by Pam Godwin
“If you let go of the damned gun…” He feathered calloused fingers over the gashes on my palm. “You’d have both hands to pull up.”
The rare tenderness in his touch didn’t match his reprimanding tone. He bent closer, fanning warm breaths on my face, eyes focused on the heave of my chest. His woodsy scent reminded me of camping trips, s’mores around the fire, embers popping, and children laughing. A time when it was safe to look away from the shadows and gaze forever at the stars.
I closed my eyes, breathing him in, and opened them to find him inches away, staring back. Christ, he was intense in beauty and stature. Blade-sharp cheekbones, youthful skin bronzed by the sun, and a powerful body sculpted with rugged exercise and a high-protein diet. But he had a caginess about him that exceeded his thirty-one years. Something in his life—maybe even before the virus—had hardened his eyes into guarded copper shields.
I reached up and trailed fingers across his scruffy cheek. “There’s a soft guy in there somewhere.”
His jaw twitched beneath my caress, and he knocked my arm away. “You need a lot more training—”
Running footsteps approached, stopping on my other side. The intruder knelt, mirroring Jesse’s position, and a halo of blond dreadlocks moved in. Ahhh, those jade eyes, softer than Jesse’s but no less potent. So easy to get lost in them, to forget the world had become such a horrific place.
Jesse sat back on his heels, his scowl directed at the other man. “You’re supposed to be guarding the perimeter, Father Molony.”
Ignoring him, Roark scanned me for injuries, hands roaming my exposed skin with familiarity.
I swatted at him. “Stop it.” When he moved to lift my shirt, I shifted to a crouch. “C’mon, Roark. I’m fine.”
His nostrils flared, and he gripped my jaw. “This is reckless, love.” His accent, as rough as the streets he grew up on in Northern Ireland, never failed to curl my toes. “Why do ye keep attempting it?”
Jesse grabbed his bow and stood. “You know why, Priest.” He stalked up the embankment, in the direction of our temporary cabin.
Roark glared after him. “I den’ give a shite about your visions.”
But he did. As a priest, he not only held a great deal of interest in Jesse’s visions, he might’ve even believed in them. His objection to this training was simply one of worry. For me.
Jesse’s retreat didn’t slow, and I missed his glare instantly. He stirred up my insides, left them fluttering and buzzing with electric vibrations. Like now.
I stared at his back. “Roark just doesn’t want you putting me at risk.” I lowered my voice. “For something I don’t even know will happen.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “My visions are never wrong.”
So he claimed. His visions also kept our relationship nonsexual. Rooted in his Lakota beliefs, Jesse alleged he and I were spirit walkers, seers of visions and dead people. According to his visions, one of two things would result in my death. Falling off a cliff or falling into bed with him. Despite his reluctance to elaborate on either, I practiced cliff diving, and he slept alone. Not that I needed another body on my bedroll. I slept snugly between the doctor and the priest.
Didn’t stop me from watching Jesse’s muscular ass disappear in the brush. Damn, that man could work a pair of jeans.
The flutter in my belly buzzed all over again. Wait, what? This wasn’t arousal. My head jerked up, my gaze wildly scanning the depths of the trees.
Roark shot to his feet, followed by the flash of steel and the swing of his arm. Shit, shit, shit. Hand on my arm sheath, I freed the blade, reared back to throw it, too slow. Black blood sprayed the surrounding foliage, accompanied by an inhuman squeal.
The sword lowered, and a mutated body slumped from behind a tree. I spun the blade at the severed head, nailed the eye, certain I saw it blink.
Fuck, what was I thinking? I’d felt that damned bug before it arrived and mistook the sensation for arousal? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I drew in a calming breath and with it came a fume of raw decay. Coughing, I breathed through my mouth, my pulse a heavy beat in my ears.
Roark retrieved the dagger from the stinking thing and nudged the carnage with a steel-toed boot. Then he looked down his freckled Irish nose at me. “Distracted, love?”
A few feet away, Jesse lowered a nocked arrow and vanished into the thick growth of trees.
