Page 57 of The Pale Rider
This young kid, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen and seemed pretty trigger happy, raised his gun.
“Who are you, and how do you know Leif?”
“Who the fuck are you that you don’t know me, Sparky?”
A man stepped forward and lowered the kid’s gun for him.
“It’s fine, Javier. Aeron fought in the war, and he’s on Leif’s team. You just don’t remember because you hadn’t joined up before he left.”
“Sorry,” the kid grumble.
“This girl is why you’ve been gone so long?”
“She’s the missing piece, so you need to protect her with your life, and if I find you disrespecting her, I’ll throw you through a wall.”
One man snapped to attention. He was all soldier.
“Men, we have a mission. Escort the princess to the castle and save the kingdom.”
Okay, and apparently a video game geek, but I could work with that. It was like this fucking military parade as they led us safely through all their booby traps. We finally got to the fence, and they took it just as seriously as California did. It was made of sheet metal and barbed wire, but San Quintin took it a step further. There were pikes at the top of the fence, and they had stuck heads on them. Some of them were Rage Heads based on the red eyes that were getting a white film over them, but some of them looked human.
“Do we want to go in there, Aeron? They’ve got human heads on pikes!”
“Your head only goes up there if they are making an example of you. All those human heads belong to murderers, cannibals, and rapists.”
Was that supposed to make it less gross? If I got inside these walls and people were wearing body parts as trophies, I’m not sure I could make myself stay. What if Leif ended up this total psycho?
“Calm down, Ariel. We are safe here. None of these men will hurt you, and you know Leif.”
“I don’t remember a fucking thing about Leif!”
“But, you might when you meet him.”
Our escorts led us all the way to a pristine white building that didn’t look like it had been through a war. Aeron helped me off Meremoth and unloaded the saddlebags.
There was either solar power, or they got the power grid working here too because the front doors slid open, and air conditioning hit me right in the face. The sun was still out, and I was sweaty and nasty. I had a layer of soot all over my face from running through all that burned territory—way to make an excellent first impression.
I wanted to kiss Aeron when he led me down to an area with group showers. I just wanted to get clean, but this was apparently to decontaminate ourselves before we went further inside. I planned on decontaminating myself under this hot water and a fresh bar of soap until someone made me get out. I had exactly one pair of clean underwear left, and I couldn’t wait to slip it on.
I was enjoying my shower so much, I wasn’t even paying attention to the hot, wet naked guy next to me. Aeron was watching me, though.
“As much as I’m enjoying watching you play in the water, we do need to go meet Leif.”
I turned and took in Aeron in all his wet, naked glory. My mouth went dry. Fuck, did he ever look beautiful. And his cock was hard and standing right at attention from watching me shower. What I wouldn’t give for some shower sex right about now. One day, Aeron and I would get our moment, and I had a feeling it would be epic.
“Little Aeron doesn’t look like he wants to go meet Leif.”
“Are you calling my junk little, Speedy?”
“No, it looks like a fucking baby arm, but it’s pointed right at me.”
“The apocalypse is a huge cockblock, Ariel. We can either sneak away and have sex, or you can go meet Leif and find out some answers you’ve been asking me.”
Why couldn’t we do both?
Chapter 34
I
