She was safe.
But she was trapped.
That was yesterday. She’d spent a sleepless night shaking, listening to the sounds of screams, explosions, the city falling apart. And she’d spent the day watching the carnage outside her windows.
Her building had photovoltaic solar panels on the roof. At least she’d have electricity until the end. Probably. Maybe.
She made herself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa. It was the new Frau model with a digital music player in the arm. She plugged in her new noise-canceling earbuds and sat back, eyes closed, savoring the utter silence for just a few minutes.
The day had been filled with the cries of the enraged and the dying. Fire and car alarms going off all over the city. The sounds of feet pounding on the pavement, glass shattering, a few far-off explosions as gas mains went. Howls. Terrifying sounds of utter destruction.
Now the noise-canceling earbuds gave her the gift of silence, a moment of weary peace. She loved silence. Sometimes after a stressful week, she’d head up to the Marin Headlands for a long walk. Something she’d never be able to do again.
The last of the TV announcements had said that both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate were closed off and that Marines were stationed at the San Francisco ends. Earlier today, there’d been a huge explosion, a column of smoke rising from the west. Her windows gave out onto Beach with no view of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it sounded as if they’d blown it up. Or maybe they’d blown up the access roads?
Maybe she could never leave San Francisco ever again.
Unless . . .
Before the Internet had gone last night, her best friend Elle Connolly had emailed to say that someone named Jon was coming for her, would be there in a few hours. Elle had made only the vaguest mention of where she was—somewhere up north. And no mention of who this Jon was.
Then Sophie lost her Internet connection and was left only with this thin thread of hope.
Something about the way Elle had written the email—Jon is coming—had given her a rush of hope. Jon was coming. She had no idea who this Jon was, but it felt as if, even though the end of the world was here, Jon was coming and maybe, just maybe, things would get better.
That was twenty-four hours ago, and Jon hadn’t come.
Jon was dead somewhere, torn limb from limb. Or, worse, Jon was now roaming the streets of San Francisco or wherever he was, with madness in his eyes, covered in blood, killing as many people as he could.
Sophie leaned back, enveloped in the cool embrace of the silence, wishing there was some kind of image-canceling mechanism too, something that would cancel memories the way the headsets canceled noise. But some things, once seen, could never be unseen.
So much violence, so much blood. So many dead.
She tried visualizing other things. Better things.
After all, her life had given her plenty of wonderful images. Her parents sneaking downstairs on Christmas Eve, placing presents under the ten-foot Christmas tree, relaxing with a glass of wine, making out on the couch, pretending with a perfectly straight face the next day that Santa had arrived.
Playing in the snow with her gorgeous, dumb-as-a-rock cocker spaniel Fritz on the lawn of their house outside Chicago. Pajama parties. Piano recitals, her first kiss, her first lover, Allan Mercer, who’d been just as gorgeous and just as dumb as Fritz.
She smiled, eyes closed.
Lots of good things.
Lots of not-so-good things too. The death of her parents in a car accident when she was twenty-four. It was the death of her family. No siblings, and her parents had been only children too. They’d been a close, charmed circle, untouchable until the hand of fate swatted her family away.
That same hand of fate was going to swat her away, too, together with the rest of humanity if she died here and no one found the vaccine and the original virus.
Oh God.
Without even thinking about it, a tear trickled down her face. She opened her eyes and sat up straighter. Tears weren’t going to change anything. If there was ever a situation in which tears couldn’t help, this was it.
Maybe wine would help. Yes, a glass of that really good Damoy Chambertin. She’d bought a case of the ridiculously expensive wine because she was enchanted with the origin name—Côte de Nuits. The Night Coast. Turned out it wasn’t a coast at all, but by that time the vendor had charmed her out of four-hundred dollars. But it was okay, because it was fabulous stuff.
Right. She had twelve bottles of it.
A bottle a day . . .
Would the world last twelve days?
Probably not.
Don’t think like that. Don’t think at all.
Yes, a glass of wine would do her good. She lifted the headset away and frowned. Was that a sound at her door? . . . Something was there . . . just as she removed the headset. More an echo of a sound than a sound itself.
Was she crazy?
It couldn’t be an infected. The infected didn’t make soft noises. They bellowed and staggered and crashed into things.
Suddenly there was the softest of sounds, a gentle rap-rap-rap. Someone knocking! An infected could never knock, they’d just beat themselves bloody against the door. Her heart was pounding. She rushed to the door, tapping out the security code to unlock it just as she heard a deep male voice say, “Dr. Sophie Daniels?” There was another sound now, a deep bellow, the sound of a heavy body crashing against something.
Oh God, an infected!
The monitor came to life. Most of the wall sconces had been ripped away, but a couple still functioned. There was a little bit of light, enough to show a tall man outside her door. Very tall. Too tall for her monitor. She could see a strong chin with blond stubble and not much more. He brought his mouth close to the intercom on the monitor. “Dr. Daniels? I’m Jon, Elle said—”
Jon! Oh God, not dead! Alive, right outside her door!
