasn't heavy by any stretch of the imagination, but their position was getting to be a bit uncomfortable.
Before he could move a muscle—even the one that had already made its presence known— Carol rose above him, straddling him so that he pressed against the heat between her thighs. It wasn't the time, it wasn't the place, but circumstance was forcing them to stop and take stock. He stilled, letting his palms brush gently up her thighs, mesmerised as she leaned down over him, her hands braced against his chest. Her breath, hot and moist puffed against his neck and then he felt her lips brush against his jaw. It was a slice of Heaven he'd never expected to have. It was dangerous to be distracted, but one more delay on having the one thing he was desperate to have could well kill him, he decided, so with bravery emboldening his every move, Daryl tangled his fingers in her hair and lifted her head away from his throat, just a little, just enough to finally claim her with a kiss.