My finger slips over the back of his hand and up his tan forearm, beginning to touch all the skin I’ve told myself not to touch. Beneath my fingertip, I can feel the thick bands of his muscles. Muscles that, to the best of my knowledge, formed into existence a little over a decade ago.

“Wife.” War’s voice has gone rough with want, and there are a thousand desires in his eyes. He’s starting to lean forward, and he looks like he’s going to pounce on me at any second.

Fuck, I think I want to find out what that feels like, just as I want to know what it would feel like to have War’s hips nestled between my thighs, his massive body pressed against mine …

I’m leaning forward too.

I almost manage to forget everything else.

But then, there’s a lot to forget. Too much.

I can hear the screams from battle, and I can see the way the birds circled those conquered cities. I remember the corpses—all those corpses—littering so many kilometers of road, and War’s armor covered in blood.

I release his hand. He’s handsome and kind and he saved my life, but as he said—

I am not like you, and you should never forget that.

Abruptly, I stand. “I think I need to go to bed.”

You idiot, Miriam. To think that you almost initiated something with the horseman.

Loneliness is clearly getting the better of me.

I can feel the horseman’s gaze on my back as I move over to my pallet. Just like the first time we traveled, mine is heaped with blankets. I’d take War’s instead, just to make a point that I can stand to sleep like a miser, but considering the way we were eye-fucking each other only a moment ago, he might get the wrong impression.

And I don’t think I’d have it in me to turn him down twice.

As I take off my boots, War puts out the last of the fire. I expect him to say something about what just happened—some promise for more, some frustration that I slipped from his grasp (literally) once again, but he doesn’t.

It’s unnerving as hell, mostly because I’m reminded that as brutal as War is, he’s a strategist. And I think he knows how to play me.

Shortly after I lay down on my pallet, he does the same, removing his shirt as he does so. I can see his tattoos glowing in the night.

“You don’t need to go to bed just because I am,” I say.

“I don’t want to be awake when you’re asleep. Talking with you reminds me of how lonely it is to exist.”

Those words tighten my chest. I hadn’t imagined that the horseman might feel that way when he lives among a horde of humans. To be honest, I hadn’t considered that he was even capable of feeling lonely. Loneliness is a very vulnerable, very human feeling. It doesn’t fit my notion of War.

Maybe your notion is wrong.

He’s right there. It’s not too late to be a little less lonely for an evening.

“Miriam,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.

“Mm?” I say.

“Tell me something beautiful.”

I’m not sure I heard the horseman correctly. He wants to hear about something beautiful? I didn’t think a man like War had room in him for something like beauty.

My notion of him is most definitely wrong.

I turn on my pallet so that I can look at the horseman. He lays on his own bed, staring up at the stars. He must feel my gaze on him, but he doesn’t turn to me.

Something beautiful …

The story comes to me almost immediately. “My father was Muslim. My mother was Jewish.”

He’s quiet.

I run my fingers over the cloth of my blankets as I speak. “They met at Oxford while they were both getting their doctorates. My dad told me he heard my mother’s laugh before he saw her face. Supposedly that’s when he knew he was going to love her.”

My fingers still. “They weren’t supposed to love each other.”

“Why?” War’s voice comes from the darkness.

My eyes move to him. “Their families didn’t want them to be together—because they were from two different cultures and two different religions.” My father, Turkish-American, and my mother, Israeli.

The horseman doesn’t say anything to that, so I continue.

“In the end, it didn’t matter to them what their families thought. They knew that love was love. That it can bridge all gaps.”

I exhale. Now my parents are gone and this great love story I believed in as a kid came to a shit ending.

So maybe it’s not beautiful, after all. The world takes away everything, in the end.

Now he turns his head to face me. “So, you find love beautiful, Miriam?” he asks.

“No,” I say, my eyes meeting his in the near-darkness. “Not love itself.” Everything I’ve ever loved I’ve lost. There’s no beauty in that. “It’s the power of love that I find beautiful.”

It can change so many things—

For better, or worse.

Chapter 24

I wake against War.

Just like the last time this happened, I’ve left my pallet, my body gravitating towards the horseman’s like a magnet.

I lift my head a little and see that at least this morning, War has left his own pallet as well, the two of us meeting somewhere in the middle.

That only makes me feel a smidgen better.

My eyes move to the horseman. He’s still asleep, his long lashes fanned out against his cheeks. I feel my skin heat even as I slowly allow myself to settle back into him.

Is it wrong to reimagine this situation? Because I want to. So badly.

The longer I’m pressed to him, the more my body awakes to his. I’m aware that he’s made of muscle and perhaps nothing else, and that all of that muscle feels so very good against me. There’s also a perverse part of me that enjoys feeling small and protected right here in the cocoon of his arms. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt protected.

My gaze moves to his chest, where his pectorals are wrapped in those glowing tattoos. Before I can think better of it, I lift a hand and trace one. Beneath my touch, the horseman’s skin pebbles.

War’s arm tightens on me, and he wakes with a slow, devil-may-care grin. I wonder how many more of those I’ll get today. I’m horrified to realize that I’ve started to anticipate those smiles. The horseman doesn’t do much smiling, so each one I win gives me perverse pleasure. Emphasis on perverse.

“Wife, you’re making a habit of finding your way into my arms.”

A habit that, judging from his face, he’s going to do nothing to deter.

“You met me in the middle,” I say a little defensively because I’m feeling an awful lot like I’m pursuing him right now when it’s been the other way around.

War gives me another sleepy smile, which heats my core.

“How could I not?” he says. “In sleep I don’t have nearly so much restraint.”

He still hasn’t let me go, and I haven’t tried to move out of his arms. I think neither one of us is all that eager to end this moment.

The horseman reaches out and traces the scar at the base of my throat. “How did you get this?”

The question shatters my mood.

The explosion roars through my ears, the force of it knocking me into the water.

Darkness. Nothing. Then—