On the monitor, she saw his head swivel to the right. There was another bellow, pounding footsteps . . .
Sophie pulled the door open, yanked the man in and fell backward, and a ton of man fell right on top of her. He kicked out and slammed her door shut. It automatically locked just as the thuds of an infected’s fists could be felt as well as heard. From what she’d seen on the street, the infected could beat themselves to death against doors and walls, like the bonobos. Butting their heads, banging fists and feet until they broke bones and teeth. It was terrifying to see.
One of the infected seemed to be doing just that. Massive thuds and terrifying screams, sounds no human should ever make, filtered through the heavy door. The vibrations carried through the floor, though, arguably, Sophie would be the only one feeling it. Jon was on top of her and the only thing he was feeling was her.
Another massive thud, two, and the infected sped off, screaming. Presumably he’d seen another victim.
Sophie let out her breath in a rush. The danger was over. She shuddered. It had been such a close call. When she’d pulled Jon in, the infected monster was reaching out and had almost touched his shoulder. The man who was lying on top of her was heavy with muscle, visibly strong, but infecteds didn’t fight fairly. One bite and Jon would be gone.
So he was here on top of her by a split second miracle.
Breathing and alive.
All those hours staring out the window at the world ending, wondering where Jon could be—and here he was.
A living, breathing ray of hope in a world where hope had fled.
She could feel her body pulse with hope, could feel the blood rushing to her face.
“Jon,” she breathed, tears springing to her eyes. “You made it!” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder to hide the tears.
It was no time for tears. Tears were weakness and weakness killed.
His body was stiff for a second, the tension of battle. The tension left him in a rush. He relaxed and hugged her back.
The world was burning out
side her door, but inside her apartment, right now, for just a second, there was life and hope as she and Jon desperately held on to each other.
Oh God. He was so big, so strong—the strongest man she’d ever touched, ever seen. She was touching something hard, resistant. It was only when he tapped something on his forearm and hard panels fell away with a thunk that she realized she had been feeling body armor.
But—even after the body armor fell away—he was still seemingly just as hard. Muscles, thick and unyielding; her arms wouldn’t meet around his enormously broad shoulders. He was wearing some kind of slick flight suit, and it did nothing to hide what he had underneath. Every inch of him was huge, hard as steel.
Something else was huge and hard too.
He’d fallen backward, but must have flipped in midair onto her. In the twisting, turning movements, somehow she’d opened her legs, and now he was lying on her in the most intimate fashion possible. Mouth to mouth, breasts to chest, hip to hip. If they hadn’t had clothes on, they’d be making love . . . because he had the biggest erection she’d ever felt.
He was so heavy. She had to work to inflate her lungs, bringing her breasts even closer to his chest—and it had an immediate effect on him. His penis moved, and somehow lengthened further and became harder.
From her breathing in.
Oh God.
She breathed out heavily, mouth against his ear, and that made him lengthen another bit. It would seem impossible, but there it was. Between them, his penis surged with every movement she made.
Usually, a man’s penis rising signaled pleasure, but there was no trace of that in his face when he lifted his head from her shoulder. If anything, his expression was grim, harsh, pale blue eyes blazing into hers. He moved, and big callused hands cupped the sides of her face.
It was as if he were two people. A big man grimly frowning, and a happy penis ready for action.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” His voice was so deep she could swear she heard it in her diaphragm.
Was she hurt? Yes. No. Maybe.
Sophie was so transfixed by him, she had to actually think about it. Take stock. She wriggled fingers and toes. No damage to her extremities. So probably no nerve damage. It was hard to breathe, true, but then she had a huge man lying right on top of her. No pain anywhere, though it was hard to tell because she was so mesmerized by the man whose nose was half an inch from hers.
She’d probably have to have a compound fracture to register pain over the fascination he held for her.
He was beautiful. That was the only word for it, yet it was the wrong word.
Beautiful because his features were pure Nordic-god perfect. Ice blue eyes, sharp high cheekbones, straight, narrow nose, sculpted jaw, firm full mouth. That gorgeous face framed by longish sun-streaked blond hair. If not for the lines of stress bracketing his mouth, the weather-beaten skin, and the crow’s feet around his eyes, he could have been a Calvin Klein model. But beautiful couldn’t be used to describe a man whose face wore that expression of grim awareness, of unspeakable weariness.
Beautiful also didn’t cover his extreme . . . maleness. Few men nowadays didn’t color their hair, shape their eyebrows, laser away wrinkles, use moisturizer. The usual enhancements. That was what was considered male beauty—someone who worked at his appearance. That wasn’t this man at all. He looked like he’d time-jumped directly from a Viking boat in AD 1100.
He was beautiful. And hard and dangerous.
And he’d come through hell to find her.
She couldn’t even imagine how he’d gotten here from somewhere in Northern California. She’d been at her window on and off all day and hadn’t seen one healthy man or woman. The healthy had deserted the world and left it to the infected. She couldn’t imagine how a noninfected had been able to walk for more than a minute with all the monsters out on the streets, let alone make his way here from far away.
And yet, here he was.
