“We’ll leave at first light. That’s final.”
“Oh, come on. It’s cold out here.”
“You’ve got me to keep you warm,” he teased, but her cold glare had him dashing any such hopes of snuggling under the covers with her.
Sighing, he grabbed a tin cup from his packsack. He’d have to eat his supper out of the cup and retrieve his plate later. He doubted he could find it. There was already a thin layer of snow covering everything.
As he scooped his dinner into his cup, she merely rolled her eyes at him—indicating he was a hopeless case—shook her head and focused her attention back to the fire. Okay, so she was giving him the cold shoulder treatment. Figures. He’d finally caught himself an unattached and very attractive woman and she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Man, sometimes he just had the most rotten luck.
While he ate in silence, she sat quietly, not saying a word, not taking her cold gaze from the fire, and he shivered involuntarily at her icy stare. When he finished, he unpacked the emergency plastic to place over the nearby lean-to he’d constructed last night. They would use this shelter tonight. Hopefully by morning she would be a little more receptive to a warm meal.
* * * * *
Since the night Will Blade had entertained that succulent red-haired woman, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. He’d tasted her that evening. She’d been as sweet as sin and sexy as hell. The erotic way she gazed at him when he’d kneeled between her naked thighs, her strawberry-red hair tumbling to just above her plump, pink nipples, her succulent lips parted as she panted and waited expectantly for him to take her pussy into his mouth had made him so damned aroused he hadn’t been able to sleep for several nights after the encounter.
Heck, who was he kidding? He hadn’t had a proper night sleep since seeing her that first time. Why he hadn’t taken more time pleasuring her eluded him—fucking her up against the door, pumping fiercely into her, her cries of arousal undoing the cold tight lid on his emotions. He hadn’t been able to tie up the fact he wanted to take her again and again. That’s why he needed to kill her and get some peace.
He stood behind a tree, his finger on the trigger of his rifle, keeping an eye on Reena Wilde and Cade Outlaw as they spoke around a fire. His last encounter with Cade was still fresh in his mind, despite it being several weeks ago. Cade had made it clear he would kill Blade if he went near Red again. He might have to take out Cade as well tonight.
He’d been floored when his boss Bev White had given him the assassination assignment against Red. Not because he had to kill someone, but because Reena was Red, the notorious leader of the Resistance.
He’d known she was different. Her strength showed in the defiant way she’d carried herself when he’d first seen her at the Pleasure Palace, and then again when he’d met her at the safe house after she’d been rescued.
Blade shook his head and tried to remember back to a time before the Wars. To before the X-virus. When a normal evening meant taking a woman out to dinner and then to his bed. Where a regular work day meant performing pap smears, breast exams and informing a patient of her pregnancy, then moving to the adjoining examination room to tell another patient she had stage four ovarian cancer.
Fuck, his life had all been so normal. So routine he’d even pondered the idea of settling and marrying a sweet, quiet nurse he’d been dating. And then the X-virus had come along and screwed his world. Hell, it had screwed everyone’s world.
Yet even in this crappy new States there were still jewels. Sexy women like his boss Bev and Tyler’s woman Laura…and now Reena.
Reena. Or maybe he should call her Red. That had been his nickname for her. He’d never imagined the Resistance called her Red, too.
Red, with the flaming red hair and gorgeous hazel eyes. Red, who’d proudly worn gold rings on her large pink nipples and teased him with a bellybutton ring, and made his knees melt when he’d seen her labia rings.
She hadn’t shied away from showing off those rings. Maybe she’d had them removed since their meeting? Or had she accepted them as part of her body?
The first time he’d entered the safe house where the SKULL men had taken her, his pulse had picked up speed as her moans echoed from one of the bedrooms. When he’d peeked into the open doorway and spied her lying spread-eagle on the bed, his body had tightened in awareness, his cock and balls tensing and swelling like a son of a bitch.
She’d been naked and moaning. Damned irresistible too with her tangled red hair billowing around her face while she thrashed beneath the mouths of two men—one tending her breasts and one lapping between her thighs. She’d begged them to fuck her.
Oh man, he’d wanted to undress. Wanted to take her. To claim her for his own.
But she was only pleading because of the drugs. He wanted more than just fucking a woman pumped full of sex drugs. He didn’t know how long he’d watched those SKULL men fucking her. Could have been minutes. Could have been hours. But the imprint of her naked and writhing beneath the erotic handling of the men was forever etched into his mind.
Sexy woman.
And she would have to die.
Here. Now. Right in front of Cade Outlaw.
Lifting the assault rifle, he peered through the night-vision scope and took a bead on Red. She sat on a fallen log in front of a small fire that fully illuminated her. Vulnerability flickered across her face in the waves of yellow firelight.
One shot to the brain and she wouldn’t feel a thing. His finger tightened on the trigger. He held his breath.
Hesitated.
Man.This was harder than the last time he’d tried to pull the trigger. Cold sweat popped out on his brow as he took aim. He hoped she would forgive him for this.
Many women preferred death as opposed to the virus they carried. Would she welcome death? Would she thank him for putting her out of her misery when they met in heaven or wherever people went after they died?
