Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,108

have overtaken the estate’s main room. The Reaper kicks open the door to the courtyard, and then we’re outside.

The warm night air brushes against my skin. All around us, I can hear nocturnal creatures calling to one another, unaware that there’s an apocalypse going on in their midst.

I know I should wait to disrobe the horseman until we reach his room, but—maybe it’s the alcohol or the sexual tension, or fuck, maybe it’s simply the fact that this man actually knows how to work his lips—I don’t know, I’m simply impatient.

I reach for Famine’s armor, my hands meeting the hard metal of his breastplate. He lets my body slip through his hands so that he can grab the low-cut collar of my filmy dress—

Riiiip. He tears it clean down the middle, exposing me almost completely.

I guess I’m not the only one impatient.

I give the Reaper and his armor a hopeless look. “Well, that’s just not fair.”

A low laugh slips out of him, and it pulls a shiver from me.

With deft fingers he unfastens his armor, shucking it off piece by piece. Once he’s down to his shirt and pants, my lips are back on his, my bare flesh pressed against the black fabric still covering him.

I pull at it while I kiss him, and together the two of us hurriedly remove the last of his clothing.

Famine pulls me in close, and I revel in the feel of his naked skin against mine. He’s so much taller than me that he has to lift me up to better kiss me. My hands go to his shoulders, then slide to his biceps—

“Wait, wait,” I say, breaking off the kiss. “Put me down.”

The Reaper’s eyes are hazy, but he does as I say. Rather than staying in his arms, I back away from him.

His gaze narrows, and some of the desire clouding it now vanishes.

“What is it now?” he asks.

“I want to look at you,” I say.

“You want to look at me,” he repeats tonelessly.

My gaze sweeps over him, from that beautiful, wicked face that I’ve all but memorized to the less familiar parts of his body. His shoulders are pleasingly wide, and then there’s those glowing tattoos that ring his neck and upper chest like some sort of thick necklace. The pale light of them illuminates the plants around us.

My gaze moves lower, over a muscled torso that God just gave him because for whatever reason Famine has to go around looking like a babe while he kills us all. His torso tapers off to a slim waist and—

This is a well-endowed man.

“Well?” he says. “Is your primitive human brain satisfied?” he says.

I flash him a wolfish smile, approaching him once more. “You’re really pretty,” I say.

“Pretty?” he says derisively.

I walk into his arms. “It’s a compliment.”

He grimaces at that.

The horseman scoops me up and carries me forward. But rather than taking me to his rooms, a few steps later the Reaper sets me down on the moist earth. He spreads my legs so that he can kneel between them, his gaze moving over my own body.

Without giving me any sort of indication, Famine leans forward and presses a kiss to my lower abdomen. From there, his lips skim up my belly. His mouth pauses at the scars on my stomach, the ones his men gave me.

“Forgive me,” he says, so softly I almost miss it.

I swallow. I hadn’t thought the horseman would regret any action of his.

My eyes find his. “It’s in the past.”

He sits up a little, placing a hand on my scars even as he searches my face. “I think you are remarkably brave,” he says, “and your compassion is uncommon and admirable. I owe you my life twice over, and that is no little thing.

“And, for what it’s worth,” he adds, “you’re also pretty. Excessively so.”

I feel my face heat from all the praise. “Why are you telling me this?”

His eyes are steady on mine. “Because you are human and I imagine you like compliments far more than I do. And for whatever insufferable reason I want to give you many.”

My heart begins to pound loudly.

“Now,” he says, a sly smile curving along his lips as he drapes himself over me, “enough of this.”

He punctuates the thought by recapturing my lips. His mouth is demanding and everything about the kiss feels intimate.

I wrap my legs around him. He’s hard and ready, but rather than jumping right to sex, he begins to move down my body, placing kisses as