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He watches me wondrously as I grab the edge of his shirt and slip it over his head.

Glorious man. I could stare at him for hours, trying to memorize every inch of his strange, beautiful skin.

Tentatively he reaches for my jacket, and I help him shrug it off. The two of us make quick work of my layers of clothing until I’m down to just a bra and jeans. I slide the straps off my shoulders, then reach around and unclasp the hooks holding it fast.

Pestilence stares at my bare chest, and a part of me is dying to know what he’s thinking. Reaching out, he tentatively runs his hands over my breasts. Heat floods his expression. He may say he’s not a man, but he’s aroused all the same.

I lean in and press a kiss to his chest, right over one of the angelic markings. “What does this one mean?” I ask, my breath fanning over the foreign word.

He gives me an odd look. “‘Pestilence.’”

His name.

I move my attention down, where another band of golden markings dip beneath his waistline. I’ve caught a glimpse of the entire spread before, but I’ve never had a chance to really look at these lower characters. Even now, they’re hidden from sight.

My hand moves for his pants. Pestilence catches my wrist, his chest rising and falling with obvious want.

I think he knows this is different.Tonightis different. It’s one thing to kiss and admire—to even touch—but it’s another to pursue this.

He stares at me for what feels like an eternity. Then, coming to some decision, he rises to his feet.

I think this is where I get turned down.

Only, it never happens.

He reaches for his boots and pulls them off. Then the horseman’s hands go to his pants. He hesitates for only an instant before he unfastens them. The entire time his eyes are on me.

Pestilence steps out of the last of his clothes, leaving him as gloriously naked as the day he was born … er,created.

It’s physically difficult to look at the perfection of him in the firelight. It makes his skin glint like muted gold and his markings to glow all the brighter.

He stares at me with such intensity. “I didn’t tell you the full truth, Sara.”

I stare at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

For a moment, all I hear is the crackle of the fire.

Looking as though he’s coming to some great decision, Pestilence draws in a breath.

“That day in the woods, the day I found you, Iintendedto kill you.”

A good dose of my desire dampens at his admission. Nothing like hearing your post-apocalyptic boyfriend once wanted to murder you to throw a wrench in the mood.

I sit back on my haunches. “What changed your mind?”

He kneels in front of me. “The light that filtered through the trees that night cast strange shadows on your tent, and one of them was this one.” He takes my hand and moves it low on his pelvis, right over one of the curving characters. It takes a helluva lot of effort to stare at the glowing word rather than let my eyes continue downward.

I stroke the skin softly. “What does it mean?”

“Mercy,” he breathes.

Something superstitious ripples down my spine, drawing out the gooseflesh.

“And so you didn’t kill me,” I say, my gaze finding his.

“And so I didn’t kill you,” he agrees, the fire glittering in his eyes.

All this time I’d been hating on God, when He (or She—let’s be gender equal here) was the very thing that stopped the horseman from killing me all those weeks ago.