CHAPTER ONE

 

 

Sixty-three years later

City of Envy

 

Over the years, there were many times Quent regretted not taking that golf club to his father and putting an end to the fear and torture…but never had he felt the regret as strongly as he did now.

Quentin Brummell Fielding looked down at the object on the table in front of him: a clear crystal, perhaps the size of a large man’s thumb. Its clarity was so pure, the stone was tinged with pristine blue and faint gray…yet when it was held to the light, it allowed the beam to shine through unencumbered, untainted. Faintly ice-blue.

Delicate tentacles trailed out from the sides and behind, stylized rays from a sun. Or, in this case, a full moon. Like slender fiber optic threads, the tentacles resembled veins erupting from a heart-like crystal—perhaps a millimeter or two thick where they sprouted from the stone, and becoming as slender as hair or fine thread as they branched out.

“So this is what does it. What gives them immortality.” Quent prodded the crystal with a small pair of forceps. His fingers shook. “This is why they destroyed the world.” He looked up at his friend Elliott, who, in a battle for his life, had hacked the crystal from of one of the immortal humans known as the Strangers.

Removing the crystal was the only way to kill them.

“Yeah,” said Elliott, who was also known to his friends as Dred. “Once the crystal is introduced surgically, embedded in the soft tissue, it sort of roots itself into the body.”

Quent poked the stone a little more sharply. A tip of one of the tentacles broke off and glinted like a minute shard of glass. If he’d used the golf club that day, sixty-some years ago, his father would be dead. And perhaps the world would still be the same, instead of the overgrown wasteland it had become.

But he had not. Quent had rolled under the bed, clutching the five wood—out of reach of the vicious attack, throbbing, broken, bleeding, half-fainting from the pain—and remained innocent of murder yet another day.

And then, thirteen years later, Quent’s father had helped to destroy the world. All for a little crystal that allowed Fielding to live forever.

If Quent had known then what his restraint had cost mankind….

“Are you certain you want to try and read it?” Elliott asked. He’d been a physician, a trauma surgeon, back in Chicago before everything had changed…before Elliott and Quent and three other men had entered a cave in Sedona, Arizona. They’d been on an adventure, using a map that Quent had acquired which supposedly led to a lost Anasazi treasure. 

Sedona was a place known for its mystical properties and concentration of energy, but none of them had any idea how mystical and powerful it would turn out to be.

They had emerged fifty years later to find the human race nearly extinct and 21^st century civilization annihilated. Somehow, they’d resurfaced unaged and unscathed from the destruction that had occurred half a century before. And now, after seven months of trying to find a way to rebuild their lives, the five of them still had no explanation for how or why.

How had they been suspended in time for fifty years?

Why the hell them?

And what the hell was there for them in this world that offered nothing of their previous lives but grief and bad memories?

Quent looked at the crystal, trying to submerge the rise of hatred it invoked. And the deep, nauseating pull in his belly.

This particular stone didn’t belong to his father, but somewhere in this strange new environment that could only be described as post-apocalyptic, Parris Fielding had one of these crystals embedded in his body. It had kept him alive and preserved for the fifty years that had elapsed since the Change.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ll try.”

Under Elliott’s watchful eye, Quent stripped off the gloves he’d taken to wearing when he was in unknown places. They protected him from the barrage of memories, images, and sights that assaulted him when he touched something unfamiliar. If he wasn’t protected, the psychometric ability to read inanimate objects could paralyze him, sucking him into whatever horrors or violence the item had experienced.  Not long ago, Elliott had found Quent collapsed in an alley, barely conscious, lost in a vortex of memories that weren’t even his.

Since then, Quent had become much more careful about what and how he touched things…but with this eerie arachnid-like crystal in front of him, he wasn’t ashamed to admit he was grateful for Elliott’s steadying presence.

Just in case.

He glanced up at Elliott, met his calm blue eyes, and nodded…then looked back down and gently touched the center of the crystal with the pad of his left index finger.

Immediately, he felt a rush of…water. The sensation of being underwater, submerged, surrounded by heavy, fluid weight pressing on him….The sea? It rippled and surged against and around him, powerful and relentless, dark and unforgiving. And cold. The crystal had been in the sea.

Quent steadied himself, pulled back from the tug that would pull him into unconsciousness, and focused half his mind on the room around him, the table beneath his other fingers, his friend watching, the chair beneath his arse…and went a little deeper into the crystal’s memories, touching the stone with a second finger.

