Skin Contact

Chapter 6: Naked

It isn’t clear who leaned forward first—exactly who initiated the final step of their first real night together—but soon the two are kissing. Daryl pushes her further onto the bed, following the line of her body until Beth’s lying flat on her back and he’s pressing down on top of her. Limbs entangled, hands gripping hair or shoulders or hips, they’re both drowning in the feel of each other. Daryl can only revel in the feel of his bare chest pressed to Beth’s, never having experienced the exquisite feel of skin-on-skin contact.

And then Beth’s reaching for his belt, and Daryl dips his mouth to her breasts in encouragement. She fumbles with the buckle before working it open, sliding her small, soft hand inside with a skill she had long since mastered. Daryl gasps helplessly against her skin, because when had he never been at Beth Greene’s complete and utter mercy? Soon he can’t possibly do anything but groan deep in the back of his throat as Beth drives him damn near insane with pleasure. In some sick form of torture, she rolls him over so she’s sitting astride him, hair cascading over a shoulder. She looks like some sort of moon goddess, naked and illuminated in soft candlelight, wild with lust.

Beth leans down to kiss him again, and Daryl is quick to try and regain control of the situation. His hands run up and down the smooth expanse of her back, urging her hips to roll against him. Beth grins cruelly against his lips. “Not yet, Dixon.” She teases. They kiss until their lips are bruised. They kiss until Daryl is sure he has spent more time with Beth in this one night than he had with every other woman combined. They kiss until they are lost in one another, until they are nothing but the wet, warm feel of mouth.

“Daryl?” Beth surfaces for a moment, still so close she shares the same air as him. She traces a line under his eye, smoothing the skin over the point of his cheekbone, watching as Daryl comes down from his lust-drunk high, his hair mused. His pupils are blown and his lips are once again red and kiss-swollen. Beth’s draped over him, one arm hooked under his arm as to grasp purchase at his back.

“Hmm?” He hums low in his throat, rolling her over so Beth is beneath him. Nestled between her thighs, her legs instinctively wrap around Daryl’s waist, pulling him close to her—

—Much to fuckin’ close.

His mouth—presently at the curve of her delicate nose—jerks up at the sudden contact.

“Daryl,” she says again, “I was going to ask if you have a condom.”

“Uh . . .” The younger Dixon brother hadn’t seen a condom in two years. How was he supposed to live another two now that he would be sleeping in a locked room with his nubile girlfriend and not be able to properly love her? In constant pain, that’s how.

“Wait, just give me a sec.” Beth kisses him swiftly on the lips before slipping from the bed. Daryl almost cries out at the absence of warmth and comfort she left in her wake. He watches Beth step into her ruined nightdress, smiling coyly at him as tries to rectify the damage he’d done to the front. Daryl stretches out on the bed, arm curled under the pillow, heat and desire coursing through him like liquid fire. Beth can’t help but close the space—there was too much of it, in Daryl’s opinion—between them and kiss his sweat-slick forehead in farewell. He reaches for her like a lost child wandering the dark alone, and she grips his hand for the briefest moment, squeezing.