Chapter 2

I yanked my hand back from him, and heat flooded my face so fast my eyes stung.

Ash stared at me over the steel muzzle, while the bulge in his pants kept swelling.

I turned around and ran.

The lab door slammed behind me, and I locked myself in the storage room with both hands pressed to my burning cheeks.

A zombie had gotten hard under my hand, and my own body had answered with a heat I did not want to explain.

Two hours later, I finally opened the laboratory door again.

But Ash was still hard. His gray eyes were fixed on me, and a low growl rumbled in his throat.

I almost wanted to turn and run right then, but if I ignored it, I might lose the only sample I had ever caught.

I could not untie his hands.

He was still a zombie.

That left me with one option that made my ears burn.

I had no choice but to get him off by hand.

"This is medical," I told him, kneeling between his bound knees.

His gray eyes dropped to my hands as I opened his pants.

He sprang free, thick and flushed and painfully hard, and the cold of his skin made me suck in a breath I was not ready for.

I wrapped my hand around him and started to move.

I had never done this for anyone, and it showed in the first clumsy stroke, too tight and then too loose.

My wrist was already complaining before I found a rhythm that changed the pitch of his growl.

His hips jerked against the ropes, and the chair legs scraped the floor, but he still did not try to break free.

I kept going until my forearm ached and my palm felt raw, and he was still unfinished.

Heat had gathered between my own legs without permission, and I hated that I noticed it.

I had not touched myself in months.

He has no mind, I told myself, staring at the bound man in front of me.

He cannot judge you, and in practical terms he is no different from a toy.

I repeated it until I almost believed it.

Then I stood up, pushed my pants down, and climbed onto his lap.

I sank down against him with the hard cold length of him trapped between us, and I started to move.

The first grind dragged a sound out of both of us.

He was cold and I was burning.

Every slide pressed him against the place that had been aching since I ran from this room.

I rocked until the chair scraped the floor.

His growl broke into something raw behind the muzzle.

I felt him jerk and then spill, hot against my stomach and the front of my only shirt.

I froze on his lap, then climbed off him and looked down.

This was my only set of clothes.

"You have got to be kidding me," I muttered, staring at the stain. "I have one shirt, Ash. You couldn't have warned me before you—"

The word that cut me off was low, rough, and unmistakably human.

"Sorry."

I froze, my mouth falling open in shock.

Heat exploded across my face.

Ash—this zombie... how could he speak?!