The despair that had gripped her heart eased, just a fraction.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered, eyes locked onto his. Dead, or worse. The thought had been tearing at her all day. That the man coming to her rescue would fall, and turn. Another tear slipped down her cheek, completely against her will. She wasn’t crying. The stress of the past two days was seeping out of her eyes, that was all. “I thought you would never come, and that I would die here alone.”
Those strong arms tightened around her. What with his weight and his arms crushing her to him, she could barely breathe. She didn’t care. Who cared about breathing when she held life itself in her arms? She thought she’d go out alone, but now she had this amazing man, alive down to his fingertips, strong and vibrant, and she wasn’t alone anymore.
“No,” he whispered back. “I wouldn’t let that happen. I was coming for you. Nothing could stop me.”
Their eyes met and held. His eyes blazed with light and purpose. Beyond the vivid coloring and movie-star good looks, there was something deeper there. Strength, power, determination. Her gaze drifted over his face, the tight features holding back some strong emotion she couldn’t identify.
She was so intent on his face that his words penetrated moments later. Nothing could stop me.
And nothing had.
Sophie knew what was out there. She’d spent the past day watching the streets. What was out there was chaos and danger on a level so outrageous it would have been safer to walk down the streets of Baghdad during the Iraq War twenty years earlier than along pretty touristy Beach Street in downtown San Francisco.
How had he arrived here? However it was, he’d undertaken a monumental task, an impossible one. As far as she had been able to tell, no normal survived out there, could survive out there.
And yet here he was and . . . she might not die today.
More water leaked out of her eyes. “Oh God,” she whispered and tightened her arms around his neck again. Was she touching the last human left? Was she holding the last sane man in the world?
Sophie shuddered, an uncontrollable shiver raking her body, and he tightened his arms even more, as if in taking her shudders into him, he could absorb her fear and panic and despair.
His hold spoke of comfort. What was between his thighs spoke of desire.
Desire.
Desire. Heat. Life.
Heat was bubbling under her skin. She’d spent the past twenty-four hours encased in ice, cold down to her bones— scared and huddled into herself to give herself warmth and comfort because no one else ever could.
Now there was someone who could. Not a girlfriend, not even someone she knew. A complete stranger, handsome and focused on her with an icy blue laserlike gaze.
Nothing could stop me.
He’d battled his way to her. “How did you—” she began and he kissed her.
And kissed her and kissed her.
Not a tentative first kiss, no. His big hands held her head still as his eyes dropped to her mouth. It was instinctive, she could feel it. That intense blue gaze turned sharply heated as he looked at her mouth, then his gaze rose. Not tender, not the look of a lover. More the look of a conqueror. The look of someone who’d traveled a long, hard road for something, and now here it was.
Yes. Here she was. She’d spent the day preparing for death, and, inevitably, she’d looked back on her life. A life well spent, oh yes. She’d studied hard, loved her parents, gone into science wanting to do good. She’d been a good girl every step of the way. Even her few lovers had been good guys. Boys, really, even if they were technically men. Other scientists like herself, from good families, like herself.
But she’d kept her healing abilities from them. Out of self-defense. It was hard, though, to keep such a big chunk of herself out of a relationship. You ended up handing over a truncated version of yourself, almost a cardboard version, everything external. Never letting anyone get too close. And no one ever had.
Jon lifted his head, eyes blazing, face drawn.
Certainly no man
had ever looked at her like this—intently, as if that ice blue gaze could read inside her head. He closed his eyes, the intensity seeming too much, and so did she—because it was.
And then his mouth was on hers once more.
Soft. Hard. Soft. Hard.
Soft touches, fingertips callused but gentle as he touched her face, her neck.
Hard muscles, immensely strong. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders and felt no give whatsoever.
Soft. His lips were so soft on hers.
Hard. His erection was like a steel cylinder between them.
Wild screams erupted outside her window. Someone dying, badly. As so many had done today. So much pain, so much death.
And yet she had life itself under the palms of her hands. Life. Such a precious thing, so taken for granted.
Another scream and she held him more tightly, pushing up against him. Immediately, his huge hard penis somehow lengthened even more. From her movement against him. She’d done that to him, to this hard and powerful man.
The change wasn’t only in him, though. When she felt his penis surge with blood, it echoed inside her. He couldn’t feel it, of course. But Sophie felt it. A bolt of heat in her groin so strong she turned liquid, so strong she undulated against him and immediately felt again how that affected him. He lifted his head for just a second and she missed his mouth against hers. Every time his tongue touched hers, a line of heat went straight to her womb.
Such heat, such life. The world was drowning in blood and pain and here was this magical man, come to save her, giving her such pleasure she nearly sighed with it.
“Sophie,” he whispered. There was a question in there somewhere. She was shaking with emotion, with relief and joy. She had no idea what that question might be, but the answer was clear.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
His big hands moved down to where her robe crossed her breasts. She was naked under the robe; he must be able to feel that. He lifted slightly on his elbows to untie her robe and open it, slowly, like a kid opens a long-awaited present. His hands covered her breasts, hands hard, strong.