“Right.” Joe nodded, and there was an edge of exhaustion that could be heard in his voice, despite the fact that he wasn’t very verbose. Darius suspected he hadn’t been resting here by the lake long enough to make up for the labor of chasing after a lightcar.
Xolani shoved his rucksack at him, which Zach had been carrying since he hadn’t had one of his own. “Eat. You didn’t take any supplies with you.”
Joe dropped to the ground and began tearing into his pack, diving voraciously into his rations. “Didn’t have time. Snared a rabbit a couple days ago, so it hasn’t been that bad.”
Darius worked with Xolani and Nico to set up camp. Zach was too destroyed to pitch in, but he hadn’t uttered a single complaint. It reminded Darius of the way Rhys had been when he’d first begun traveling with them, especially on the harrowing pursuit of Jacob Houtman. Despite the conversation they’d all overheard, when Nico had refused to touch Zach, now he hovered over him, laying out his bedroll, fetching him rations, rubbing his legs when they cramped up.
They were all too tired and concerned for much chitchat, though Nico made the attempt.
“Will Kaleo be coming back with Toby and Titus?” he asked innocently. “I was surprised to see Schuyler was here without him.”
Darius exchanged looks with Xolani and Joe, then sighed. “Kaleo’s dead. Killed in action a couple years ago.” He pointed to Zach. “By his brother, matter of fact.”
Zach’s head shot up. “What?”
They ended up telling the entire story, all the bits Rhys had omitted when he’d told Zach the short version of his experiences with Jacob Houtman and his father. How Houtman had become infected with Alpha and then abducted and infected three civilians with Beta, including Rhys’s only surviving friend from his adolescence to torment Rhys when Houtman’s attempts to turn the Jugs against Rhys had failed.
“I’m sorry,” Zach whispered when they finished. Darius snorted softly when Nico drew Zach protectively against him.
Yeah, that resolve wasn’t going to last long.
“Wasn’t your fault,” Joe muttered.
“No, but considering the history, I’ve certainly given you no reason to think any better of me or my family.” He sighed. “I’m sorry I tried to talk Rhys into keeping our plan from you. I was afraid what might happen if you knew—”
Xolani sniggered, and Darius shook his head, chuckling softly. “You really think Rhys would keep something like that from us?”
“I realize that now,” Zach murmured. “You’re doing all this despite having no reason to trust us. I understand.”
“How generous of you,” Xolani said flatly. “You spent six years waiting for an opportunity to fall into your laps so you could stop Littlewood rather than making the opportunity yourselves. If Rhys hadn’t come along and given you an opening, you’d still be sitting around playing espionage in the DPRP while Littlewood continued to do his thing.”
“Hey, now—” Nico started to argue, but Zach cut him off.
“You’re right,” he conceded. He drew his calf out of Nico’s grasp, hugging his knee to his chest. “I know we should have done something sooner, but I don’t know what we could have done. Or maybe it’s just self-interest that kept me from acting. Maybe I’m making excuses.” He met Nico’s eyes with a bleak smile. “I kept hoping we’d find a way that wouldn’t exacerbate bad relations between the Clean Zone and the Jugs.”
Nico pulled his hands into his lap as if only now realizing how thoughtlessly he’d been touching Zach just moments before. Darius rolled his eyes and turned away. Until Rhys was safe, he was having a hard enough time not beating down one or both of them. He didn’t have any sympathy to spare for the pair’s star-crossed-lovers routine.
Zach apparently didn’t have anything else to say as he pushed himself to his feet with a barely suppressed whimper and wandered down the street.
Nico began scrutinizing their surroundings. “This whole area’s been cleared of revs, right?”
Before Darius could confirm that Delta Company had patrolled Utah and Nevada years ago, Nico jumped up and chased after Zach anyway.
Xolani snorted when they were gone. “It’s worse than watching you and Rhys angst over each other, back in the day.” She curled up on her side on her bedroll, turning her back to everyone. After a moment, Darius and Joe did the same.
Nico’s footfalls announced his approach before he spoke.
