by Joss Ware
Marley was shaking her head. “You’re selling yourself short, Quent. You forget, I’ve known you for…well, too long. More than sixty years, though a woman should never admit to knowing anyone that long. And yeah, you’re all those things. But you changed so much after that trip to Haiti. That was when you began to grow up.”
He snorted. “Yeah, the trip that I signed up for purely to spite my father. The minute I got off the damn plane, I wanted to turn around and get the hell back to my luxury condo in Naples. It was bloody hell.”
“But you didn’t. And you stayed and tore your hands up, working on that hospital. And you met Wyatt and Elliott. And when you came back, you’d changed. You didn’t want to show it, but you did. And don’t think I don’t know about the contributions—the hundreds of thousands you donated afterward. And the other humanitarian thing you went on to Malawi.”
“That was just so I could try to meet Madonna on one of her adoption trips, and shag her,” he quipped.
“Quent.” Her voice was steel and something inside him started to unravel.
“It’s all true. But I don’t have any of those resources anymore, Marley. I’m no bloody good to anyone here except to get close enough to kill Parris Fielding. Oh, he’ll want to see me. He’s egotistical enough that I’ll be able to get to him. And then…well, we’ll see what happens.”
“You might not have the money anymore, Quent, but you’re still the same person. Inside. And…I just don’t want anything to happen to you, now that I’ve found you again,” she said, stepping into him again. She pulled his face down for a kiss.
Marley, Marley… was all he thought.
He kissed her back, their lips cool from the water, bodies warm, mouths familiar and knowing. Sleek and deep and everything comfortable.
They both pulled away at the same time and he saw that she was smiling crookedly at him. “Well,” Marley said, giving him an affectionate pat on the cheek, “if that wasn’t the most distracted, obligatory kiss I’ve ever had.”
Quent blinked and opened his mouth to deny it, but she was already shaking her head. “When you’re ready to move on from Zoë, which I know you will, I’ll be waiting. But I’m not going to be your consolation prize anymore.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve grown up over the last fifty years,” she added with a little laugh. “And while I would always wait for you, Quent, I’m not going to play the games we used to play.”
“Fair enough,” he said, still wondering what had been wrong with his kiss. Then, since they were on the subject, and he was, after all, a man, he asked, “Right, then. Uh…what are you doing for birth control nowadays?”
Marley burst out laughing and gave him a little shove as she turned away. “Don’t tell me you’ve been abstaining and that’s why the air’s so tight between the two of you.”
“Not exactly,” he said, thinking about the two…or three…times he’d not managed to make the withdrawal soon enough.
Bugger it. Zoë could be pregnant with his child. Right now. A flush of heat and emptiness flooded him. What would she do if she found out she was pregnant?
“Can’t help you there,” Marley said, and he heard the deadness in her voice again. “I haven’t had a period in fifty years. No need for me to have birth control. In fact, I spent the first five years screwing any guy I could just so I could forget about what happened.” She looked at him, and the humor was gone from her face. “You know, the fucking nuclear war that destroyed the whole earth. Including you.”
“Right,” he said. What else could he say? His mind was already edging back to the cozy sanctuary where Zoë was hanging out with Fang.
Or…his heart stopped. She might have gone. Out, hunting. Putting herself in danger.
Or out…just out. Just…gone.
“Let’s get back,” he said, trying to get his lungs to work again.
CHAPTER 11
Fang bared his teeth, showing off a broken eyetooth that nevertheless looked wicked enough to do a good bit of damage.
Quent looked at him and said firmly, “Fang, chill,” and walked through the courtyard, toward the entrance to Zoë’s hideaway. Despite his cool actions, the hair at the back of his neck prickled as he strode confidently past the annoyed wolfhound, who sat right inside the doorway.
But other than a low, warning growl, the creature remained still and Quent considered himself successful when he got into the little flat unscathed.
He looked around, but his first instinct was right: Zoë wasn’t there.
Marley had followed him, of course, and when she came in behind, Quent stepped aside and gestured. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to see if I can find Zoë. I may be gone awhile.”
