“Oh my God,” I shield my eyes, “put some clothes on! No one wants to see that!”

He frowns. “Your human sense of propriety is absolutely ridiculous.”

For all this dude’s knowledge, there are very obvious holes in his education—like, for instance, what makes humans as uncomfortable as fuck.

“It doesn’t change the fact that seeing you butt-ass naked is not on my shortlist of things to do during the apocalypse.”

Not that it’s a bad body or anything. I mean, if circumstances were different …

“Why you tell me these things when I want you to suffer is such a quandary,” he says.

“Can you just put some pants on?”

Really that’s all I ask.

He comes up to me, every inch—and I mean ev-er-ry inch—on display. I take in those glowing amber tattoos that are so foreign and beautiful. My eyes move to his massive shoulders and his tapering torso; my gaze dips lower, to his abs, then to …

Maybe it’s just sitting next to the fire, but suddenly, the urge to fan myself is overwhelming.

“Please,” I plead.

“When I begged you for mercy, did you grant it?”

This is so ridiculous.

“No, but—”

“No,” Pestilence agrees. “And for this reason, I too shall overlook your pleas.”

He’s not getting the fact that being shot in the face and staring at an impressive example of the male form are two entirely different tiers of suffering. No, scratch that, they’re not even tiers. They’re like homophones; they sound the same but the words mean two totally different things.

“You’re really all for this eye-for-eye justice,” I mutter.

An Old-Testament God is definitely running the show here.

“You’re seriously going to make me look at you naked?” I ask

“Where you look is your concern.” He steps up to the fire and seriously, I can’t even stress how hard it is to not look there.

Really, really hard. (Bet the horseman wouldn’t get that joke.)

My brain is slow to process the fact that Pestilence is using the heat of the fire to dry himself off. Which means that he’s going to be standing here for a while.

Time for me to skedaddle.

Just as I’m about to leave, the horseman beats me to it. He turns and begins walking out of the room, his tightly coiled muscles rippling with the movement.

“Lay down on the couch and take off your shirt,” he orders over his shoulder as he retreats.

I freeze at the command.

He’s naked, and now he wants me to undress …

What in the world?

To be honest, I’m more baffled than anything else. I didn’t get sexy-time vibes from Pestilence—despite the fact that he was happy to prance around in his birthday suit. Not that it stops me from grabbing the fireplace poker. I will beat the crap out of this guy if he does try anything.

I’m just … stupefied at the idea.

I tense when I hear the horseman’s footfalls coming closer. A moment later he enters the living room. My muscles relax an iota when I see he’s donned his black clothing. He’s even put his boots back on. The only thing missing is his gold regalia.

For all his threats about remaining naked, the horseman has poor follow through.

In one of his hands he clutches a small item.

Pestilence pauses when he sees me, my shirt very much on, iron poker in my hand.

He sighs. “So be it.” Taking several long strides, he crosses the room.

I swipe at him, and just like all those idiot horror-movie victims, it does nothing. Pestilence plucks the poker from my hand and grabs the back of my neck, hauling me over to the couch. He throws me face down onto the sofa, and then his knee is pressed against my back.

“Humans,” he mutters.

My breathing is coming in heavy pants. I buck, but it gets me nowhere.

A moment later I hear material rip as Pestilence tears the back of my shirt open.

The horseman’s fingers hook beneath my linen bandages, the pressure causing me to jerk from a sudden burst of pain as my wounds wake up, and then he begins ripping through those too. He tears the linen apart like it’s nothing more than tissue paper.

The process hurts. I don’t think Pestilence is deliberately trying to harm me, but every brush of his knuckles or tug against my skin flares up my wounds.

At some point, it ends. Goosebumps break out across my skin as the cold air of the living room kisses my flesh.

There’s a pause, and then the horseman’s warm palm brushes against my skin. His touch is only there for a moment.

“Sit up,” he orders.

What?

Clutching the remaining tatters of my borrowed shirt to my chest, I do as he says.

“Shirt off,” he says, sounding vaguely annoyed.