White light stunned him, shocking and bold, cutting through the dark sea…and then darkness. Pulsing, pumping, throbbing darkness…he shifted in his seat, adjusting his feet on the floor, grounding himself…but opened his mind a bit further, tried to separate the faces that blurred in a whirlwind around him….

And then he felt a strong tug gripping his arm, and the room slammed back into his consciousness. The crystal was gone, his fingers curled empty into the table top, and Elliott leaned over him.

“You all right?”

Quent nodded, vaguely aware that he needed to catch his breath. “I’m all right. Why did you take it away?”

Elliott settled back in his seat. His face, considered handsome by most was drawn and tight. “You were gone for more than thirty minutes. Your breathing and pulse increased, your color faded. It was time to come back.”

“Thirty minutes?” Quent tried to shake off the wave of unease. Lost for a half hour and it had felt like mere seconds. This fucking ability of his scared the rot out of him sometimes.

Most of the time.

“Was it worth it? Did you get anything important?”

Quent shrugged. “I’m not sure. I saw a lot of faces. Some of them seemed bloody familiar—members of the Cult, right. But they flew by so quickly. One thing I’m damned certain of.” He glanced down at the crystal, then back up at Elliott. “It comes from the ocean. Deep in the ocean.”

Just then, a soft knock interrupted them. Elliott rose quickly and went to open the door, exposing three newcomers on the threshold: Wyatt, Theo, and Lou. Beyond them was a spare, windowless room lined with computers, monitors, printers, and an old license plate hanging on the wall. 

A coppery-haired woman sat at one of the desks, three monitors arrayed in front of her, fingers typing madly, earbud cords dangling from beneath her hair. He knew from experience that anything short of another apocalypse wouldn’t interrupt Sage from her work.

In fact, if he didn’t know any better, Quent might think he was looking into a control center for NASA or even a computer call center…but outside of this hidden subterranean electronics lab, working computers and those who knew how to operate them were non-existent.

“We didn’t wait,” Elliott said as the newcomers filed in. “Quent’s already done his thing.”

“How’d it go?” asked Wyatt. He was one of the five men who’d been in the Sedona cave with Elliott and Quent. He looked from the crystal to Quent, as if to assess any damage. His rugged face was flat and sober.

The other two men, Lou and Theo Waxnicki, had been living here in the city of Envy since the Change. It was they—self-proclaimed “fucking computer geniuses”—who’d collated and built the clandestine computer lab in the decades following the mass destruction. Twin brothers, the two had been working in tandem to construct an underground Resistance against the Strangers by building a secret computer network that could be used for communication as well as research. The driving force behind the Resistance was that the more they knew about the immortal humans who had brought about the Change, the better prepared they would be to combat and eventually destroy them.

Quent, Elliott, Wyatt, and the two other men who’d been in the cave with them—Simon and Fence—had become key members of the Resistance in the last month, partly due to the paranormal abilities at least some of them had acquired. And partly because they had unique knowledge of 21st century civilization before the Change, which was from where the Strangers had come.

Because, of course, they’d lived there. 

“The experiment was a little rough,” Elliott said before Quent could brush it off.

“Well?” asked Lou. Although his eyes gleamed with intelligence and spirit, the lines in his face and the subtle stoop to his shoulders indicated his age. Despite his experience living through the horrors of the Change and the difficult reconstruction that followed, he still bore a youthful air and wore his long silvery hair in a low ponytail. Glasses that had been at the height of geek trend in 2010 perched on a slender nose, and today, he wore a bright yellow t-shirt with “Forget about the bollocks, here come the Sex Pistols” on it in hot pink.

Quent wasn’t certain if it was a shirt Lou had worn in his youth, or one that he’d found more recently. Either way, it wasn’t something he’d ever expected to see a seventy-year-old man wearing.

Lou’s twin, Theo, was a different story all together, and the reason the Waxnicki brothers had been willing to trust the five men from Sedona with the secrets of the Resistance. Theo had been caught in a subterranean computer safe-room during the Change. Something had happened to put him into a sort of sleep mode—perhaps similar to what occurred with Quent and his friends. But Lou had found him only a few days after the devastation, and had been able to awaken Theo.

Yet, over the next fifty years, Theo had hardly aged at all, only recently beginning to sprout gray hairs and stubble that needed to be shaved. So, he looked no more than thirty years old, although, like Lou, he’d lived through the months and years following the annihilation of the world. And, like Quent, Elliott, and Simon, he had acquired his own superhuman ability.