Ignoring Marley’s amused grin, he walked across the room toward the hanging beads. A low glow came from beyond, and he gathered up the clinking strings and walked through. He found himself in a short little passageway, and then came upon a pair of swinging doors like one might find in a restaurant. The glow was stronger, and he felt a wave of heat emanating from beyond.
When he pushed through the metal doors, which were warm to the touch, Quent was blasted by a wall of heat. Immediately, he felt the weight of the heat in his nose and lungs, and the sweat springing along his lower spine.
Kitchen and forge, indeed. The only light came from the red-orange glow of coals spilling from inside an arched brick opening in the center of the room. Heat waves radiated from the oven that had originally baked bread or pizza, shoved in on long wooden paddles. Zoë stood to the side, and as he watched, she used a long pincerlike tool to fish a slender metal rod from deep in the fire pit.
The tip of the rod glowed yellow-white, and she applied a different tool to pinch and flatten the molten metal. Without acknowledging his presence, Zoë rested the metal rod safely on one of the small industrial kitchen’s steel countertops, lining it up with several others. Then she turned back to the forge and reached her tool in for something else.
Her bare arms bulged and gleamed with sweat, and she’d donned a white tank top that appeared to have been trimmed to just below her breasts. Its frayed hem curled up in the back, exposing the long flare of her waist, and a hint of the dimples just above her arse rising from low drawstring trousers. A heavy apron covered the front of her body, strings crisscrossing into a low tie at the back. Zoë’s messy dark hair shone, winging about in every direction except where it was flattened by the ski goggles she wore for eye protection. Gloves covered her hands, but the rest of her mahogany skin glistened and her lean muscles shifted and slid as she used two clamping tools on what looked like the tine-end of a fork.
Quent realized he was having trouble breathing, and it wasn’t just because of the heat in the air. She looked like some sort of exotic, science-fictiony blacksmith, slaving in the throes of hell.
As he watched, fascinated and quite as hard as a rock, she bent the outside tines in toward each other in a half circle, and he realized she was making one of her arrows. The fork tines, their normal curve now exaggerated, were the starburst parts that were ejected from the tip of the arrow when it hit its mark. That brain-scrambling aspect was what made the weapons so effective in fighting zombies.
At last she acknowledged him with a curt look from behind ski goggles framed in neon orange. “Back so soon?” she said, digging through a bucket of metal objects with loud clangs and clinks.
“It didn’t take Marley long to wash up.”
“Not when she had a bit of help,” Zoë replied, her mouth quirking beneath the goggles.
Quent stepped from the wall, which, away from the direct line of the oven, seemed to be the least sweltering area of the room. He came toward her, feeling as if he were wading through the heat. God, it was stifling. Steamy and heavy…and all he wanted to do was get his hands on her hot, slick body.
“Not from me,” he told Zoë firmly.
That caught her by surprise, for he saw her biceps flex and glisten, her elegant throat convulse, then relax. “I find that hard
to believe, genius.”
“Why don’t you put that down and I’ll show you how easy it is to believe.” He’d moved up closer behind her now, feeling the unbearable blast of heat from the forge that somehow made the moment even more charged.
“I’m in the middle of something,” she told him, turning to dip a pinched object into the tub of water in front of Quent. A loud hiss of steam rose between them, but their eyes met through the smoke, through her lenses. Even in the dimness, he felt a renewed blast of heat that had nothing to do with the forge.
“Put it away, Zoë,” he told her. “I’m not feeling very patient right now.”
“You’re going to get burned if you aren’t careful.”
“I’ve no doubt of that. Put it away.”
“If I don’t finish it now—”
“Zoë.” Quent couldn’t keep his hands still, couldn’t stop himself from moving toward her. His shirt stuck to his back, a trickle of sweat slid down his temple and another down his spine. Even his feet felt a little slippery in their sandals, and he could hardly breathe the sultry air—but he had to have his hands on her.
