Heart pounding fast, I begin to touch the horseman’s body. He’s still wearing armor, bloodied, dirty armor. I begin to pull at it.
“Take this off,” I command.
“First you get me to break my rules, now you give me commands?” He says this even as he begins to undress us both. “You’re playing a delicate, dangerous game.”
“Aren’t dangerous games your favorite?” I say.
War reels me in close. “Savage woman, I don’t play games.” With that he rips away the last of my clothes.
We’re still bloody from battle, but that doesn’t stop the two of us from coming together. I pull him down to the carpet-covered floor, his large body engulfing me.
I take one of his hands, threading it between mine. The markings on his knuckles glow, and I kiss them one by one. These hands have caused so much death, but now they’ve saved me and another.
Perhaps one day these hands will stop the killing altogether. It’s insane to wish for something so farfetched, but I’m addicted to the possibility. It’s all the hope I have left.
War’s cock is hot and hard against me, and I can sense that battle hungry buzz still burning through his system. He’s practically shaking with the need to bury himself in me.
The idea of having sex with the horseman is utterly terrifying and completely exhilarating. I shift beneath him, until the head of his cock is pressed against my entrance.
For an instant, War’s hips press forward, and oh my God this is going to happen. But then he groans and pulls away from me, his entire body trembling with his restraint. “Heavenly creature, you were created to tempt me.” War is breathing heavily. “But you haven’t surrendered. Not yet. I’ll have you wholly only then.”
The horseman reaches out, cupping my pussy. Very deliberately, he dips a finger in. “But for now, this will do.”
Chapter 33
While the rest of the camp—War included—is at the revelries later that evening, I head over to Zara’s tent, food in hand. It’s become our thing, bringing each other food when we’ve had a rough day.
I enter the tent without knocking. Inside, Mamoon is asleep on Zara’s pallet, and my friend sits next to him, stroking his hair.
She jolts when I enter, her hand reaching for her dagger. She relaxes when she sees me.
“Sorry, I should’ve announced myself,” I say.
In response, she pulls me to her and gives me a tight hug. She doesn’t let go after several seconds, and pretty soon I hear her muffled sobs as she cries into my shoulder. Today was an awful day for her. She lost her sister and her brother-in-law, and she nearly lost her nephew.
I rub her back and hold her, letting her spill out all of her grief. It goes on for a long time, and her sobs are mostly silent, probably due to the fact that she’s trying to let Mamoon sleep.
“What do I tell him?” she whispers.
I shake my head against her. “I don’t know.” This is such an unnatural situation. There are no easy words for it.
Eventually, her sobs become sniffles, and then she pulls away, wiping at her eyes.
“How’s he doing?” I ask.
“Okay,” she says, her voice shaky. “I mean, he’s traumatized, but he’s alive.” Her voice breaks a little over the word. “That’s more than I can say about—”
About the rest of her family.
“What happened to them?”
Zara gathers her legs to her chest. “War’s riders got to them first. They weren’t even in their home when I got there. I think they’d tried to flee—I found their bodies lying in the street …”
Mamoon stirs, and Zara lets the story trail away.
“What does he know?” I ask, nodding to her nephew.
Her features crumble and she shakes her head. “I’m not sure. He hasn’t spoken much.”
“At least he has you—and you have him.”
Zara takes a deep, shuddering breath and nods.
She wipes her eyes again and looks me over. “How are you?” she asks, pulling herself together. Alarm rushes into her eyes. “Oh my God, this afternoon,” she says, like she’s realizing what happened for the first time. “You did so much for my nephew, and then you were caught for it—I’m so sorry.” She begins to cry again, and I catch her hand.
“Hey, hey—hey,” I say. “I got myself into that mess. Not you. Don’t be sorry for it. Besides, War won’t let me die, so …” So I get to be the little asshole that wrecks his plans. Kind of. I then have to make up for it in sexual favors that I enjoy more than I should.
“I don’t want you to suffer for my situation,” Zara says.
Suffer might not be the word I’d use …
“I’m not,” I assure her.
“Be careful with the horseman,” she says to me. “What he did today … he’s more than just enamored with you.”
I swallow a little. I assumed War liked me solely because he believed his god made me for him. To think that there might actually be real feelings …
No, Zara must be mistaken. War feels passion and possession towards me but nothing more.
Absolutely nothing more.
“The warlord wants to see you,” Hussain calls out from the other side of my tent late that same night.
By then I’ve long since returned from seeing Zara and her nephew. I’ve even managed to finish making two arrows.
I set the book I’m reading aside, blow out my oil lamp, and leave the tent, following the phobos rider towards War’s quarters.
Out of nowhere Hussain says, “You better watch your back, Miriam.”
I glance at him sharply. Is he threatening me?
He meets my gaze, then sighs. “The men have been talking about you, and they haven’t been saying anything good.”
It’s not a threat, I realize, it’s insider information he’s passing along.
“Listen, Miriam, just … be on your guard,” he continues. “War doesn’t pick his phobos riders for their honor.”