I let out a shuddering breath.

I don’t want to do as he asks if only because, despite how open he is with nudity, I’m not. But now … I’m remembering the way my body dragged across that asphalt, and the remorseless look in Pestilence’s eyes the last time I disobeyed him.

This is not a human I’m dealing with. He won’t hesitate to hurt me more if I resist.

And I’m tired of resisting. It just feels so … useless against this unstoppable force.

I shrug off my shirt, doing my best to cover my breasts with my arms.

Pestilence’s hand moves to my back, his fingers splayed out. His touch is gentle, but I jerk at the feel of it anyway.

“Hold this against your front,” he says from behind me.

I glance down at what he’s offering. It takes me a second to register that the white cloth he’s holding out to me is gauze.

Bandages. He means to bandage me.

I let out a shuddering sigh that ends up sounding like a sob. Alright, maybe it was a sob. And that sob turns into a hiccupping laugh, which turns into another laugh. And then I can’t stop laughing, even as tears begin to slip out from my eyes and I’m no longer sure whether I’m laughing or crying, because.

Because.

Because oh-my-fucking-God, I shot a man and lit him on fire and even now I want to throw up that I could do that to anyone, even a harbinger of the apocalypse. But the nightmare didn’t end there. I was tied up and forced to run behind the same undying creature that I thought I killed, the same creature that’s killing us all off. And I was then dragged, and my arm was wrenched out of its socket and my back feels like it was torn to bits—not to mention my legs—and I had to watch a man die the most horrific death, and now I’m being patched up when I thought I was going to be physically humiliated, and ugh, this nightmare is not going to end because Pestilence is an ungodly psycho who isn’t satisfied with destroying life as we know it. He must make an example of mine along the way.

Now I’m no longer laughing, and I’m not even sure you could call this crying. It’s a full body sob, like my mind’s trying to purge everything it’s witnessed

“I hope you’re enjoying this,” I say through my tears.

“I am,” Pestilence responds joylessly. “Here.” He passes me the roll of gauze. Still shaking with the force of my emotions, I take the bandages and wrap the linen across my torso, then pass it back. The two of us do this over and over again until he’s redressed my wounds.

I wipe my eyes, clear my throat, and pull myself together.

Deep breath.

It’s all going to be okay—or it isn’t, but that’s okay too.

Once I trust myself to speak, I say over my shoulder, “I appreciate what you’re doing, but if I don’t clean the wounds, they’re going to get infected.” I mean, they might not, but that’s a gamble.

I suppose I should simply be grateful for this little bit of kindness.

“That’s unnecessary,” the horseman says.

“What do you mean that’s unnecessary?” I ask, trying to riddle out what he means.

“Your wounds won’t become infected.”

I swivel more fully to face him. “How do you know that?”

He looks heavenward, like he’s trying to find both God and his patience in the rafters. “Because I control infection in all its forms.”

Seriously? So not only can he prevent me from catching the plague, he doesn’t need to clean my wounds to keep infection at bay?

“Then why change the bandages at all?” I ask, facing forward again.

“An injury this large demands upkeep for it to heal properly,” Pestilence says. He rips the gauze from the roll and ties it off. “Now, give me your wrists.”

I do so, oddly mesmerized by the situation—and by Pestilence, if I’m being honest.

He leans over my wrists, his wavy golden hair falling in front of his eyes as he unwinds the old gauze. At this angle, the horseman looks heart-wrenchingly innocent, which is an odd thing to say about a man, particularly one who has a healthy kill rate under his belt. Perhaps it’s simply that he’s being gentle for once, or that I’m finally getting a glimpse of his (vanishingly small) humanity.

My brows furrow as I stare at his bent head. “Why are you doing this?”

“Suffering is meant for the living.”

I don’t know why I expect a different answer. And I get it. I hurt him, so he hurts me. We’re both just following script. It’s just this moment that I don’t get. Watching him care for me, being tender with me. It’s unsettling enough to expect an answer beyond, I want to make you suffer.

But if there’s another explanation, I’m not going to get it.