He fitted his fingers around the warm, damp curve of her waist, beneath the apron, and bent to kiss the bare side of her neck. Salty, moist, cinnamony and hot.
God. He closed his eyes, slid his hands up under the apron, lifting the frayed edges of her tank to cover her neat, high breasts. She arched back a little into his chest and he heard the dull clang as the tools clunked clumsily together, but Zoë, his Zoë, his obstinate Zoë, wouldn’t put them down. Not yet.
That would be admitting defeat.
“Quent, for fuck’s sake, I have to fin—”
“Don’t let me stop you,” he murmured into her ear.
Her nipples thrust hard beneath his finger pads, and he stroked leisurely over them, one after the other, delicately and diligently. She bent her head to see to her task, but he felt the rough hitch of her breath against his chest. The back of her neck had bared when she looked down, and he found the little hollow there where nape met shoulder, kissing and nibbling on her damp skin.
Her arms moved above his and he felt the jolting rhythm as she hammered on a piece of metal. Clang, clang…in the same rhythm of the need pounding inside his body, in the pulsing of the massive erection straining his zipper.
“Quent, I’m not…fucking…kid—” she said, and then gave a little gasp. He heard a metallic clunk as she stopped hammering, then silence. A breath later, she arched and shuddered beneath the rhythmic fingers on her nipples.
He smiled into her hair. There we go, luv. “That was a nice surprise,” he murmured, sliding his apparently very talented fingers down beneath the loose drawstring of her pants. “And here I thought you’d just be making jokes about turning up the heat.”
“All right,” she said, obviously trying to keep her voice hard, but failing miserably, “now let me get the fuck back to work.” She tried to sidle away from his grip, but between the hot-and-heavy pokerlike object she held, and the way the workspace was set up, Zoë had nowhere to go.
Quent smiled.
“I don’t think so,” he said, discovering the slick warmth of her sex down beneath those loose pants. “Definitely not.” Oh, yes. She was full and wet and he found the hard little knot buried in the heat of her panties. “Ah, Zoë,” he half sighed, half groaned into her ear when she shivered at his touch.
There was another dull clang as she dropped the metal tools. “Watch out,” she muttered sharply, and he heard something roll and then clatter to the floor near his foot. “Serve your…ass…right if it…landed on…you,” she managed.
“I’m overwhelmed by concern,” he murmured, shifting his feet around in front of hers so that their legs were twined, and her feet tucked backward so she relied on him for balance. He felt her weight shift forward and tightened one arm around her damp belly to keep her steady. Somehow she pulled off her gloves and the next thing he knew, her hands had come to settle around behind her head, onto the back of his, elbows wide and akimbo. The heat clustered in his nose and mouth, settled heavily on his skin, burned from her, but he wasn’t going to let her go.
“I’ve never seen anything so sexy,” Quent told her, sifting, sliding, swirling his fingers in long, sleek strokes, “as you playing blacksmith.”
She tightened against and beneath him, and he felt her gathering up again. Her breath roughened and her muscles trembled, and he buried his face in her shoulder, smelling and tasting the familiarity, coaxing her to the finish once again. Zoë made the little surprised gasp she always did and shuddered from deep inside, her fingers tightening in his hair.
Then he spun her around and tore the goggles away, diving down for a deep, hot kiss, crushing her mouth and shoving her against the wall. Her hands settled on his shoulders, curling there as if they belonged, and she met him, arching against his body as he pressed her into the bricks.
She murmured his name, low and desperate, and the frantic sound sent a surge of need rushing through him. She needed him. And, oh God, he needed her. He suddenly couldn’t imagine life without her.
I love you.
The words popped into his head, clear and solid in the midst of the hot, close desire, and he almost stopped breathing. He’d never said those words…to anyone. Never. I love you, Zoë.
Then something moved; he saw it out of the corner of his eye. Quent dragged his mouth away as Marley came into view. What the—
But then he stopped when he saw her face. Frantic. “I’m sorry, really sorry,” she said, holding up a hand as if to hide her face from what was going on. “I called, but…uh, no one heard me,” she added, still looking away.