Meaning that I’m a marked woman. My arms break out in goosebumps at that.
The two of us arrive at War’s tent. Hussain bows his head, then backs away into the darkness, leaving me alone.
I take a breath and force myself to set aside that worry for another time. I have more immediate matters to deal with. I pull back the flaps of the horseman’s tent and step inside.
Only … the horseman is nowhere to be seen.
Panic.
This was a setup. Whatever Hussain was alluding to, it’s not going to happen at some point in the future; it’s about to happen right now.
I pull my dagger from its sheath just as the tent flaps are pulled back.
War walks in bare-chested and he’s drunk. Very drunk.
“Wife.” His eyes alight when he sees me. He crosses the room, wholly ignoring the dagger in my hand. Sweeping my hair back from my ears, he takes my face in his hands.
His eyes are bleary. “Lay with me.”
For a moment, I don’t breathe. I don’t move at all, even though those three words have pulled all sorts of inappropriate responses from my body.
A minute ago I was sure I was about to be ambushed; instead I’m getting propositioned. By a drunken horseman.
“I thought you wanted me to surrender first,” I say.
“I changed my mind.” His thumbs stroke my cheeks, and it’s so damn tempting. So, so tempting.
He must see how weak I am because he leans in and kisses me ferociously. The second he does, I taste the spirits on his tongue.
I pull away. “How much did you drink?” I ask him suspiciously. War’s a big man; he’d likely need to drink an entire trough of alcohol to get to this point.
“Enough to cast aside my reservations.”
Lay with me.
I lean my forehead against his shoulder as a thought comes to me. “Even if I wanted to—
“You want to,” he says, his voice sure.
My stomach clenches at his voice. It’s low and certain, and he sound
s like a lover—like my lover.
“What about protection?” I say. Something I distinctly haven’t thought about until now, though I definitely should’ve.
He pulls my face away from his shoulder, his bleary eyes sharpening.
“Protection?” he says. “From what? I am the embodiment of war. Whoever attempts to cross me will find themselves dead.”
I want to laugh. I want to melt into the floor.
“Not that sort of protection,” I say.
Oh boy. I didn’t expect to have this conversation today.
The horseman’s eyebrows pull together.
“I could get pregnant,” I say slowly.
I can’t tell by his expression whether or not he’s following.
Maybe I’ve gotten this all wrong. Maybe War can’t have kids. I mean, he’s no ordinary human.
I take one look at his muscle-packed body. I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen a more virile man. I feel like one long look from him could knock me up.
My next question just spills out of me.
“Have you ever gotten a woman pregnant?”
Those glowing tattoos shine from the darkness. The horseman stares at me, looking like he’s poised to strike. In fact, the longer I stare, the more menacing he appears.
“Why would you ask such a question?” he says.
Curiosity mostly.
“Have you?” I press.
Whatever state of inebriation War was in when he entered his tent, it’s gone.
“What do you think, Miriam?” Those violent eyes are locked on mine, and he sounds particularly dangerous. “Do you think I impregnated a woman while I moved across your land? Do you think I then killed my child, along with its mother?
“Or do you believe that they are both here somewhere in camp, hidden from view?”
I don’t know. I wouldn’t put any of it past him, despite the fact that he sounds offended. So offended, in fact, that I’m now pretty sure that despite the sex fest he’s had since coming to earth, he has no children.
That thought should relieve me. Instead, the whole conversation is reminding me of all the reasons why sleeping with War is a bad idea. Fooling around with him is only fun when I don’t have to think too much about it.
“Coming here was a mistake,” I say. I begin to walk past him, towards the exit.
He catches my arm and spins me to face him. “This was not a mistake.”
“Sleep it off, War,” I say. “You’ll feel better once you do.”
“So you’re fleeing then?” he accuses.
“Isn’t that what all us humans do?” I ask.
“Not you, savage woman,” he says, his expression dark and cunning as he grips my arm. “You fight even when it’s unwise to do so.”
“What would you do, if you got a woman pregnant?” I ask.
War just stares at me.
He has absolutely no idea, and that is terrifying in its own right.
“Goodnight, War,” I say.
I jerk my arm from his hold, and I leave his tent.
I don’t see War again until the next day. By the time he comes to me, he’s already returned from raiding all the satellite communities around Arish. From what I’ve seen of Egypt so far, there aren’t many of these. Out here, there’s desert and ocean and sky and nothing else.
“Did you have a hangover?” I ask him. I sit outside my tent, busy fitting a glass arrowhead to a finished wooden shaft.
“A hangover?” He smiles a bit. “There was a brief flash of pain and some fleeting nausea, but I wouldn’t call that a hangover.”
Part of me is belatedly surprised that he knows what a hangover is, but he’s lived among soldiers for a year now. He was bound to learn about them eventually.
“Do you remember our talk?” I ask him. “From last night?”
His face changes, but I can’t say exactly what his expression is. Brooding? Curious? Right now it’s impossible to tell.
“Every last bit.”
Awesome.