I didn’t encourage Roark with a response. Though he grinned, sexy and smug standing there in the afterglow of saving my ass, we both knew dropping my guard was a serious fuck up.
He wiped his sword and my blade on the hem of his cassock. “While ye were goggling the Lakota’s arse, ye missed one of me best moves.”
“I doubt it. You’re much better with your fists.”
Watching him pound an aphid in the British pub the night we met had done things to my girly bits. Things a Catholic priest had no business doing. But times had changed with the virus, if my unorthodox, complicated relationships were anything to go by.
He reached for my hand, returned the dagger to the arm sheath, and pulled me up. “It’s worth noting…” That sexy grin grew. “The Lakota throws ye a’ the beasties, and I save ye from them.”
I turned toward the trail. “This isn’t a competition, Roark.”
He muttered something about a wanker and followed me through the thicket. Spindly branches crowded the trail, no evidence of Jesse’s pass through.
A long one-hour later, the brush thinned and gave way to a clearing. There stood the sagging cabin, sheltered by Appalachia pines. Jesse emerged from the tree line beside us.
The shock of being here again still hadn’t released its claws from my heart. I was a different person the first time I came to West Virginia, broken and alone. Wandering into these mountains lush with life and mystery, I’d met Jesse Beckett and his Lakota brethren. Not long after, I followed some strange intuition to this cabin and found the nymph within.
The hellacious trip that followed had taken me across the Atlantic and back. I’d come full circle to stand here again, with a cure, facing yet another journey.
I adjusted the carbine on its sling and studied the crumbling cabin, the blooming life in the surrounding woods, and the rocky ridge beyond. “I’m ready to leave the mountains.”
Jesse gazed down at me. “There’s a lot of cliffs out there.”
I blew out a breath. “Yeah. And a lot of worse things than cliffs.”
“Like priests?”
“That was uncalled for.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. How old were they? Five?
Roark glared at Jesse, his stance all tall, broad, and fierce with a hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword.
His eyes softened as he looked down at me. “Ye won’t be alone, love.”
As long as I lived, I would be protected and cherished. I vowed to do the same in return, even if my guardians tried to strangle one another behind my back.
We approached the cabin’s porch, and a harvest of orioles took flight from the roof. The door opened, and Michio stepped out, followed by Elaine, our living proof of the cure.
Michio leaned against the railing, the rustic wood at odds with his exotic looks. Striking brown eyes clinically roamed my body as my doctor, then they affectionately lingered on my face as my lover. We shared a suspended moment of eye-contact, a sweet kind of torture, that begged to be reinforced with a passionate kiss, a shredding of clothes, and a rough fuck on the creaky porch. But privacy was a rare luxury.
Elaine placed a hand on his forearm. With the other, she twirled a dark lock of hair. Color bloomed in her cheeks. No hint of the gray complexion she suffered only a month earlier when I’d found her again, still holed up in this cabin. I shivered at the memory of her matted hair, all-white eyes, and skeletal limbs crouched over the corpses of her children.
No child survived the airborne virus. The madman who created it bragged about its success while he imprisoned me on Malta. He was delighted when every woman on the
planet contracted the infection and transformed into a nymph. Every woman except me.
Nymphs appeared more human than aphid, but they didn’t escape the insectile mouth. And it was the nymph’s bite that initially spread the infection to men. The bite that turned both victim and nymph into aphids. Two years later, aphids outnumbered humans.
As for the unusual nymphs that remained nymphs—those that never bit—no one could explain it. Elaine remembered nothing from her life as one. Just as no one knew why I was the only woman with the evolving DNA to evade the virus. But it was my DNA that carried the cure. The cure for nymphs, if we could find them. I’d found Elaine.
Her palm slid up Michio’s arm, fingers stroking his bicep. A tingle of tension pricked across my jaw.
When he shifted his arm away, she bumped his thigh with her hip and licked her lips. Creepy as hell, considering we’d seen her with claws and squirming mouthparts. Wasn’t hard to imagine her with fangs, stabbing his neck. Or me with a knife, stabbing her neck.
Though she was cured, she still had a lot to learn.