Zoë pushed Quent away and straightened her tank top, giving him and then Marley an evil glare. “You can put your damn hand down,” she said, picking up one of her forgotten tools. “There’s nothing to see.”
But Marley had continued. “There’s something wrong with Fang. He’s growling and pacing and he looks really upset. I’m afraid there’s something out there.” She looked at Quent, her face shadowy in the low light, but her crystal blazing soft and white-blue on her golden skin. “I’m afraid they’re out there. Looking for me.”
Zoë dropped her tool with a clatter at the first mention of Fang and started out of the forge without hesitation. Quent looked after her, then back at Marley.
“I’m a little more subtle than that,” she told him with a roll of her eyes. “If I wanted to interrupt you, I’d have found a much less obvious way. I don’t give a shit if you’re balling her, even in a sweaty, stinky place like this. I told you, I’ll be there when you’re tired of it.”
He raised his brows. “The thing is, I’m not so sure I’m going to get tired of it. So don’t hold your breath.”
Frustrated, still pounding with desire—not to mention terrified at his realization—he started off after Zoë. But when he got to the curtain of beads, he stopped and turned back to Marley. “Stay here, just in case.”
She met his eyes, her face taut with worry, her salon-streaked hair tumbling around her shoulders. “I will.”
He started across the room once more, stopping only to rifle through his pack for the limited weaponry he had, and turned back to her again. “If we’re not back in thirty minutes, you’re on your own. Take this.” He handed her a knife and the gun that had belonged to Raul Marck—which left him a gun, a bottle bomb, and a much smaller knife. “And find a way to get to the city of Envy—you saw where the humvee’s hidden. Wyatt and Elliott are there. In Envy. Go north and you’ll find it.”
Zoë burst back in at that moment, Fang on her heels. “Son of a bitch,” she said, rushing over to the windows and pulling the tarps back into place. Quent rushed to help her, closing shutters. “There’s a—a what the fuck do you call it, a truck, out there. Heading this way. Ass-wipe bounty hunter, probably. Might not be looking for you, but you never know.”
Marley’s lips tightened, but she didn’t run screaming off to hide
. “What do we do?”
“Stay here. You too, genius,” she said flatly. “There’s a secret exit through the forge. You’ll find it. I’ll see if I can distract them, and you can take her to safety.”
“Zoë,” he began, starting toward her. At her glare, he stopped and changed tactic. “You mean you trust me not to get my arse in trouble without you around?”
“What the hell is an arse?” But a flicker of humor crossed her face, then was gone. “We don’t have any other choice, do we, if she doesn’t want to get her arse dragged back to the Elite. I’m giving you the chance to get away. Do it.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’ll take her back to Envy,” he said. And she was gone. Quent flexed his hand, then curled his fingers tightly. Waiting.
“Thank you,” Marley said.
“I’m not fucking staying here while she’s out there,” he told her, and started for the exit. “I’m going to cover her. I’ll be back only if the worst happens.”
“Quent,” she said, stopping him once again. “What I said earlier, about you getting tired of her? I don’t think that’s going to happen. But,” she said, her eyes serious, “when she’s the one who walks away…I’ll be waiting.”
And with those happy, gut-truth sentiments ringing in his ears, Quent stalked out after Zoë. And came up short.
Fang sat there, barring the way. And he didn’t look as if he were going to let anyone pass.
From her perch high in a tree, Zoë watched the humvee drive away. Her bow slung over her shoulder, its quiver full, she stared until the shadowy box of a truck rolled off into the darkness.
Why the hell was her chest feeling so damned tight? She’d given him no choice but to leave. Of course he would choose to keep the Elite woman safe.
She clamped her lips together and looked back west, in the direction she’d seen the other vehicle. The one that had set Fang off by coming too close to her hideaway. But it hadn’t stopped, and had continued on its journey to wherever. Whether they were bounty hunters or Strangers looking for the escaped Elite, or simply hunting humans for the gangas, they were long gone.
