Chapter 353: Ridiculously Possessive
Lingyun smiled brightly. "Your wish is my command."
I stared at him, black blood still dripping from my sleeves onto the scorched grass. "That’s not what I—"
"I’ll start the water," he continued, interrupting me. He was already moving toward the house, his manic golden retriever energy radiating off him. I could have sworn a tail appeared behind him and started wagging frantically. "I’ll make sure that it is hot enough to boil the zombie stink off but not hot enough to cook our pretty princess alive."
"I will stab you," I told him flatly, but my feet were already following him because standing here covered in gore was rapidly losing its appeal.
The happy little murder buzz was starting to fade, leaving me with nothing but sore muscles, zombie blood in places zombie blood had no right to be, and the memory of an entire day spent watching parasites threaten my house before I had to burn living people because they were too infected to stay living for long.
Yuche fell into step beside me and placed his hand at the small of my back. I glanced at it, then at him. He looked entirely too pleased for a man whose fingers were still attached. "Lingyun will flood the bathroom if left unsupervised."
"I resent that accusation," Lingyun called back without turning around. "I only flooded it twice."
"Three times," Yuche corrected, his thumb rubbing a small circle against my spine through the blood-stiffened fabric. "You’re forgetting the incident with the decorative fountain outside the old base."
I would have asked about the decorative fountain, because that sounded like a story involving property damage and Lingyun being proud of himself, but Chenghai was already waiting inside the entrance with towels under one arm and a black garbage bag in his other hand.
Of course he was.
The man had apparently seen me covered in zombie blood and decided the real emergency was my flooring.
He looked me over once, his gaze stopping on the black blood dripping from my sleeves, the chunks stuck to my pants, and whatever horrible thing had dried against the side of my hair. His expression didn’t change, but somehow he still managed to judge me.
"Clothes go in the bag before you get anywhere near the sitting room," he said.
I stared at him. "Are you banning me from walking through my own house?"
"Yes."
I opened my mouth, then looked down at myself.
Unfortunately, the traitor had a point.
The black blood had soaked through in places, my skin felt tight beneath it, and there were bits of zombie caught in the folds of my clothes that I had no intention of identifying. Some mysteries deserved to die unexplored.
"I built a murder wall less than five minutes ago," I muttered, taking the bag from him. "A little respect would be nice."
Chenghai handed the towels to Yuche like he had already decided which one of them was least likely to turn this into a public indecency charge. "I respect you. I also respect clean floors."
Lingyun leaned closer, his eyes dropping to the garbage bag with far too much interest. "So we’re stripping here?"
"No," Chenghai answered before I could.
Lingyun looked wounded. "You didn’t even let her decide."
"She would stab you."
"I like when she considers it."
Yuche’s hand settled at the small of my back and stayed there when I didn’t bother removing it. "Upstairs," he said, steering me toward the staircase before Lingyun could find a way to make Chenghai’s hallway suggestion worse. "Before you drip on anything else and give him a reason to start mopping around your feet."
"I hate all of you," I said, but I went because arguing meant standing still, and standing still meant realizing exactly how much zombie blood was drying on my skin.
The idea of hot water was becoming dangerously appealing.
By the time we reached my bathroom, I could feel the blood stiffening in my hair and pulling at my scalp. My sleeves clung to my arms. My shirt stuck to my back. Every step made something cold and disgusting shift against my skin, which was just one more reason zombies deserved to be fed to the lawn.
Lingyun reached the tub first, because apparently the promise of bath-related crimes gave him speed. He leaned over the faucet, then held one hand above the water as steam began to rise.
Of course he looked pleased with himself.
His fire ability made him better than any water heater, and unfortunately, he knew it.
"Perfect temperature," he announced, testing it with his other hand. "Hot enough to melt the day off, not hot enough to add ’boiled alive’ to your list of apocalypse problems."
"How considerate." I started peeling off my jacket, grimacing as the fabric stuck to my arms. Black blood had seeped through to my skin, leaving dark stains that looked like bruises.
Yuche set the towels down and turned to me, his dark eyes tracking over every visible inch of skin with the kind of focus that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with inventory. "Any burns from the fire?"
"No."
"Scratches from the zombies?"
"They didn’t get close enough." I dropped the jacket on the floor and started on my shirt, too tired to care that both of them were watching. "I’m not made of glass."
"No," Yuche agreed, catching my wrist before I could lose the fight against a blood-slick button and rip the whole shirt open out of spite. "You’re not glass. You’re violence, bad decisions, and territorial rage stuffed into a body that somehow keeps surviving things it shouldn’t."
"That sounded almost flattering."
"I wasn’t finished." His thumb slid over my wrist, pressing lightly against my pulse while his other hand worked the button free with annoying patience. "You’re also covered in zombie blood, and I’m checking every inch of you before you decide that open wounds are private information."
I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where he could put that concern.
Then his fingers freed the button without pulling the fabric against my skin, and the insult stalled.
Annoying.
He wasn’t fussing. He wasn’t hovering. He was just handling the problem in front of him, which unfortunately happened to be me, my shirt, and whatever corpse soup had dried between the two.
"Fine," I muttered. "But if you find anything, don’t look smug about it."