He takes my hand. “Come, I want to have you alone to myself.”
I take his hand, even as my eyebrows furrow. “Where are we going?”
He whistles. “You’ll see.”
A minute later, Deimos comes galloping towards us, his deep red coat shining in the sun. He still has his saddle and bridle on from the morning raid.
The horse comes to a stop next to us.
“How do you get him to do that?” I ask. He doesn’t need to be stabled, and he comes at his master’s call. I haven’t met that many horses, but I don’t think this is normal.
War leans towards me. “He is no more a horse than I am a man.”
Point taken.
The horseman gestures for me to mount Deimos. For a moment, I hesitate, not sure that I want to spend more time with War than is absolutely necessary. But in the end, I get on.
War swings into the saddle behind me, so close his thighs encase mine, and his chest presses against my back. This isn’t the first time I’ve shared a saddle with the horseman, but it is the first time I’ve noticed him.
His hair tickles against the skin of my neck, and I can feel his breath against my cheek. An arm comes around my waist, pressing me deeper into him, and I should not be so affected by this.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, I’ve had the man’s dick in my mouth.
“Stay with me in my tent,” War says against me, his breath fanning across my ear.
“What will be left of me if I do?” I don’t mean to say it out loud, but the words come out anyway.
“Wife, I’m not going to eat you if you move in—well, I will eat you, but I know you enjoy that sort of thing.”
I feel my cheeks heat, remembering the feel of his mouth between my thighs.
I half turn my head to him. “Can you not say stuff like that?”
War’s hand tightens against my stomach. “Stay with me, Miriam.”
“No—unless you want to make another trade.”
The horseman is quiet. “You do realize I could simply make you stay with me.”
So he’s threatened before.
“Then do it,” I say, knowing he won’t.
It must be odd for him, a man of action, to make empty threats. He’s never had to before me. When you want the world dead, it’s easy to make real threats—or, more War’s style, simply kill without ever threatening someone at all.
“You will fall to me, wife, just as everyone and everything else has.”
That is exactly what I’m afraid of.
The horseman steers us south, into the desert. There’s nothing out here except rolling expanses of dry earth. It’s beautiful in a very austere sort of way.
We’ve only ridden for maybe five or ten minutes when War stops his horse.
“Where are we?” I ask, glancing around as I hop off Deimos.
“I don’t exactly know,” he says, dismounting, his kohl-lined gaze squinting at the sun.
I glance around. “So there’s no particular reason why you brought me here?” I ask.
“Oh, there’s a reason,” he says, “it just has nothing to do with our surroundings.”
I’ve taken a few steps away from him, but now I glance back. “What’s the reason?” I ask.
“I want to hear what you sound like when no one but me is listening.”
Chapter 34
When it comes to intimacy, War gives more than he takes. Which is a lot. It’s all a lot. He has the appetite of a deity, and I can barely keep up on either end.
He’s making me work for those aviaries.
I lay on a blanket with him, our clothes cast aside.
“I like it when you’re like this,” he says, trailing a finger over my bare abdomen.
I glance over at him. “I bet you do.”
“Not just in that way, wife,” he says, giving a low laugh. “You are more open with me in these moments.”
I am? Alarm bells are going off.
“And you like that?” I say.
I study the horseman’s face. “Why?”
His gaze searches mine. The gold in his eyes glitters in the light.
He’s more than just enamored with you. Zara’s words ring in my ears.
Before War says anything, something moves in the distance, causing me to jolt in surprise. My entire body is exposed. I desperately gather my clothes to me, trying to cover myself.
“What is it?” War says, his voice sharp. His gaze follows mine.
It’s a person, one I’ve now doomed to death.
But when the horseman sees him, the tension in his body eases. “Relax, wife. He’s one of mine.”
“One of yours?” Does he mean one of his soldiers? Because I really wouldn’t want one of them seeing me naked.
“The re-animated dead,” War explains.
The hairs on my arm stand up. I’d almost forgotten about that ghoulish ability of his.
I take the distant figure in again. “What is it doing out here?”
“Miriam, my undead linger everywhere I am or have been. They patrol every piece of earth I’ve touched.”
I figured as much after encountering his zombies back in Ashdod.
“How long do they patrol a city?”
“Forever. Once I’ve claimed a territory, I do not give it up.”
Chills.
Every single place that War has been, his undead are there still, never sleeping, never ceasing, but always, always hunting.
Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, I scoot away from the horseman, an action he notices. I keep letting myself forget about War’s true nature.
“You have seen me kill many times, Miriam, and yet this bothers you?”
“Of course it bothers me,” I say. “It makes me not want to touch you.”
War’s face … that violence is back in his eyes, but for a single instant—a single, brief instant—I see his hurt.
It’s almost preposterous to think a force of nature like War is even capable of feeling hurt. But maybe I’m not the only one who gets vulnerable when you strip them down.
“But you will keep touching me,” he says. “So long as you want your aviaries to remain intact, you will—and I don’t need to remind you how easily I can undo all of the progress you’ve bought your kind.”
War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Page 22