“But it must,” he says, more to himself than to me. “Can I make you feel the same sensations you made me feel?”
My eyes go wide. Oh.
“It’s a little different,” I begin, noticing how sharp his features are. He’s hanging onto every word. “I don’t have the same anatomy,” I gesture vaguely to my pelvis, “but generally speaking, yes.”
Death’s eyes light like an inferno. He takes a step forward, intention written into every solemn line of his body. “So you tasted me and gave me pleasure but didn’t stick around long enough for me to return it. I would’ve.” Another ominous step forward. “That I can swear to you.”
By the look in his eyes, I believe it.
He takes another step. “You must ache as I ached—as I still do ache. Let me ease it.”
Ease it?
The thought of my fingers in his fine hair as those supple lips stroke my core—the very ache he speaks of now blooms within me.
“What would you do if I said yes?” The words are out before I can stop them.
Why did I say that?
Now Thanatos prowls forward, his eyes blazing. “Let me show you.”
I nearly trip over my own feet I back up so fast.
I put an arm out. “Wait—wait!” I say.
Very, very reluctantly, he pauses.
My mind is racing. I didn’t mean for him to actually act on the question, though now that the thought is in my head, I can’t get it out.
Who knows what would’ve happened if, right then, two skeletons hadn’t cut across the room, hoisting a chest between them.
I’ve been so focused on the horseman that I forgot about the dead moving around us, but now that I look, I see signs of them everywhere, stacking dishes, carrying crates, wandering down the halls.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Thanatos doesn’t look like he wants to answer.
“Packing,” he bites out.
My eyes move over them again. “Why?”
“Are we not going to finish our previous conversation?” he demands.
“There’s nothing to finish,” I say.
“On the contrary, there is the matter of finishing your pleasure.”
More heat rises to my cheeks. He takes another step forward, as though to resume.
I put my hand up again. “Oh my God, Thanatos, stop. I don’t want that right now!” I say this even as my pussy throbs in protest.
“I disagree,” he says vehemently, as though he can sense it as well. “I think you’ll find that any experience I lack in this I will happily make up for with enthusiasm.”
He thinks I don’t want this because he’s inexperienced? I want to laugh. Being a giving lover far outstrips any inexperience. It’s his eagerness that has me backpedaling. I can feel the power I wrested from him last night now slipping through my fingers, and I’m unwilling to part with it.
“I haven’t had breakfast yet,” I say, throwing out the first excuse I can think of. “And your servants are packing—why are they packing? What’s going on?”
Death might not concede defeat all that easily, but I can see that my words have stopped him—for now.
His jaw clenches. “You have your instincts … and I have mine.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“I need to keep moving.” The confession comes out quiet.
Moving … and killing.
The thought chills my blood.
“Us horsemen were made to travel and destroy,” he continues. “I could snap my fingers and wipe out humanity in less than a day—”
Fear curdles in my chest.
“—but I won’t,” he continues. “That is not the task set before any of us horsemen. All four of us brothers must understand the creatures we are annihilating. That is why I visit each town. Only once I’ve truly come to understand humans can I make my ultimate decision on them.”
I stare at him aghast as it hits me all over again that he holds the power to destroy or save us all. And I am somehow supposed to change his mind.
“But you don’t know anything about us,” I say softly. “You kill a town before you even ride through it.”
“All the same, I must ride through them.” He glances at the walls around us. “And now, you will ride with me too, Lazarus.”
Outside the mansion, a procession of dead wait underneath the midday sun. Dozens more move about the courtyard, their brittle forms loading the final chests of clothing and crates of food and wine into wagons hitched to skeletal horses. All those sun-bleached bones—both human and equine—move as the living might, as though sinew and muscle and flesh held them together rather than magic alone. Some of the undead servants even seem to have their own particular gait, a trait that must’ve carried over from life into death.