“From what I was able to tell,” Quent explained again, “the crystal comes from the ocean. Deep in the ocean.”

“Not a surprise, given what we’ve been able to find,” Theo said. He wore his jet black hair cropped short around the ears and neck, almost militarily so, but longer and spiky on top. “Between all the damn crystals and the new land mass that seems to have erupted in the Pacific, plus the fact that, thanks to you, we know that the Strangers were all members of the Cult of Atlantis before the Change, the clues continue to point in one direction.”

Quent nodded. Atlantis. Indeed, he’d been the one to recognize the symbol used by the Strangers as one identifying a group to which Fielding had belonged. He’d had no idea that the Cult of Atlantis was anything more than an exclusive club of powerful and wealthy world players until a few weeks ago. His knowledge had collided with the information Lou and Theo had collected over the last half-century, and the results were nightmarishly disturbing.

“Fifty million American dollars to even join the fucking cult,” Lou said, shaking his head, eyes sober. “According to what Simon was able to find out from that female Stranger.” Who was, now, also dead—despite her unnatural crystal.

“What a fucking bargain for immortality,” Quent said. His head had begun to pound, and everything felt tight and stretched. He always felt this way whenever he thought about his father and the hand he’d most certainly played in causing the Change. 

No one was certain exactly how it had happened, of course, but the curious Lou and Theo had hacked into satellites about a year after all hell broke loose and saw that the rest of the world was just as damaged as what had become known as the city of Envy. And they’d recognized a new continent in the Pacific Ocean that may have caused the great earthquakes, tsunamis, and violent weather that followed for almost two weeks.

Quent realized his jaw hurt from clenching it so hard, and that his shoulders seemed unable to move. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to find him and this time, I’m going to fucking kill him.

I should have done it years ago.

That had been his first thought on seeing a picture of his father, of Fielding, standing with two other of what was known as the Triumvirate of the Strangers. One of them was now dead. That left two more, and countless other members of the Cult.

He stood, suddenly needing to get out of this room. 

“I’m going now,” he explained, knowing that his decision was abrupt. But he also read the understanding in Elliott’s eyes. “Up. See you in the morning.”

If Fence, the big, bald guy who always had to make a joke—whether appropriate or not—were there, he would surely make a comment about whether Quent was going up alone or not. Admittedly, Quent was relieved the black guy wasn’t there to do so.

Because he’d be hitting too fucking close to home.

“It’s raining,” Wyatt said. 

Quent shrugged. But his friend was looking at him knowingly and that made him feel like even more of a wank. “Later,” he replied, gathering up his gloves, and left the room.

He passed behind Sage, who actually glanced up as he swished by, but neither of them paused to exchange pleasantries. She offered a vague smile, then returned to her computer screens, keys clicking noisily, aqua-blue eyes focused on the monitor.

On the spiral staircase that snaked up inside an old elevator shaft, Quent met Simon, who was likely coming down to see if he could drag Sage away from her work and up into his bed, since it was nearly midnight.

Power fucking to ya, old chap.

Gloves back on, Quent knew it was safe to jab angrily at the numbered buttons that would, at one time, have selected the floor and opened the door to the elevator, but now acted as a passcode to enter and exit the secret stairs to the computer room.

Great buggering sense of humor the Waxnickis had. Too damn many spy movies. They thought they were fucking James Bond.

Yet, Quent accepted the fact that the computer network and the information they were collecting had to be kept secret, not only from the Strangers, but from everyone else in Envy. Very few people believed or even knew of the horrors their fellow man had suffered at the hands of the Strangers—both during the Change, and in the fifty years since. And since the few who had tried to make their knowledge public had disappeared or been otherwise destroyed, the Waxnickis stuck with their plan of stealth and secrecy.

The elevator shaft opened, and Quent stepped into the dark, ruined hallway of what had once been a casino resort in Las Vegas. At this far side of the building, in an area that hadn’t been maintained after the Change, the corridor seemed deserted and abandoned—a state the Waxnickis carefully preserved, despite their daily visits to the lab.

He could make his way along the halls back to the occupied area of the hotel, and up onto the twenty-sixth floor, where he had been given a hotel room for his own residence. But when it came time to make the turn that would take him in that direction, he kept straight on.

Outside, rain poured. Heavy, steady, but straight so that it looked like a gray and black shower curtain obstructing the night.

