Chapter 4

He had stayed in that chair because he did not want me afraid.

I looked at his empty wrists, then at the wrecked hall, then at the way he was still waiting to see if I would run.

"Okay," I said, and I meant it even though my hands were shaking. "No more ropes. You saved my life, and I am not tying up the person who did that."

The muzzle stayed on that night.他主动要求带着，以免我害怕。

By morning I had locked the shutters, cleaned the hall, and started teaching him letters with a children's reader from the staff lounge.

He learned fast, faster than the speech, his cold finger tracing A and B and the shape of my name.

What he wanted most, I did not expect.

Whenever the lesson drifted, he pointed at old magazine pages, the ones with couples holding hands, kissing, rings held between two fingers.

"This," he said. "Want know this."

Human courtship.

So I explained it like a lecture.

People start with hands, I said, and then they kiss, and if they mean to stay they give a ring.

He listened without blinking.

Then he looked at my mouth and said, "Show me."

I should have said no.

But for some reason, I hesitated, then unfastened the steel muzzle with my own hands as if possessed.

His mouth was right there, human and unmarked, colder than it had any right to be.

I leaned in and pressed my mouth to his.

The first contact was clumsy, more press than kiss.

Then he learned the angle from me and kissed back with a focus that made my thoughts slide out of order.

I kept repeating that this was courtship research.

My body did not care about the protocol.

I was wet before the kiss broke, and I hated how easy that had been.

His hand found the waist of my pants, then the heat between my legs, and he watched my face the whole time he touched me.

I came apart on his fingers with my forehead against his cold cheek.

He did not stop there.

He went to his knees on the lab floor and put his mouth on me.

The first pass of his tongue was ice, and the shock of that cold tore a sound out of my throat.

I gasped and pushed at his head.

He did not need to do this.

This was past data and into something I had no protocol for.

He lifted his mouth just enough to speak.

"You helped me. I want you happy too."

He went back down, and the cold stubborn rhythm of it pushed me over again until my knees gave and he had to hold my hips.

For a second I thought he would take more.

He was hard against his own pants, and when I reached for him he caught my wrist and shook his head.

"No," he said, and it looked like it cost him everything.

I did not understand him then.

I was still shaking when he lifted my left hand and slid something onto my finger.

It was a ring, too cold and too sure of itself.

I did not know where he had gotten it.

The thought that something was wrong flickered and died under my own exhaustion.

A human and a zombie had no future.

He was only imitating. He did not understand real love.

The pickup team was coming, and when they arrived this would end.