he won’t because he wants to do it his way. Satan can’t control his little crotch dropping because he knows he’s gotten further than his previous brothers, and he’s gotten arrogant.”
“So, how are we going to end this?”
“We can’t tonight. I still need to study your blood more. Take a break, Ariel. You’ve been reading those emails all night. We need to eat dinner, and you need to sleep. Remember, you were in a coma for a long time, and you lived rough on the road. You can’t save the world unless you take care of yourself first.”
I shut the laptop and pouted. I knew he was right, but after reading those emails and knowing something worse could be coming, I wanted to end this yesterday.
Chapter 18
L
eif brought me to the front doors instead of back to his apartments. I had no idea what he was doing until I realized Aeron wasn’t back yet. I’d been so engrossed with that laptop, I hadn’t even thought about him being outside these walls. I was a pretty shitty online girlfriend, though if there was anyone you could probably let outside these walls without freaking your shit out, it was the Horseman of Death.
I saw Aeron walking towards the building with a bunch of soldiers, and I ran to hug him. I stopped dead in my tracks and decided against that hug when I got close enough to smell him. It looked like he got up close and personal with the walking dead. All I could see was the whites of his eyes and his teeth when he grinned at me. The rest of him was covered in black blood. The fucker looked pretty damned proud of himself.
“You reek,” I pointed out. “You have Rage Head in your hair.”
“We found a nest a few towns over. They must have made their way in a few days ago and were headed straight for San Quintin. We wiped every single one of those red-eyed mother fuckers out.”
Leif came up to my side and wrinkled his nose.
“What did you do, roll around in them?”
“It was Rage Head Whack a Mole, and they outnumbered us. We all got a little on us.”
“That’s not just a little blood spatter, Aeron. You aren’t setting foot in my building until you take a shower,” Leif fussed.
“I know you crashed the women’s shower,” I told Aeron.
“Technically, you were in the men’s shower, Speedy. I was there with you because everyone in San Quintin knew we were looking for you. There’s been a lot of unknown people here since I left. I was protecting you. Want to shower with me again?”
What I should have done was punch him in his zombie guts covered face and gone back inside with Leif, who hadn’t tried to check out my naked ass so far. But when had I ever reacted normally to anything that had happened since I woke up from that coma? I wasn’t all that offended Aeron saw me naked. I did my fair share of checking him out in the shower too.
And I wanted to do it again. I worked all day poring over that laptop. I deserved to sexually objectify the Horseman of Death after a hard day of work.
“Yeah, I’ll take that shower, but you’re staying far away from me because I don’t want my feet in zombie guts.”
Aeron just smirked at me like he had something planned. Leif just threw up his hands and went back inside.
“One day, I’m going to get called when science is sexy,” he muttered.
Oh, I totally found Leif in his lab coat and goggles sexy, but I was still trying to process that and remember him. I liked what I knew about Leif so far, but I wasn’t ready to get naked with him. I had a feeling there should be a yet behind that sentence, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I still wasn’t fucking their entire team in the Oval Office, but I could admit I felt very comfortable around Aeron and Leif, and I liked them a little more than just apocalypse friends.
Aeron held out his hand to me like he expected me to hold it. I wasn’t touching that hand until he cleaned under his fingernails because it looked like he even had zombie under there too.
“No way. You’re filthy, and you smell like someone wrapped shrimp in a dirty diaper and left it in a sweltering room with no ventilation for two weeks.”
“I do not smell