If Quent had hoped Wyatt was wrong, or that it might be little more than a soft drizzle, he was bloody disappointed.

Still, not because he expected anything—he wasn’t that cocked up—but because he needed to feel, he stepped out of the building and into the downpour.

Since the Change, the climate in Vegas had shifted from that of a dry desert to an almost tropical one. Rain was plentiful, the temperature mild or hot, and the air humid and too close at times.

Having lived in England until he was eighteen—when he moved an ocean away from Fielding and his riding crop—Quent was used to the damp. And now, as the heavy rain pounded on him, he walked, letting it soak through his stretchy silk shirt, suede jeans, and leather sandals. Good clothing wasn’t always easy to find, but he’d been lucky and had come across an old suitcase filled with duds from a guy about his size. And the guy had had decent taste, which helped. Suede jeans might not be practical, but they looked nice.

The city known as New Vegas, N.V., or, more commonly, Envy, was the largest settlement of people in hundreds of miles—and as far as anyone could tell with the limited communication and transportation, it was the largest in the world. The irony that the formerly hedonistic city, with its superficiality and flashiness, should now be the cradle of humanity was lost on no one who’d ever visited the Strip—including Quent.

Now, with the massive shift in land mass and tectonic plates, what had been the North Strip was under water—covered by the Pacific Ocean, which, unbelievably but irrefutably, now covered California and parts of Nevada, Washington and Oregon. Only a few high-rise casino resorts remained standing, and of those, many of them were in disrepair.

The Strip’s neon lights still glowed red, blue, yellow and green, but much more feebly and in less abundance than they’d done a half century earlier. And the part of the Strip that remained visible was empty of people—a condition that would have been inconceivable back then.

Quent couldn’t help himself. He looked up, trying to peer at the jagged rooftops and glassless windows above him, searching for a lanky shadow, slender and sure and sleek.

But all he got for his trouble was a face battered with sharp raindrops and another wave of anger.

At himself of course. For his foolishness. For wasting his time.

For not fucking swinging that damned five wood sixty-some years ago.

Hell. Could his one decision have made a difference? Kept the Change from happening? He might have spent the rest of his life in jail back then, but at least he’d have had a life.

Quent drew in a deep breath of clean, damp air, then exhaled. Turned his thoughts from the rage that never seemed to completely leave him.

Zoë wouldn’t be out in this weather, lurking in the shadows as she was wont to do. She wouldn’t be slipping down, all warm and slender and bold, to join him in a dark corner, hot and urgent and bold.

A combination of lust and fury tightened his jaw, hitched his steps.

What the bloody hell was he doing out here in the buggering rain?

He was searching, damn fool that he was.

All he wanted to do was find Fielding and kill him. Quent’s life, his purpose for being, had funneled down to nothing but that.

Everything else was just a fucking way to pass the time.

Even walking uselessly in the rain. Even rolling in the sheets with Zoë.

He wasn’t cold, though he was as soaked as if he’d been swimming, and he kept inhaling random droplets of rain. Wet grass and bushes brushed his bare toes as he trudged away from the inhabited area of the city. The clean smell of fresh rain mingled with the underlying must of decay and mold, here in this narrow walkway. Two buildings rose, half-destroyed, jagged, and overgrown, the one on the left taller and more forbidding than on the right. If he straightened his arms to the sides, his fingertips would brush the brick. Soggy leaves and the gentle give of wet dirt softened the cracked and uneven concrete beneath his feet.

The first time he’d met Zoë, she’d saved his life, appearing from nowhere to skewer the ganga that had attacked him. She’d shot an arrow that lodged in the skull of the zombie-like monster, which scrambled its brains and dropped it dead.

No sooner had the creature collapsed than she demanded that Quent return her arrow.

He hadn’t even been certain she was a woman or a slender young man…until she came close enough to touch his face.

And that first time she touched him, just a faint brush of fingertips over his cheek, as if she wasn’t used to doing such a thing, it had seeped into his skin, warm and gentle. Hesitant, and yet…solid. 

Now, Quent leaned against the ivy-covered wall, sending an additional shower of droplets scattering from the leaves. And he looked up again into the unrelieved darkness. Still fucking searching.

Rain blinded him once more, and he turned away, frustrated.

After their first meeting, she’d disappeared, slipping into the shadows, without her precious arrow. He’d taken it with him here to Envy, but before he turned to go, he called after her, into the dark, and invited her to come and retrieve it any time.