“You shouldn’t wander off by yourself,” he chided. Zach ignored him, idly inspecting the exterior of an abandoned lakefront house that must have been quite lovely back before the pandemic.
“How are you feeling?” Nico tried again.
“Like I’ve taken a beating on every major muscle group for fourteen hours a day.” He’d meant to come off as flippant, but it emerged as exhausted. “I’m fine, Nico. Go get some sleep.”
“You think I’d be able to sleep with you out here alone?”
His eyes burned, but he refused to turn to face Nico. “I’ve been alone for ten years. It’s familiar. And better than being surrounded by people who don’t trust me . . . or who resent me.”
“You never made new friends in the Clean Zone besides Morris?” There was a plaintive note in Nico’s voice, begging Zach to say that his life in the Clean Zone wasn’t as lonely and melancholy as Zach always made it sound.
Until Nico had returned six years ago, Zach hadn’t had a chance to tell him about how most of his uninfected friends had abandoned him because they had feared Zach’s relationship with Nico would result in him passing the Beta strain to them all. By the time Nico knew just how alone Zach had been during those years, it had been too late. Zach’s isolation and unwillingness to trust anyone again had taken on a life of its own.
“I have acquaintances who come to my weekly Bible study groups. Quite a few, actually. We had to find a bigger venue. Some of them went on to start their own ministries, though. They’ve even made handwritten copies of passages from my annotated Bible for their congregations.” He smiled wanly. “So when I’m not spying on the DPRP, I’ve become a one-man seminary.”
Nico swallowed audibly, his voice thick with pride and affection. “Who better?”
“I even almost had a relationship once. She was lovely. Sassy. Funny. She understood about you. I spent a while trying to convince myself it wouldn’t really be adultery, and she spent a while trying to convince herself that she was okay with the fact that I’d never be able to give her my whole heart.” Zach shrugged, reaching down to strip the seeds off a long stalk of grass. “Neither of us could quite manage it.”
“When was that?”
“Just before you came back from Texas.” He felt Nico behind him, not quite close enough to touch, and it hurt. He’d needed the help Nico had been giving him to keep up with the Jugs, and the comfort and assistance at the end of the day, but it didn’t mean that so-close-but-not-quite contact wasn’t its own brand of agony. “Fortuitous timing, I suppose.”
He finally turned and made himself look at Nico. He could barely see the man he’d met all those years ago. Back then, just a few months after the first wave of the pandemic, Nico hadn’t quite lost all the dazzle and polish that had made him an escort who commanded top dollar from powerful and famous people. He’d had a certain cockiness, a flare that had drawn Zach like a flame draws a moth. Zach’s life until then had been all about black and white, austerity and moral absolutes.
Nico had changed everything.
It was hard to see that sparkling rentboy under the grizzled man who stood before him. Zach didn’t know exactly where in the ruins of Colorado Springs’s uninhabited areas Nico had made his home when he hadn’t been combing the desert trying to locate the DPRP’s secret lab, but wherever it was, it was rough. Nico’s face was densely bearded, his hair a long, thick black mane. His clothing was threadbare in places and fraying in others, and his face was deeply lined at the corners of his eyes and mouth from too much sun exposure.
He wasn’t the
same man Zach had committed his heart to ten years ago, and yet he was. Those fathomless brown eyes were still unspeakably gentle when they settled on Zach, and still as full of yearning. Sometimes he wondered if, after this many years, he and Nico really still loved each other and not just the idea of each other. But it didn’t matter any more than it had mattered that they had fallen almost before they even got their first full glimpse of each other. Here at the end of the world, the rules about how to wisely conduct relationships, like taking it slow and waiting for the perfect, compatible partner, didn’t apply.
Nico was standing closer than he usually did. If nothing else, the last few days had broken down that barrier. Zach smiled sadly. He’d beg if he had to. There was just no point to pride.
“Will you hold me? You’ve been touching me for days. It doesn’t matter. Please?”