I removed a blade from my arm sheath. “How many humans are left on this planet?”
She knew enough to guess. We spent many nights calculating our survival rate.
She shifted her weight, rocking that curvy hip against Michio. “A hundred million?”
Ten percent of the human population survived the initial outbreak. We guessed a quarter of that remained human.
I tilted my head. “And how many are men?”
She glared, her brown eyes sparking. “All of them.”
Except her and me. I rolled the dagger’s hilt between my fingers. “Then I’m not being unreasonable when I tell you to keep your hands”—and those fucking hips—“off three of the hundred million.”
Michio’s lips twitched. Oh, this was just making his day. Two women fighting over him? Every man’s dream, right?
Elaine’s mouth pinched in a straight line. “Your three guardians.”
Who else? Her sarcasm sat heavy in my chest as my husband’s dying words floated to the surface. Trust mind, body, and soul. Your guardians.
I turned my head and met three sets of eyes—Jesse, Roark, Michio—and returned to Elaine. “Yes, my guardians.”
Her delicate fingers flexed on Michio’s arm, and she waved her free hand in Jesse’s direction. “But you’re not even sleeping with him.”
Heat surged through my blood. Seriously, this woman had no clue.
“Careful, Elaine.” Jesse’s gaze fixed on me as he leaned against a tree, whetting an arrow.
I aimed the blade at the porch post an inch from her shoulder and nailed it with a thunk.
She screeched, stumbling back. Good grief, it was just a warning. But if she touched him again, she’d need more than my doctor to reattach her fingers.
Michio collected the blade and closed the distance between us in three strides. His expression was unreadable, but his dark eyes didn't waver from mine as he kissed my lips then the soreness on my palm. My doctor, guardian of body. Our trust in each other was the anchor for our plan.
As soon as we set foot outside our little isolated refuge in the mountains, we would become outnumbered by men and aphids. Some of us would get hurt. Or worse. But I couldn’t spend the rest of my life sitting here while there were women out there trapped in mutated bodies. Not when I could cure them. And I had Michio, a medical doctor with a lethal skill in martial arts, at my back.
I gave him another kiss on the lips. “Since Elaine’s at full health, we can head out soon.”
She gasped. “For good?”
I softened my voice. “For now.”
She crossed her arms, lowered them, and crossed them again. “I’m coming with you.”
Michio rubbed his head. “No, you’re not.”
She hadn’t been off this mountain since the virus hit. She couldn’t fight, refused to learn how to use a blade or a bow. Hell, she couldn’t even shoot a gun. She wouldn’t last a week out there. Hauling around a woman in a lawless world full of men was dangerous, and protecting her would risk all of us.
Her face paled. “What if I need a doctor?”
I bit my tongue, fighting the need to tell her to find her own fucking doctor. I relaxed my hands and met her eyes. “You’ll stay with the Lakota Indians.”
Jesse’s brethren scouted the lower hills. They healed me after my husband died. They would take care of Elaine.
She fidgeted with the tie on her breeches. “While you’re off hunting and curing nymphs, what will I do?”
“You’ll bloody stay alive.” Roark walked toward the tree line, apparently done with this conversation.
“And make babies,” I added, cringing inwardly.
Michio stroked his jaw, eyebrows gathering. “Humanity’s future.”
God help us. Two women were not enough to repopulate the world, especially since I refused to take on that particular role. We were doomed to extinction or at the very least, a fucked-up gene pool.
But if we found and healed hundreds of nymphs? Thousands? If we hurried, if we left the cured women protected by good men, the future of humanity had a fighting chance.
And I intended to fight to the wretched, bloody end.
That night, I woke to the crackle of wood in the fireplace. Toasty and inviting, the amber glow warmed my skin and tempted me back to sleep. I let my forehead fall forward against Roark’s shoulder, senses dimming, until Michio’s soft lips grazed the top of my spine.
