Pestilence (The Four Horsemen #1)(95)

“This is how you kill me,” I murmur.

He pulls away instantly. The moment he takes in my flushed cheeks and dazed look, his worried expression morphs into one of male satisfaction.

I’m pretty sure no one has given Pestilence anatomy lessons (aside from me), but he’s figured out pretty quick that my clit is the source of all goodness and wonder in the world.

The horseman returns to his ministrations, and his clever tongue has me bucking and writhing beneath him. His warm breath puffs against me as he laughs. Pestilence might’ve once been a newb at this, but the pupil is definitely surpassing the master in record time.

“Ughn,” I moan. “Ssss—stop. Too much. Stop.”

Fucker doesn’t stop.

He keeps going and going and—

I let out a cry, my hips rising off the bed, as sensation rips through me, blinding in its intensity.

Pestilence doesn’t give me time to fully come down. He moves up my body. “You’ve convinced me.”

“Huh?”

He wraps my legs around his waist. I feel his cock right at my opening, hard and insistent.

“You’re healed.”

And then he drives himself inside.

Another moan slips out of me as his thickness stretches me. It’s been lifetimes since we did this. Pestilence has been so careful not to hurt me or jostle my wounds that it’s a shock that he’s now suddenly in me.

It’s an even bigger surprise to feel his frenetic energy. His movements are not slow and reverent, or even playful and exploratory. He pistons into me like he can’t drive himself deep enough, and he gathers me up to him like he can’t hold me tight enough. His mouth sears my skin as he kisses my shoulder, one of my bullet wounds, my throat, my lips.

His hands grip my legs, pulling me closer.

Thump—thump—thump!

The headboard smacks into the wall again and again and again until paint and a little bit of plaster have chipped away.

Pestilence’s eyes glint brightly. And it’s not wholly love that I’m seeing. It’s love and anguish and a possessive desperation and—strangest of all—an apology.

I can’t make much of it now, however. Not with his cock filling me up and rubbing me down in all the right places.

For a second time I tip over the edge. I clench around him, pulling him close to me. With a groan, he comes on the wings of my climax, rocking into me like his very life depends on it.

Once he begins to come down, he kisses me everywhere, his lips brushing over every bit of exposed flesh. All that raw, male energy is converting into something painfully sweet and reverent.

He gathers me to him, cradling my body against his own. There’s nothing like being pressed skin to skin with this man to make me feel utterly at ease with the world. My eyelids begin to lower.

Still haven’t figured out the contraception issue, I think lazily.

Pestilence brushes a kiss along my temple.

He’d make a good dad.

Can’t believe I just had that thought …

I nestle closer to him as I let myself drift off.

One of his fingers traces over my stomach.

His body slides away from mine, and his voice filters in from the edge of sleep. “I’m sorry, Sara. I was waiting for this, and I thought that maybe … maybe you getting better would change my mind, but it hasn’t. It’s only made me surer of what I need to do.”

I grope for his hand, but it’s gone.





Chapter 49


The next morning, I make my way into the kitchen, trying not to let Pestilence see just how fatigued that simple action makes me.

I shouldn’t have bothered. For once the horseman isn’t even paying attention. The television in the living room is on, and Pestilence is standing in front of it, his arms folded, staring at the screen grimly.

I glance at the T.V., just to see what has tied up his attention.

“… Breaking news: virulent outbreak of Messianic Fever along the West Coast and Pacific Northwest, spreading into Mexico. State and local governments are rapidly trying to quarantine infected areas. No known sighting of the horseman yet. Please stay in your homes and avoid city centers. I repeat, please stay in your homes and avoid city centers. To all those affected: our prayers and thoughts are with you.”

My stomach bottoms out.

I stand there for a long time, not talking, not reacting, just … staring at the television dumbly. The report replays itself five different ways, the information regurgitated to fill the empty minutes. They are showing the pictures of Central Park taken after Pestilence passed through the city months ago, with its mass graves filled with bodies. Then images from Toronto and Montreal appear, the few photos anyone has of the Fever. There are even a couple from Vancouver and Seattle, places I saw with my own two eyes.

But now new footage joins the old. A shaky video of a hospital in San Francisco appears, the place filled with the dying. Another from Los Angeles, where people are lying in the streets, their eyes sunken and their faces flushed with the beginnings of fever.

San Francisco, Los Angeles. Those places are states away.

I grow cold.

I manage to rip my eyes away from the screen, and now, now Pestilence is looking at me. There’s still that damn apology in his eyes, but no remorse. None. In its place is a familiar coldness.

My throat works. I don’t want to ask because asking makes it real, and this can’t be real. The words come anyway.