You have awoken my heart.

There it is, out in the open, what I have desperately been running from.

A shiver runs through me as I take in Pestilence’s form. He’s not the only one who’s been affected by the other’s presence.

I begin to lean towards him, ready to do all sorts of stupid and ill-advised things because I’m just so tired of fighting this.

Before I get the chance, the horseman reaches out and runs a hand up and down my arm. “You’re cold,” he says. “Forgive me, Sara, the elements do not affect me the same way.” He rises to his feet, then reaches out for me.

Grabbing my beer, I let him help me up and follow him inside, my body tightly wound in anticipation. It doesn’t dissipate—not when Pestilence leaves my side to start a fire, not when I move the candles and oil lamps into the living room. The only thing that seems to have any effect on my giddy nerves is my beer … and I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s helping the situation either.

Not that it stops me from grabbing another two from the icebox—one for me, one for Pestilence.

By the time I return to the living room, the fire is just blooming.

I pass the horseman one of the drinks, feeling a twinge of guilt for giving him a taste for the stuff. But then my eyes meet his and my nerves rise and I praise God in all His wrathful glory that alcohol exists.

Taking a long swallow, I sit down next to the fire. Pestilence lounges across from me, leaning his weight on one of his forearms, his new beer sitting untouched next to him. His gaze moves from the fire to me, flames dancing in his eyes.

“Do you ever wish things were different?” I ask. “That you and I weren’t supposed to be mortal enemies?”

“What good does wishing do, Sara?” he says.

I want to tell him that wishing makes all the difference, but it sounds too cheesy, like something people used to say before the Four Horsemen landed, back when the world made sense. Wishing doesn’t fill your belly, or stop your house from burning down. It doesn’t make your car drive, or save you from the plague.

“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I just want to stop feeling this way.” I hate this guilt that’s eating me up. “When I used to look at you, I’d see a monster,” a beautiful monster, but a monster nonetheless, “but I don’t anymore.”

“What do you see when you look at me?”

Rather than answering him, I lean forward and brush my lips softly against his. He seems content with that, his hand coming up to cup my cheek.

Gently, I push his shoulder back until he falls against the floor. He pulls me down with him, our bodies pressed together.

My mouth finds his once more, and suddenly, the fire isn’t simply at my back. It’s beneath me, in me, searing through my veins.

I pause to run a finger down the horseman’s face. He really is problematically beautiful, with his high cheekbones, sharp jaw, and his guileless eyes.

“Right now,” I say, finally ready to answer his question, “I see a man.”

A man to kiss, to touch, to lose myself in.

“I am ageless, Sara.”

If that’s supposed to make any sort of sense, then it’s lost on me. Maybe that’s his way of protesting my answer. Whatever.

I return to his lips and fall into the kiss. He might be ageless, he might be a force of nature rather than a human, but in the end, I find I don’t really care. Pestilence is Pestilence, and that’s all that really matters to me right now.

The hard planes of his body fit just right against mine, and his touch feels like it was made for me. I reach for the straps of his armor, hopelessly confused about how to remove it. His hand covers mine, and for a split-second, my stomach plummets.

He’s going to stop me.

Instead, Pestilence moves my hand and unfastens his metal breastplate himself. He makes quick work of the rest of the armor, until it all litters the floor around us.

The problem with armor, I’ve now come to realize, is that even after all the fanfare of getting it off, there’s still his clothes to deal with.

Then again, the longer it takes to undress him, the greater the anticipation …

He watches me wondrously as I grab the edge of his shirt and slip it over his head.

Glorious man. I could stare at him for hours, trying to memorize every inch of his strange, beautiful skin.

Tentatively he reaches for my jacket, and I help him shrug it off. The two of us make quick work of my layers of clothing until I’m down to just a bra and jeans. I slide the straps off my shoulders, then reach around and unclasp the hooks holding it fast.

Pestilence stares at my bare chest, and a part of me is dying to know what he’s thinking. Reaching out, he tentatively runs his hands over my breasts. Heat floods his expression. He may say he’s not a man, but he’s aroused all the same.

I lean in and press a kiss to his chest, right over one of the angelic markings. “What does this one mean?” I ask, my breath fanning over the foreign word.

He gives me an odd look. “‘Pestilence.’”

His name.

I move my attention down, where another band of golden markings dip beneath his waistline. I’ve caught a glimpse of the entire spread before, but I’ve never had a chance to really look at these lower characters. Even now, they’re hidden from sight.

My hand moves for his pants. Pestilence catches my wrist, his chest rising and falling with obvious want.

I think he knows this is different. Tonight is different. It’s one thing to kiss and admire—to even touch—but it’s another to pursue this.

He stares at me for what feels like an eternity. Then, coming to some decision, he rises to his feet.

I think this is where I get turned down.

Only, it never happens.

He reaches for his boots and pulls them off. Then the horseman’s hands go to his pants. He hesitates for only an instant before he unfastens them. The entire time his eyes are on me.

Pestilence steps out of the last of his clothes, leaving him as gloriously naked as the day he was born … er, created.

It’s physically difficult to look at the perfection of him in the firelight. It makes his skin glint like muted gold and his markings to glow all the brighter.

He stares at me with such intensity. “I didn’t tell you the full truth, Sara.”

I stare at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

For a moment, all I hear is the crackle of the fire.

Looking as though he’s coming to some great decision, Pestilence draws in a breath.

“That day in the woods, the day I found you, I intended to kill you.”

