“The head,” Jay repeats.

“I’m trying, okay?” I jab forward and manage to spear the thing’s skull. The haptic feedback provides the illusion of resistance, and a sickening squelch blasts through my headset as the bar sinks home.

“Pull the weapon out. Like this.” A bodiless hand touches my arm. I look down, but all I see is the scarred ground of the post-apocalyptic world.

Jay guides my motions, helping me wrench my crowbar free of the dead zombie’s skull. The corpse topples aside.

The press of Jay’s hand disappears from my arm. There’s nothing in front of me but the empty street—yet I can sense him, very close. “Where are you?”

“Here.” His voice is faint through my headgear.

I reach forward, and where the game shows empty air, there’s a solid something—fabric shifting over a firm chest.

“This so weirdly cool. It’s like you’re invisible. Touch me again.” When Jay inhales sharply, I realize how it sounds.

I also realize, with a salacious thrill, that I don’t care.

“Oh, there’s another zombie,” I gasp. “Move or I’ll hit you.” I hope he moved, because I need to swing the crowbar like now or be bitten. The bar arcs, striking the zombie’s temple, and I jerk back as brain matter splatters my visor.

Two steadying hands brace my waist; Jay is behind me again. I move ahead in the game, climbing a ladder, ducking through a window, jumping to a lower floor. The house is cluttered with moldering furniture and bloodstained family photos. I round the corner and come face-to-face with another cluster of zombies. “Oh, crap!”

“There’s a gun on the table in the kitchen,” says Jay.

“Where’s the kitchen?” I squeal, flailing with the crowbar.

“To the right, if I remember correctly—wait—left, not right, sorry.”

I’m slashing violently, but I’m also hyperaware of his hands on my waist. When I move, my rear bumps lightly against the front of his pants, and each time that happens, a delicious tingle races between my legs because I can feel a rigid hardness against my ass.

When I’ve finally obtained the gun and dispatched the remaining zombies, I shift purposely backward so that telltale bulge presses into my bottom.

I haven’t forgotten that I’m frustrated with him, that I need answers. But my pussy doesn’t care about any of that, traitorous little fucker that it is. It’s been so long since I’ve let anyone touch me… I haven’t had the heart to even think about starting over with a stranger, trusting someone with my body and my heart again. But Jay… With all his newness and his unknowns, Jay is already mine.

I shouldn’t play with him until I’m sure about this, shouldn’t let arousal blur my judgment into a rosy haze. But I want him so badly, and I ache. I’m sore, deep inside, right in the crevice of my broken heart. Letting him ease one kind of soreness might help with the other.

I push my lower lip into a pout. “I’m not good at this.”

“You’re doing great.” His voice sounds a little breathless. “You just need to relax.”

“Maybe you should help me out with that.”

His sharp exhale stirs my hair. No plausible deniability now… He knows I can feel him, and he knows what I want.

Jay’s body is fitted to mine, moving with me, the heat of his breath ghosting across my ear now. His hands move lower on my hips, then slide forward across my lower belly, until his long fingers press lightly between my legs. Soft, ticklish quivers race through my clit at the proximity. He’s almost, almost touching the perfect spot, but not quite, and I’m desperate, both in game and in real life.

I’m breathing fast and shallow, and everything’s flashing red. “My health is low.”

“I think there’s a med pack in the next building. Sometimes it shows up in the food truck, though.” His fingertips delve inward, pushing the fabric of my dress between my legs. Then he ripples those fingers, a quick, firm palpation that makes me gasp aloud. Between the game-induced adrenaline pumping through my veins and the waves of lush heat racing over my body, I’m riding a pretty dramatic emotional high in this moment.

Before Jay showed up, it had been weeks since I felt even the tiniest bit of desire for a man. I’d been Tom’s for years—his to grope and squeeze, his to spank or pinch or fuck whenever he liked. He rarely took the time to tantalize me like this. But what Jay is doing—this slow, sensuous progression, the way he caresses my body like it’s a treasure—makes me want to cry and scream for joy at the same time. I had no idea how much my body has been craving this kind of intimate touch.

Feeling his touch without being able to see him is wildly titillating—a new kink unlocked, one I never suspected I’d enjoy, but the slippery state of my underwear is a firm yes on that score. Jay keeps stroking between my legs, his erection hard against my ass, while in game, I clamber through some wreckage into the neighboring building, searching gloomy, foul bathrooms and bedrooms streaked with gore. “No med pack,” I say, just as Jay’s fingers arch, his nails scraping against the thin fabric of my dress, grazing my clit. I bite back a faint scream as thrills race through me, heightened by the sight of four more undead stumbling my way.

