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Chapter 38

You have awokenmy heart.

There it is, out in the open, what I have desperately been running from.

A shiver runs through me as I take in Pestilence’s form. He’s not the only one who’s been affected by the other’s presence.

I begin to lean towards him, ready to do all sorts of stupid and ill-advised things because I’m just so tired of fighting this.

Before I get the chance, the horseman reaches out and runs a hand up and down my arm. “You’re cold,” he says. “Forgive me, Sara, the elements do not affect me the same way.” He rises to his feet, then reaches out for me.

Grabbing my beer, I let him help me up and follow him inside, my body tightly wound in anticipation. It doesn’t dissipate—not when Pestilence leaves my side to start a fire, not when I move the candles and oil lamps into the living room. The only thing that seems to have any effect on my giddy nerves is my beer … and I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s helping the situation either.

Not that it stops me from grabbing another two from the icebox—one for me, one for Pestilence.

By the time I return to the living room, the fire is just blooming.

I pass the horseman one of the drinks, feeling a twinge of guilt for giving him a taste for the stuff. But then my eyes meet his and my nerves rise and I praise God in all His wrathful glory that alcohol exists.

Taking a long swallow, I sit down next to the fire. Pestilence lounges across from me, leaning his weight on one of his forearms, his new beer sitting untouched next to him. His gaze moves from the fire to me, flames dancing in his eyes.

“Do you ever wish things were different?” I ask. “That you and I weren’t supposed to be mortal enemies?”

“What good does wishing do, Sara?” he says.

I want to tell him that wishing makes all the difference, but it sounds too cheesy, like something people used to say before the Four Horsemen landed, back when the world made sense. Wishing doesn’t fill your belly, or stop your house from burning down. It doesn’t make your car drive, or save you from the plague.

“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I just want to stop feeling this way.” I hate this guilt that’s eating me up. “When I used to look at you, I’d see a monster,” a beautiful monster, but a monster nonetheless, “but I don’t anymore.”

“Whatdoyou see when you look at me?”

Rather than answering him, I lean forward and brush my lips softly against his. He seems content with that, his hand coming up to cup my cheek.

Gently, I push his shoulder back until he falls against the floor. He pulls me down with him, our bodies pressed together.

My mouth finds his once more, and suddenly, the fire isn’t simply at my back. It’s beneath me, in me, searing through my veins.

I pause to run a finger down the horseman’s face. He really is problematically beautiful, with his high cheekbones, sharp jaw, and his guileless eyes.

“Right now,” I say, finally ready to answer his question, “I see a man.”

A man to kiss, to touch, to lose myself in.

“I am ageless, Sara.”

If that’s supposed to make any sort of sense, then it’s lost on me. Maybe that’s his way of protesting my answer. Whatever.

I return to his lips and fall into the kiss. He might be ageless, he might be a force of nature rather than a human, but in the end, I find I don’t really care. Pestilence is Pestilence, and that’s all that really matters to me right now.

The hard planes of his body fit just right against mine, and his touch feels like it was made for me. I reach for the straps of his armor, hopelessly confused about how to remove it. His hand covers mine, and for a split-second, my stomach plummets.

He’s going to stop me.

Instead, Pestilence moves my hand and unfastens his metal breastplate himself. He makes quick work of the rest of the armor, until it all litters the floor around us.

The problem with armor, I’ve now come to realize, is that even after all the fanfare of getting it off, there’sstillhis clothes to deal with.

Then again, the longer it takes to undress him, the greater the anticipation …