Nothing Left to Burn [DISCONTINUED]

Chapter 17 - Things Changed

Content warning: Mention of rape; other brief sexual content.

Aven stirred out of a peaceful sleep and didn't bother to open her eyes, content to stay half-conscious in the orangey-black abyss behind her closed eyelids with the sun streaming in from the window to try to wake her. She felt almost too warm, but it was nice. From her hips down, her nude body was wrapped in black satin sheets that absorbed heat from the sunlight. From her waist up she was wrapped in a pair of big, strong arms. One was draped over her, the hand gently cupping her breast. The other arm encircled her waist from underneath, the hand gripping her side firmly as though keeping her in place so she couldn't get away, not that she'd want to.

She could almost feel the muscular ridges against her bare skin, and the hard muscles of his torso against her back (not to mention the hardest muscle of all pressing against the back of her thigh). The bed still smelled like sex from the night before, but Aven didn't care. She'd never, ever woken up feeling this good until she met this man. His arms squeezed tighter around her and soft lips started trailing their way over her shoulder and up her neck, and she sighed contentedly, tilting her head to give him better access.

"Isn't this so much better than waking up on your own out there?" Negan purred when his mouth reached her ear. He tugged on her earlobe softly with his teeth before trailing his lips back down the way they came and nuzzling his face in the crook of her neck. She giggled when his beard tickled her and she tried to pull away but he held her tighter, chuckling against her skin as she squirmed in his arms and managed to turn and face him. He grinned down at her and placed a lingering kiss on her forehead before kissing his way down her face.

"I guess this is okay," she said, rolling her eyes but unable to stop smiling. "A few weeks ago I was sleeping on the ground so this is definitely an upgrade."

"You deserve so much better than to sleep in the god damn dirt." He placed a soft kiss on her mouth but immediately teased her lips open with his own, tangling his tongue lazily with hers.

"Instead I deserve to wake up with your dick poking through my legs," she sneered, pulling back a little to look up at him as he grinded his hips against her.

"Hey, obviously my dick has somewhere important to be and he ain't waistin' time." Aven bit her lip and slowly dragged her leg up his, hiking it around his waist and gasping as his growing erection brushed her clit.

"Well, who am I to get in the way of his schedule?" she breathed, looking up at him with fire in her eyes and her cheeks pink from arousal.

Aven slipped out of her dream and into reality, which was a lot less comfortable and a lot less exciting. She wasn't in a king-size bed with Negan's arms around her, but she was still much too warm. She was still sick with a little bit of a fever, and her head somehow simultaneously felt like a balloon and a brick. However, as she sat up and stretched with a groan, she could tell she was feeling a lot better than she had been in the previous days. She blushed to herself as the details of her dream lingered in her mind, and she couldn't help but think that it was strangely realistic. After mulling over the details a few times, she pulled her notebook out from under the bed to jot down the dream just in case it was a real memory. She had no way of being sure; at this point, she was writing down every little thing that might be a piece of her history.

Since reuniting with Negan, those dreams and moments of recollection were coming more often, whether it was a short moment of deja vu or an instance where she completely remembered something. The pages of her notebook were quickly filling with scribblings about small snippets of time that she detailed to the best of her ability, some memories too hazy to articulate and others too scary. There were a few distinct memories of intimate moments with Negan that she noted cryptically on the pages but couldn't bring herself to really think about any further.