“Jay,” I breathe. “This is so creepy and awesome.”

“Speaking of creepy, is there a noncreepy way to be obsessed with someone?” His voice is husky, barely audible through the bellowing of the oncoming zombies. “Because I’m kind of obsessed with you, and I’m trying not to be weird about it.” His nails keep grazing my clit, over and over, but now and then he curls his fingers, cupping my pussy, his palm giving me just the right amount of agonizing, intoxicating pressure.

My heart pulses, hot and bright, and I use the energy to rain dreadful havoc down on the zombies. “You’re trying not to be weird about it, huh?” I manage between blows, while Jay holds me against him, anchors me with the press of his hand. “Look around, Jay. The money, the house, the parties—supposedly all for me? You’ve got to admit, that’s a little much.”

“I’ll admit I bought this house to be close to you,” he murmurs in my ear, while his fingers flex, coaxing another flare of arousal. Oh god, I almost came that time. “I was hoping you’d show up one night, because I was too nervous to come to your house. And you did show up, thank god. But the parties have another purpose, too.”

“What purpose?” Viciously I stab a zombie through the chest and fling it aside; and then my spine arches involuntarily because Jay’s other palm is skimming up, along my rib cage, over my breast. Thankfully I have a moment’s peace between waves of attackers, because I can’t do battle anymore. I can only lean helplessly against Jay’s chest while his fingernail circles over and over the silky material in precisely the right spot, teasing my clit faster, faster… He’s relentless, holding me captive while I gasp and squirm and oh…oh…oh god, oh fuck… An explosion of pleasure crashes through me, bathing my lower body in ripples of heat. My hips jerk forward, and Jay croons his satisfaction against my ear, his hand cupping firmly over my pussy while I struggle to hold back the cries I want to release.

As the orgasm fades, my common sense returns, and along with it the shocked awareness that I just came on Jay’s hand in the VR room. Anyone could have walked by and seen us. Oh god, my panties are drenched. What if the wetness soaked through my dress?

Pushing away from Jay, I tip up the VR visor and straighten my skirt, relieved to find only two tiny spots of dampness.

The game may as well be over. I can’t concentrate anymore. With trembling fingers, I remove the headset and strip off the gloves.

Jay watches me set the equipment back on its station. He’s flushed, his pants bulging with what looks like an impressive erection, but he doesn’t ask for relief. He’s reading my expression, my body language. Tom wouldn’t have respected those signals. He’d have considered my silence an invitation to get rough. He would have shoved me face down on the carpet and taken what he wanted, and I would have pretended to be fine with it, because I loved him.

I gave too many years of my life to that bastard, and I’m going to be damn sure about Jay before I let him in.

My gaze drops to his hand, to the long fingernails that teased me so skillfully. Strange…his nails look much shorter than they felt when he was touching me.

“That was—” I draw a shuddering breath and squeeze my thighs together.

“Not the answer you asked for,” he finishes quietly.

“Enough with the secrets, Jay. Are these parties some kind of networking thing, so you can meet clients and pull them aside and make secret little promises about mysterious insurance policies?”

“Yes, exactly. And the events also serve the needs of my previous clients.”

What the hell does that mean? My hands curl into fists, partly from anger and partly because I’m still shaky from the best orgasm I’ve had in a while. “Jay, I will put that visor back on and hit you with my invisible crowbar if you don’t give me a straight answer.”

“I don’t think you’re ready for the straight answer.” He steps toward me, cups my cheek, and skims his thumb along my lower lip. “I want to tell you everything, believe me. But I need us to reconnect first, to pick up where we left off.”

I scoff and whirl away toward the cubicle’s opening. It’s easier to tell the truth when my back is turned, when I don’t have to watch the hopeful light in his eyes fading to sadness. “There’s no way to rewind time, Jay. You and I are different people than we were eight years ago, and that’s not going to change. We have to be honest with each other and start building again from here and now. We can’t just pretend the last eight years never happened.”

“I guess not.” There’s a fragile ache in his voice. I can feel him standing there behind me, with a careful distance between us now that I stepped away from him, because he heard my wordless no. He won’t touch me again unless I let him, and that simple act of respect means everything to me.

“May I touch you?” he whispers, and I almost laugh, because I knew it—I knew what he was thinking. We’re still connected, he and I.

I don’t know what he wants to do, and I still haven’t gotten the answers I need—but every nerve in my body is whimpering yes, and the soaked underwear between my thighs is a mute and desperate yes, and so I breathe, “Yes.”

His fingertips start at my elbows and drift upward, halting at the dress’s cap sleeves. “You have the loveliest skin.”

“Says the guy who’s trying not to be creepy.”