Nico stood frozen for far too long, long enough for Zach’s heart to sink and anger to start simmering in his gut at his own idiocy for even asking. But then Nico’s arms were around him, Nico’s body pressed up against his, and nothing else mattered. They were both sweaty and dirty from days of travel, and neither of them smelled clean, but Zach didn’t care. He wrapped his arms around Nico and clung to him as though his very salvation depended on it.
Nico’s grasp was no less desperate. He held Zach until he couldn’t breathe for being squeezed so tightly, until they were both shaking with the emotion of it.
“I’ve missed you so fucking much,” Nico whispered brokenly, and Zach turned his face, seeking the full lips under the bushy beard. His poor, touch-starved Nico, who craved contact the way other people craved food. Living in isolation except for the few times a year when Zach slipped out of the Clean Zone on a hunting party to meet with him and confer on what Littlewood and the DPRP were up to. How had Nico endured it? How had he had the resolve to keep himself from touching Zach until now?
Nico’s lips parted, pulling Zach’s seeking tongue into his mouth, and then he had Zach pinned against the wall of the house and he was all over him. Hands and teeth and tongue everywhere, on each salty inch of stubbled skin. He grabbed Zach’s backside roughly and ground his hips against Zach, the pressure both a relief and a torment against the restrained bulge in Zach’s trousers.
“God, Nico. Yes . . .” Zach sobbed between kisses, seeking more. Nico’s trembling hands tore at their flies, his callused fist clasping both of them together as he thrust. Zach buried his hands in the tangled waves of Nico’s thick hair to get more traction so he could push back. “I love you, Nico. God, I love you. Please. More.”
Nico stopped thrusting long enough to shove Zach’s pants down his hips, and Zach practically tripped trying to kick his boots off so he could step out of them completely. He ripped his shirt over his head and threw it aside, then jerked anxiously at Nico’s shirt too, unable to stand the separation any longer. And afraid, if truth be told, that Nico might change his mind and put that horrible, soul-killing distance between them again.
He didn’t, though. Instead, he seized Zach’s ass and hauled him up until his feet left the ground. Zach wrapped his legs around Nico obligingly, and Nico slammed him against the wall again. It was rough against Zach’s back, but he didn’t care. What he cared about was Nico’s thickly matted chest grating against his own sparsely furred one, about the sweat slicking their skin, making them glide together.
Nico spat on his fingers and reached behind and underneath, and Zach groaned at the burn as a single digit forced its way into him. Ten years had passed since Nico had used his fingers to spread and open Zach. Not his cock, of course. Never that, not while Zach refused to accept the Alpha strain. But once upon a time, Zach had become intimately familiar with the pleasures of having that tight muscle pried open, having fingertips against his prostate, catapulting things that already felt amazing into a whole new stratosphere of pleasure.
It ached now, but Zach welcomed it. He reached down to continue what Nico had started earlier, gripping their cocks so they could slide against each other, pumping and groaning. Another finger relentlessly invaded Zach’s ass, and he answered the pain with a cautious bite at Nico’s lips. Nico growled in response, knocking their teeth together for an uncomfortable instant as he sought another savage kiss, which he pulled back from quickly when it started spiraling out of control.
Zach was careening toward the edge, knowing that beyond the precipice waited a heedless plunge into bliss. He sprinted for it, fucking himself on Nico’s fingers while his hand pumped them both. His head thudded against the house behind him, and he cried out, so close to that peak it was almost unbearably good, the release hovering just out of reach, taunting him.
It was the threatening presence of a third finger, rough and dry and pushing against his rim, that put him over. Nico’s mouth latched on to Zach’s throat as he cried out, biting and sucking firmly while Zach spilled over his fist, his seed slicking both their cocks and his muscles clamping around Nico’s fingers. Zach’s climax seemed to break down what little restraint Nico had left. He rutted against Zach with single-minded ferocity, groaning and panting as he chased his own release.
It was beautiful when it happened—the sound he made, the way he shuddered in Zach’s arms and went slack. Zach hung on to him with arms and legs, unwilling to let go as Nico held him against the weather-beaten wall and caught his breath.
He felt the conflict and reluctance seep back into his body, making him tense in Zach’s arms, making him try to draw away.
