Still, he’s bloody and I hate that. And I hate that I hate that, but not nearly enough, and I’m making no sense, but honestly, absolutely nothing in my life makes sense right now, so …
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry for what those people did to you, and for what I did to you—and for what everyone else has done to you since you arrived.”
Pestilence came here with a grisly task, and he armored himself against the atrocity of it by convincing himself that humans were monsters. And we proved him right every time we attacked him.
That’s what hate does—it brings out your worst.
He’s only caught glimpses of our goodness, and yet that’s all it’s taken for his deeds to weigh on him.
Because that’s what compassion does—it brings out your best nature.
“I’m sorry for every stupid thing I said earlier,” I continue. “What we did together meant something to me. You mean something to me.”
Pestilence holds me close. “Does this mean you’re going to marry me?”
I laugh through my tears. “No, I don’t do pity proposals. But I’m open to make up sex.”
Pestilence kisses me again, one of his hands sliding reverently up my cheek and into my hair.
“It wasn’t a pity proposal, dear Sara,” he murmurs.
He sits up, my body tucked tightly against him, then stands, cradling me in his arms. His lips find mine once more, and we resume the kiss. I’m barely aware that we’re moving through the house until Pestilence lays me out on the bed in the master suite.
I shiver at the sight of the horseman above me as he removes his refashioned armor, his gaze searing me the entire time. He takes his crown off last, setting it on the bedside table.
Stripped bare of his golden adornments, he’s no longer my noble, otherworldly Pestilence, but my flesh-and-blood lover.
He comes back to me, fitting his body over mine.
“Sara, Sara, Sara,” he breathes, kissing my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips, my chin. “I confess, your earlier apologies have moved me, but they are unnecessary all the same. You needn’t ask for my forgiveness—you already have it and more, if you’ll but take what I offer.”
I think he means marriage … and for the first time, the thought intrigues the crap out of me.
I could marry him.
He kisses the column of my throat, right down to the hollow at the base of it. “You have my mercy, my mind, my adoration, my body, my … life.”
I could’ve sworn that for a moment, he was about to say another four letter “l” word, but maybe that’s just my imagination.
And for the first time, I’m disappointed that he didn’t say it. But that makes no sense.
Life is a big enough promise coming from an immortal man.
I’m just a greedy bitch.
Pestilence makes quick work removing his shirt. I almost sigh at the sight of his thick arm muscles and his tapered torso. My hands move first to his pecs, then to his abs, for once ignoring the markings that ring his skin. Beneath my fingertips, his muscles tense, like his skin is hyper-sensitive to my touch.
The horseman flashes me a purely masculine smile, enjoying my exploration. He sinks back down onto me, lifting my shirt to expose the skin of my belly.
I shiver at the feel of the chilly air along the band of bared flesh, but then Pestilence’s warm hands are moving over it, and his lips are claiming it kiss by kiss.
“Once again, I have you to thank for protecting me—saving me,” he says against my skin.
Saving, that’s a big word coming from him, the man who is impervious to death and who believes he is too powerful to need rescuing—or at least he used to believe that. I don’t know when things shifted in his mind, only that they have.
“Tell me, dear Sara,” he continues, “how might I repay you?”
I shake my head, staring up at him. “That’s not something you ever need to repay me for. I didn’t do it to make you owe me. I did it because I care about you.”
His eyes find mine, soft and bright and burning with so much … love.
Or am I imagining this too? All I know is that the look is too tender to be lust and too passionate to be kindness or compassion.
No, my eyes aren’t deceiving me. Now and only now am I seeing his feelings for what they truly are.
Love.
I have bound this man to me. I’ve cultivated a very human appetite in him, and this is the result. Love.
I should be frightened at the thought, but a strange sort of thrill rushes through me.
This time, it’s Pestilence that takes the lead. His hands rove over me, tossing away my blood-soaked clothes one piece at a time, his touch strong and sure.
My passion rises; along with it is this delicious uncertainty—like the horseman knows forbidden things that I don’t, and tonight he’s going to introduce them to me.
I think Pestilence means to move slow—I know I do—but in the end our movements are hurried. The last of our clothes come off, and then it’s just leagues and leagues of glorious skin.
His tanned arms bulge as he dips lower and lower down my torso, kissing a trail down my body. He pauses when he gets to my core, staring at it for a long second. Then he kisses that too.
Involuntarily, my hips rise off the bed.
Whoa.
Pestilence spreads my legs wide, giving himself an unobstructed view of me. He drinks the sight in before moving back up my body settling his hips between my thighs.
I feel him thick against me, his cock pressed against my entrance. Without warning, Pestilence drives himself inside. I nearly moan as he fills me, coating himself in my wetness.
“I missed this,” he says as he pulls out. He thrusts into me hard again, his movements deep and demanding.
I run my hands up his back, drawing out goosebumps along his flesh. “Me too.”
Now that he’s this close to me, this alive, I finally, finally am able to banish the last thoughts of this morning to the hinterlands of my mind.
Pestilence cups my face. “This is not fucking.”
He chooses now to make his point?
He stares at me as he works my core, and I realize he expects an answer.
Can’t remember my own damn name at this point.
“Mmm,” I say. That’s noncommittal enough.
His hips piston in and out, in and out.
“This is love-making,” he states—no, demands.
He’s really latched onto that term with gusto.
“Tell me your thoughts,” he all but orders. “I need to hear them.”
How can he even think right now? But one look in his eyes has me sobering up real quick. This is important to him.
“This isn’t fucking,” I agree, and I mean it. There’s far too much emotional subtext here between us. Each rushed touch is filled with longing, with lov— “It’s love-making,” Pestilence agrees, like the two of us are on the same page.
I shake my head. Am I in denial? No? Yes?
“Love-making is slower, more reverent …” That’s all I’ve got.
The horseman’s brows furrow and his pace—damnit—his pace slows. But his thrusts deepen, his cock thick and throbbing inside me, and he unshutters his gaze so that everything he feels is right there staring down at me. He’s gazing me as though I’m beloved.
His thumb brushes my cheekbone. “Like this?” he asks as he pumps slowly in and out of me.
“Yeah,” I say, unnerved as hell because the full-force of that adoring gaze is staggering, “just like this.”
His eyes dip to my lips, even as he moves deep inside me. “And if I kiss you, will I still be making love to you?”
I nearly forget to breathe. “It’s all about your intent.”
His mouth follows his gaze until I feel the sweet brush of his lips against mine. The very sweep of them as they pass over my mouth seems tender, loving. And when he coaxes my lips open and our tongues touch, that too seems to be done as though he reveres even the very taste of me.
He pulls away. “Was my intent clear?”
“Very.”
Pestilence goes slow and deep for a while, but then, perhaps in response to my own feverish need for more of him, he begins to speed up, his thrusts becoming fast and rough.
“Want to keep making love to you, but I cannot resist this need—”
“Then don’t.”