A few days later, she had found him in Envy, walking beneath a clear moon, and once again demanded her arrow to be returned. Despite her belligerence and god-awful haircut, Quent was compelled to kiss her.

And that had been all either of them needed. It felt as if something had been released, unleashed…snapped.

The sex that night, and the few other times they’d gotten busy since, had been hot and fast and urgent. It had left him with curled toes, breathless…and, despite its ferocity…comfortable. Settled.

Until she sneaked off into the night without a word. Taking her precious arrows with her.

After that first night, it had become sort of a game. From up on a rooftop, or a high window, she’d shoot an arrow where he’d be sure to find it, then disappear into the night. A day or so later, Zoë would show up, all self-righteous and annoyed and demanding it back, as if he’d stolen it right from her quiver…and then they’d get to it. On the bed. In the stairwell. Against the backside of the hotel. Wherever they managed to tear each other’s clothes off. This had been going on for weeks, but he was unable to keep her out of his mind for long.

He spun suddenly, his foot squishing into mud and then jolting against a wedge of sidewalk, nearly tripping himself. Bloody buggering hell.

What the fuck was he doing wandering in the rain looking for a rude female Robin Hood when there were plenty of other willing partners inside?

Galvanized, he started back.

But once he got inside, rain dripping audibly from his hair and shirt and rolling off the hems of his jeans, Quent knew he had too much of a bag on to go to the Pub. Though the pints were plenty and the waitresses friendly, and Elliott’s lover, Jade, often sang onstage in a definite foreplay sort of way, he’d not be good company for anyone. So Quent walked past. His leather sandals squished softly. 

Maybe after he changed into dry clothing—the suede jeans were already shrinking from the rain—and did something with his hair, he’d change his mind. But unlikely.

What he really should do…what he suddenly wanted to do…was to go back to the computer lab and touch that crystal again. 

If Elliott hadn’t interrupted him earlier and pulled the stone away, Quent might have been able to get more from the gem. The blur of faces might have eased from the fast-forward of a video to a slower parade, and he might have learned something. Identified someone. Seen his father.

He might be able to discover where the Strangers lived or came from. And then he could do what he had to do.

After that…Quent had no thought. He’d probably die in the process, for surely he couldn’t simply kill a leader of the Strangers and walk away unscathed. 

Inside his room, Quent moved directly to the closet and felt up behind the lip of its shelf. Force of habit, first thing he always did when he came back into his space. And when he realized he’d been checking to see if the latest of Zoë’s precious arrows was still there—it was—he felt yet another blast of fury that he was still playing this game.

That he still cared to play it.

“So that’s where you’re hiding them now.”

Quent froze. A rush of heat and anger, a sudden weakness in his knees, and the tug of a smile, both relieved and yet paralyzing, caught him for a moment. He collected himself, emptied his expression, and turned.

“What the hell were you doing out in the rain for so long?” Zoë said in her low, rusty voice. She looked like a Bollywood actress with a rubbish haircut—exotic features, cinnamon-skinned, and her ink black hair cropped and falling every which way around her high cheekbones and jaw. A wide mouth, pointed chin, high, plum-sized breasts and long, lanky limbs completed the package.

She leaned nonchalantly against the wall across the room, behind the door through which he’d just come. The quiver and bow she normally wore over her shoulder rested on the floor. Her entire being shouted condescension and belligerence—but for her dark, almond-shaped eyes. Even in the dim room, lit only by a small lamp in the corner, Quent felt the weight of their gaze. Hot.

Blood surged through his body. “Were you waiting for me?” he asked, his arrogance matching his haughty gaze. “Or was it just that you hadn’t discovered my latest hiding place?”

She stepped away from the wall, graceful and lean in her tight black tank top and baggy, hip-riding cargo pants, and moved further from the door. Just into the room. Watching him. His mouth dried. The blood rushed through him faster, his heart pounded.

“You’ve gotten a hell of a lot more creative since the first time you stuck them under the bed,” she said.

Damn straight. Quent still remembered the impotent fury he’d felt when he discovered that Zoë had come into his room and taken back another arrow he’d retrieved…without seeing him. Without playing the game.

Without the wild, hot tumble on the bed or against-the-wall bang he’d come to expect.