A good dose of my desire dampens at his admission. Nothing like hearing your post-apocalyptic boyfriend once wanted to murder you to throw a wrench in the mood.

I sit back on my haunches. “What changed your mind?”

He kneels in front of me. “The light that filtered through the trees that night cast strange shadows on your tent, and one of them was this one.” He takes my hand and moves it low on his pelvis, right over one of the curving characters. It takes a helluva lot of effort to stare at the glowing word rather than let my eyes continue downward.

I stroke the skin softly. “What does it mean?”

“Mercy,” he breathes.

Something superstitious ripples down my spine, drawing out the gooseflesh.

“And so you didn’t kill me,” I say, my gaze finding his.

“And so I didn’t kill you,” he agrees, the fire glittering in his eyes.

All this time I’d been hating on God, when He (or She—let’s be gender equal here) was the very thing that stopped the horseman from killing me all those weeks ago.

And now, here we are.

His hands go to my jeans.

He hesitates, probably waiting for me to change my mind. And maybe after that admission I should change my mind.

But I don’t.

I lift my pelvis, angling my body to better help him remove my pants.

Pestilence does so, reverently looking at each patch of exposed skin as it’s unveiled. He traces a finger along the edge of my ill-fitting panties.

“I wished to be convinced of human depravity …” he says under his breath, “but instead, this.”

His fingers hook around the underwear, and then he’s pulling it off of me. And with that, the last of the clothes between us is gone.

Moving agonizingly slow, Pestilence drapes himself over my skin. I almost sigh at the sensation of his weight and warmth against me. My hands come around his back, gliding over the thick bands of his muscles. I pull him closer to me, feeling the press of his cock trapped between us.

Pestilence the Conqueror hasn’t tasted conquest at its most carnal. Not until now.

He hooks an arm around one of my legs and lifts it up indecently. He glances down between us, and even though I’m certain he simply intended to see how our anatomy lined up, his gaze catches at my core, and there it stays.

Whatever he sees causes his cock to jerk.

I reach between us, and wrap my hand around it, pulling a groan from him.

“Sara, this is … beyond words.”

And we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.

I guide him to my opening. For several agonizing seconds, he stays there, immobile, soaking up the moment.

“Please,” I finally say. My hands move to the small of his back and urge him on.

“Please,” he repeats, letting out a pained laugh. “I should deny you, but I cannot.”

His breaths are coming faster, his blue eyes piercing me even as his cock begins to push its way in.

I release a breath at the sensation of him filling me up. He feels … sublime.

Pestilence has only partially sheathed himself when he pauses, his forehead dropping to my shoulder.

He releases a shuddering breath, then lifts his head once more to stare at my face as he enters me, his expression one of rapture. His gaze continues to brighten until he’s fully seated inside of me.

“This is suffering,” he says. “Exquisite suffering.”

God is he right. This is that place where pain and pleasure meet.

I reach for him. My fingers brush his crown, which somehow managed to stay on his head this entire time. Gently, I set it aside.

He tracks my every movement but doesn’t protest.

Can’t believe he’s inside me.

If he was breathtaking before, now, this close to me, he’s almost unbearable to look at—like trying to stare down the sun.

Slowly he pulls out of me, then thrusts forward. A groan slips out of him. “Cannot unknow this sensation … surely it will haunt me for all my days.”

He starts out slow, savoring each stroke of his hips like I do good chocolate. But like good chocolate, the savoring gives way to indulgence. His pace picks up, and soon he’s not gently stroking me, but fucking me in a frenzy, his hands finding my hips and pulling me closer, closer.

He stares at me like he’s never experienced anything so wonderul. “Sara, I am … I am in you. A part of you.”

I swallow thickly.

The idea that Pestilence can reach inside me and touch something deep and intimate—if only in the most physical sense—should bother me, but I am decidedly not bothered.

In fact, everything about this feels painfully right, as though this is where he’s always belonged.

I cup his cheek. “You are.”

I bite back a moan as his thick girth slides in and out of me, our bodies making slick sounds as they come together.

He leans his head against mine. “I’ve wanted to be this close to you,” he says. “Close enough to feel your heart beating against my skin.”

I press my hand to his chest, right over his own heart. Beneath my palm I feel it pounding away.

He closes his eyes at the sensation. When he opens them, they glint with so many emotions. “Never want to leave.”

I don’t want you to either.

I give him a soft smile. “You don’t have to yet.”

He marvels at me as I writhe beneath him. I clutch him tight, forcing each one of his strokes to go deeper as my core clenches around him.

Pestilence groans at the sensation, the deep sound heightening my pleasure.

I feel myself building, building …

“Oh my God,” I breathe. Meant to hold out longer. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

The horseman pauses, staring down at me with concern.

“Don’t—stop,” I plead.

He resumes with thrust after powerful thrust and—

Oh—my—God.

I cry out as my orgasm takes me suddenly. My back arches as it lashes through me, blinding me briefly.

Pestilence’s strokes deepen, until he’s slamming himself home. His eyebrows hike up, staring at me in glorious shock as he’s pulled towards his own climax.

I feel his cock thicken, and with a deep groan, he’s coming inside me. My body quakes at the sensation.

He stares down at me, entranced, as his strokes gradually slow. “That was …” He says a word that breathes along my skin, and it’s like God is in the room with us for a brief moment.

Angelic—whatever the word was, it was spoken in Angelic.

“What does that mean?” I ask, aware of how reluctant he’s been to share his native tongue with me.

Pestilence gives me a deep look. “Heavenly. That was heavenly.”