Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,112
one person who understood my pain, it would be him.
“I shouldn’t tell you this,” I admit, “but sometimes … sometimes—God this is perversely fucked up—sometimes I’m actually grateful you and the other horsemen are killing us off.”
Famine goes still, those unnerving green eyes tracking me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t really want to make him believe that he’s doing some good deed by wiping us all out.
I rub my temples, feeling like I need to explain myself. “When I think of all that’s been done to me and others like me, when I think of every mean act I’ve seen—acts done without remorse or a second’s thought—sometimes it feels like there’s something fundamentally wrong with human nature. I don’t understand why we can be so hateful to one another.”
I feel shame as I speak, but then—in the wake of my words—lightness, like I’ve unburdened myself.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Famine asks.
“That I sometimes hate people just as much as you do?” I say. “Was I supposed to? Would it have changed anything?”
The look he gives me says plainly that, yes, it would’ve.
There’s a long pause. Finally, the Reaper says, “If you feel this way, then why do you get upset when I kill?”
A hollow laugh slips out. “I don’t always hate humanity. And even people who do bad things aren’t always bad.”
Famine gives me an incredulous look. “Like your aunt and the woman who was going to give you to me.”
“Elvita,” I say.
“Fuck her and her name too,” Famine says. “You can’t give someone away like they’re a sack of flour or a candlestick. You are a person.”
Does the horseman realize he just basically said that humans have some inherent value? That’s new …
“And you can’t routinely beat someone and pretend to still love them,” he continues.
“You don’t know that,” I say, my voice coming out as a whisper because he touched on something real and deep. “It’s not that black and white.”
“Are you serious?” he says, disbelieving. “We’re talking about the people who hurt you, Ana. How can you come to their defense?” Famine looks outraged on my behalf.
“They gave me a home when no one else would,” I argue.
“I would’ve,” he says.
“Am I supposed to regret not heading off into the sunset with the man who murdered my entire town?”
“They were scum who abused a kid—and they abused me.”
The moment the words are out of his mouth, his jaw clenches and unclenches.
I open my mouth to argue with him some more when he stands, scooping me up in the process. “Enough of this,” he says, carrying me towards the wing of the estate where his rooms are. “I want to taste that pussy of yours again, and damn you, but the concessions I would make just to get your cunning mouth back on my dick.”
Concessions? Now that’s piqued my interest. Maybe I’ll still get my moment to save humanity after all.
A blowjob to end all bloodshed. I really do like the ring of that.
Chapter 37
Late the next morning, I wake up in a bed that’s not my own. Which, really, isn’t all that strange, now that I have some time to process where I am.
Famine’s room. Heitor’s house.
I sit up, only to realize that my lips are swollen and my clothes are missing, my hair is a fucking mess, and my head—
Fuck me—I haven’t had a headache this bad in who knows how long.
A moment later, the nausea surfaces.
There’s a fancy toilet in the bathroom, but it might as well be in a different city, it’s too far away. There’s a decorative vase resting near the bed.
That’ll have to do.
I barely have time to scramble over to it, buck naked, before my stomach is purging itself of everything I ate and drank in the last twelve hours.
As I retch, last night comes back to me in all its lurid detail.
And oh, was it lurid.
I clutch the ceramic vase to me and hurl again, though this time I’m not sure whether it’s from the alcohol or the memory of my bad, bad choices.
I can still feel Famine’s touch on my skin, his lips pressed against my pussy.
I let him eat me out. Good God. I let a horseman of the apocalypse eat me out.
At the memory I feel myself blush. Me, the professional prostitute, blushing—over oral, no less.
But Father have mercy, I’d enjoyed it too. And then there was our very painfully real conversation. He saw my scars, he got angry on my behalf.