His body felt alive, awake, ready, but he maintained the blank expression and a casual stance…although he had a feeling his bedraggled state might take the edge off his insouciance. “What’s so special about these arrows that you have to keep stealing them back?” he asked, keeping his voice idle as he retrieved the last one from the closet shelf. He’d touched it so many times that it didn’t bother him to do so anymore; same as the other parts of his room. 

“What’s so special?” she retorted. “Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to make them?”

Quent gave her a look that clearly said he didn’t care, but that he had other things on his mind, and was rewarded when he saw her swallow. Hard. He submerged a grin…and a flare of hope. “Right, then. You make them yourself?”

He tipped the arrow from end to end, and inside, the small metal weight rolled from one end of the hollow shaft to the other. It was a bloody brilliant design, and he could well understand how difficult it would be to create one, let alone multiple bolts like this. When the arrow slammed into its target, the little weight barreled into the tip. It lodged into a mechanism that shot a starburst of metal spikes from the sides of the point. 

Perfect for scrambling ganga brains. A bloody fine way to kill them, if a chap didn’t have a small explosive like the bottle bombs he and his friends used.

“Yeah, I make them myself, genius. And it takes a long damned time. So I’d appreciate it if you’d give it back to me.” She held out her hand as if she actually expected him to put the bolt there.

“Come and get it,” Quent said. His voice dipped way low and he met her eyes.

She met his right back. Hot. “My clothes will get wet.”

He smiled. Not with joy or mirth, but with promise.

Her lips moved, parted just a bit, softened, in blatant promise.

Fuck. He had a hard-on the size of a cricket bat and she hadn’t even bloody touched him. 

“Right then,” he said, marshalling his control, keeping his voice nonchalant. “You can always take off your clothes. And then they won’t get wet.”

She turned away suddenly, and for a moment, for a catch of his breath, he thought she would reach for the door. Turn the knob, leave. But then, her back to him, with one swift, smooth movement, she whipped off her skinny little tank top. And sent it flying in a soft arc.

Quent smiled, this time with relief and delight. But he didn’t move. Not yet.

Her bare back was smooth and taut, and her cargo pants rode low on the gentle flare of her hips. He’d never found that look sexy until now. Ragged, dark hair brushed the nape of her neck, but that long, sleek expanse of mahogany skin from shoulder to bum made her look like a slender Shiva.

She kicked off her shoes, some nondescript dark ones that tumbled against the wall, and then he heard the quiet snap—unsnap—of a fastener. Zoë turned back to face him then, and in spite of himself, he caught his breath.

Her hands at her waist, obviously ready to draw down her trousers, her slender, muscular arms alongside those high, palm-sized breasts with tight dark pink nipples…the dark hollow of her throat and the shadows near delicate collarbones…her long, slender neck. And the arrogant lift of her chin. Challenging him yet again.

Bloody buggering hell, did she know how to play him.

“What,” she said, drawing her gaze slowly, heavily, over him, “the hell” —she unzipped her cargos— “are you waiting for? Get out of those wet clothes.” The trousers fell, exposing lean legs and a little white swatch of panties that sagged a bit.

“Come here,” Quent said, in a desperate attempt to regain some control over the situation.

“You’re dripping wet…I don’t want to get cold.” Her challenging look swept over him and he knew he wasn’t going to be cold himself any time soon. 

“If there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that you’re not going to be cold,” he promised, tossing the arrow aside. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Is that right?” she challenged, her voice rough.

“What do you think?”

The next thing he knew, their bodies were smashed together. Somehow, her warm, sleek skin became plastered against his soaking clothes. Her hands shoving into the dripping mess of his hair, his palms cupping her panty-covered bum, their mouths ferocious and demanding.

Oh God. Yes. Thank you.

And then, it became all about Zoë. There was nothing but her–spicy, warm, sleek and strong. Her mouth soft and full, fitting to his, teasing away then coming back for more…her breasts pushing into his wet shirt, one of her legs wrapping insistently around him. Her hips lifting and grinding into his.

The bed bumped into his thigh and he cracked his knee on the edge of the table next to it, but he hardly noticed as they tumbled onto the brocade coverlet. He couldn’t get enough of her—the essence of her skin, somehow hinting of the same cinnamon flavor as its dusky color, the strength of her legs, twining, shoving between his, just as impatient to get it on as he was.

Her fingers pulled at the buttons of his jeans, difficult because the buttonholes had shrunk from the dampness, and Quent found himself almost laughing as she swore and yanked and bitched between kissing the hell out of him.