Alertness tingled through my veins and aroused every point of contact. We lay on our sides on a blanket covering the hard floor, all three of us in cotton shorts, chests bare, with me in the middle. My breasts pressed against Roark’s back. The hard ridges of Michio’s chest pinned me from behind. My fingers rested on the deep cuts of Roark’s abs, and Michio’s legs hooked around mine. Roark’s feet angled away—heaven forbid, the guys accidentally touch.
Through skin-on-skin, their masculine force of Yang somehow protected me, a theory that stretched the limits of my agnostic beliefs. But I couldn’t argue with the evidence. Swaddled by strength and satiny flesh, I escaped the nightmares that had terrorized me since the outbreak.
Warm breaths glided across my shoulder. The nearby flames flickered shadows over our cuddle, the waft of hickory smoke smothering the mildew that clung to the cabin walls.
Michio’s hand curled around my hip and flattened over my stomach, his knuckles so close to Roark’s ass he had to have bumped it. His caress dipped beneath the elastic of my shorts, and all the heat in my body descended, throbbing beneath his fingers, as he rubbed and teased and spread me open.
I held still, certain I shouldn’t encourage him while sharing the makeshift bed with another man. But those fingers persisted, his intention blatant in the hard jab against my thigh. My inner muscles clenched, and I lifted a knee to part my legs, even as my stomach tightened with guilt.
A glance around the room confirmed Jesse was outside, either sleeping on the porch or guarding the edge of the woods. The single interior door closed off the room where Elaine slept. When we cured her a month earlier, we burned her bed and the three bodies decomposing atop it. Thankfully, she only remembered her children alive and healthy, her nymph fever saving her from the gruesome details of their deaths.
The hand between my legs pulled me back, mentally, then physically, stroking with the intoxicating skill of a doctor. He scissored his fingers, sliding deep, in and out to the pace of his quickening exhales.
Goosebumps prickled my spine, and wet heat eased the entry of his fingers. Of my three guardians, he knew my body best thanks to months in his care during my captivity on Malta. In the span of a few panting heartbeats, he took my arousal from a low burn to a frenzied boil.
I flexed my fingers, brushing the short hairs below Roark’s naval. His blond dreads tickled my nose, the strands knotted with leather ties and braids, yet soft against my face and clean with his oaky scent, like his skin. If he were awake, his
hips would’ve rocked to urge the path of my hand. So responsive, my priest.
He was celibate in the most literal way. Other than our one time, he didn’t fuck me. At least, not my pussy. He found relief in my mouth, my hand, and most often, grinding against my leg. The man had mastered the art of dry-humping.
Technically, his vow was long past violated. Blow jobs, hand jobs, all of our stolen moments forbidden by the Church. The Vatican was gone, the Pope likely hunting the streets of Rome with a serrated mouth. Laws and doctrines no longer existed, but Roark’s integrity and faith remained intact, practiced through his own rules. Foreplay without shagging gave him some whacked-out balance between his god and the woman he loved.
My feelings about that wrestled in constant battle. Relief. Frustration. It made a mess of my emotions. I wanted him. That much, I knew. I also wanted Michio and Jesse, and if asked to choose between them, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I shared something different and special with each of them. Did that make me selfish? Would it be kinder if I ignored their reciprocated desire? God, their heated looks. I would have to avoid eye contact. It would make things weird.
And empty.
It was already uncomfortable, my nipples pressed against Roark, as Michio fingered me with long strokes. The diabolical rhythm of his thrusts produced a quiver in my thighs and a sheen on my skin. His erection nudged my ass, and his free hand shoved down his underwear just enough to free his cock.
I turned my head and found his eyes. Black as the night and too deep to measure, they sucked me in and swallowed me whole. Hints of his Japanese heritage delineated their large shape, as well as his olive skin and the inky shine of his cropped hair. But his Caucasian father must have given him the square chin, thick neck, and long legs.
His powerful frame flexed into a tight curve around my back as his fingers thrust deeper, harder. He kissed my mouth, neck, and shoulder, and slid his cock against his strumming fingers, prodding my flesh, seeking entry.
Firelight outlined his body, his thickly muscled arm around my waist, the bunching of his shorts below his ass, the bulging calves of his legs where they entangled with mine…and Roark’s.