“No.” Zach held on tighter. “No. No more.”
“Zach—”
“I said no.” Zach lifted his face away from Nico’s shoulder and glared at him. “If you’re going to leave me again, you’re going to have to sneak away and run off like a coward, because I’m not letting you do it this time.”
“I can’t risk—”
“I can. It’s my life. My risk.” He unwrapped himself from around Nico, lowering his weight to the ground, but he didn’t let go, not even to fix their clothing. Semen was drying on his right hand, and his ass ached from the intrusion of Nico’s fingers, but he held on. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me it’s been worth it, being apart? Because the last twenty minutes have meant more to me than the last decade.”
“I’ve caused so many deaths, cariño. I know I was used, and it wasn’t my fault, but I did. If I can save just one person, just you . . . I couldn’t live with myself if I was the cause of your death. I couldn’t.”
Zach shook his head adamantly. “There are no guarantees, Nico. None. Yes, there could be an accident and I could get infected. I could also die of any number of other mishaps, whether you’re with me or not. If it’s going to happen, I’d rather be with you.”
Nico closed his eyes, his face anguished. “Do you have any idea what it would do to me if you died and I was the reason?”
“So you’d be okay if you weren’t the reason?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“If I died of the Rot tomorrow, I’d do so content, knowing I’d spent tonight where I belong, with you.” He clasped Nico’s face between his hands, compelling his gaze. “No guarantees. I won’t accept the Alpha strain because that’s not the Lord’s plan for me. But what we have, Nico, it’s grace. It’s a gift from God. I won’t let you reject it.”
A tear tracked down Nico’s dusty cheek. “I don’t have your faith in God.”
“Then have faith in me.”
“I do.” Nico collapsed against him, trembling, and buried his wet face against Zach’s throat. “I’m so afraid.”
“Don’t be.” That grace he’d spoken of, the surety of God’s benevolent will and purpose, filled Zach. He felt incandescent with it, radiating certitude for the first time in years. “This is right. You know it is. It always has been.”
Nico didn’t try to argue again, and Zach knew he’d finally gotten through. Finally, Nico drew back and sucked in a shuddering breath. He met Zach’s eyes, calmness smoothing his beloved features. “No gua
rantees.”
“Just every day we have available to us, together. Where we’re meant to be.”
The smallest hint of reluctance shadowed Nico’s eyes, but he nodded. “Every day.”
Every bone and muscle in Rhys’s body ached when he awoke, lying on his bunk where they had dumped him, semiconscious, the previous night. It had been midafternoon the day before—he thought—when the guards had come for him and hauled him into a lab. Dr. Thanh hadn’t been there, just more guards, one of whom had ordered Rhys stripped, put in restraints, and hooked up to a saline IV. A collection device had been wrapped around his penis, and then . . .
Rhys winced and shuddered at the way he’d screamed and seized when the electrified prod was jammed behind his balls, forcing convulsions that had pumped semen into the collector without any regard for Rhys.
At least it had been clinical rather than sexual, thank God. Littlewood’s absence was telling. If he’d been there, Rhys had no doubt the prod would have gone somewhere a lot worse. But Littlewood was too afraid of Rhys to show up and take any pleasure in watching him be forced to produce semen to inoculate Littlewood himself.
They had repeated the procedure every couple of hours until late into the night when they returned him to his cell. Now it hurt to move. The muscles of his lower back, abdomen, and thighs had all spasmed and locked with each forced ejaculation. Rhys lay there curled into a ball and didn’t dare try to stretch. He was too intent on his misery and on wondering at what point it would be too late to save the people here, if Dr. Thanh could come up with a way. He could take some small consolation from the idea that Littlewood was hiding in his quarters, frantically using Rhys’s semen in an effort to live.
Would it be enough for Littlewood to succeed? Would he become a Jug, or would he die the way he deserved to?
Rhys wasn’t sure how long he lay there, but eventually his door crashed open. Terrified that the guards had returned to take him back to the lab, he struggled to sit up, but it was just Dr. Thanh.
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