Good God, she could kiss. Her tongue swiped deep and strong, teased and thrust as she sucked and licked and nibbled, then pulled away and breathed a sharp, furious curse. Then went back for more with full, sleek lips matching his, fitting, slipping and sliding as their breaths mingled and her fingers fumbled.

“Let me,” he said finally, removing his hands reluctantly from her smooth skin, where they’d been relearning that long, curving spine, down beneath the warm cotton of her panties. Zoë arched against him, her breath warm and labored against his neck as she tipped to the side, sagging next to him on the bed.

For a heartbeat, they lay there, breaths rough and unsteady, and their eyes met. Caught. Quent felt as though something sharp and sudden pierced him, something uncomfortable, and saw Zoë catch her breath, then her eyes shutter. He thrust the moment away by yanking violently at the stubborn fly of his increasingly-tightening jeans. Fucking last damned time he wore suede. The buttons exploded, popping and dropping as if he’d just undone a row of snaps, and then she was there, sliding her callused hands down into his warm package.

He groaned aloud as she covered him, deft fingers closing around him, freeing the pounding center of his universe. And then the little sigh-groan Zoë gave when he slipped free nearly sent him over.

Jeans still around his hips, damp and heavy and awkward, he pressed her back onto the bed, half covering her and sliding his hand down past the stretched-out elastic of her panties, to her slick warmth. Oh, God, she was full and wet and ready, and she shifted and sighed, shoving herself against his palm.

“You sure you came here for that arrow?” he asked, watching her face as he fingered her. 

Her almond eyes, half-shadowed by the dim light, closed and her lips parted for a soft puff of breath. “Damn right….It’s mine.”

He shifted his fingers, teasing them against her, coaxing and stroking, watching her breathing change, her eyelids flutter. “Then why don’t you go get it,” he suggested. “Don’t let me keep you.”

He settled his mouth over the closest of her hard, gathered-up nipples, sucking it suddenly and firmly as she tightened and arched next to him…then a blaze of pleasure barreled through him as she gasped and shuddered her orgasm beneath his fingers and lips.

Oh yeah, luv, that’s it. Let me show you how good it is.

He coaxed everything he could from her, waiting, teasing softly till she settled, then did it again. This time, leaving her clawing for breath, even writhing a bit…and reaching for him.

“Guess I’ll be going now,” she said in a raspy voice. Her full lips twitched up at one side. “Now that you mention it.” Her fingers closed around him and gave two—count’em, two—quick, long strokes…then she was over him, and up and off the other side of the bed.

Quent’s breath exploded in a great gust and he flipped over toward her. But instead of being halfway across the room, as he’d feared, there she stood, right by the bed, a wicked, wicked smile on her well-kissed lips. Naked. 

“Zoë,” he said, not caring if he sounded desperate. He was. Oh, bloody fucking hell, he was desperate…so desperate he thought about begging. Bloody Quent Brummell Fielding, begging for a woman.

“Well, shit, if you’d take off your damned clothes, I might be convinced to stick around,” she said. “They’re cold as hell and sticky too.”

Quent let out his breath in a gust of humor as he realized that, indeed, he was still fully clothed except for the raging hard-on thrusting from his open fly. He tore off his shirt and peeled the bloody jeans off, and when he’d slapped them to the floor in a damp pile, he looked up.

She moved toward him, pushing him back onto the bed, none too gently. The next thing he knew, Zoë had settled over his hips, her hands flat and warm over his chest, and lowered herself down. Oh God...God…

He squeezed his eyes shut, clamped his hands on her to keep the bloody damned minx from moving before he could regain control. Her deep, low laugh teased him like a smoky whip and he opened his eyes to meet hers, to read the same lust blazing there.

She tightened around him, he groaned as the pounding surged harder, almost lost it, and brought himself back.

And…no. In this way, he would be in control. With a swift move, he flipped her onto her back. Zoë half-laughed, half-gasped in surprise and delight as he took over, as he wasted no time before he brought them into the long, sleek rhythm.

The ride turned frantic, and Quent lost all sense of details but for the soft gasps and sighs, the slide of leg, the scrape of nails, soft lips, the rising, gathering pleasure, and everything became slick and hot and pounded through him, barreling to the edge…and over.

At the last second, he remembered, somehow, and twisted away with a deep grunt of release and effort…blinding pleasure trammeling through him as he reached what he needed. And held on as he slipped into the hard-won ease of sleep.