Rogue Rider

Twenty-three

“Oh, Reseph,” Jillian whispered. “What have they done to you?” Thanatos and Limos had warned her, but this went beyond anything she could have imagined.

Reseph sat with his back against the wall, his body a mass of wounds in various stages of healing. His arms were wrapped around his bent knees, his head hung loosely on his shoulders, his hair obscured his face. Wearing nothing but sweatshorts, he rocked back and forth, soft moans breaking from his chest.

From his ankles, seeming to come directly from his skin, were thick, ivory chains that attached to the wall like a root system. They were long, giving him the freedom to move around the room and bathroom, but not long enough to go through the door.

“Reseph?” All of her apprehension fled, and she rushed to him, fell to her knees at his side. “Hey, it’s me. It’s Jillian.”

When he didn’t respond, just kept rocking, she very slowly reached out to brush his hair back. She fought a gasp at the sight of his blackened eyes and deeply gouged cheeks. Dear God, it looked like he’d clawed at himself.

“Reseph.” This time she spoke louder, with more force, and he jerked.

In a series of choppy motions, Reseph lifted his head and fixed his glassy gaze on hers. For a few agonizing heartbeats, Jillian wasn’t sure he recognized her.

“Jillian?” His voice was gravelly and raw. “You look like my Jillian.”

My Jillian. The words brought fresh emotion to the surface, and she had to swallow before she could speak. “It’s me. I’m here.”

His hand shook as he reached for her, but an inch from her face, he stopped.

“Go ahead,” she whispered. “I’m real.”

His fingertip brushed her cheek, and then his palm, and then, so suddenly she gasped, he threw his arms around her and hauled her against him.

“I can’t believe it,” he rasped into her ear. “Can’t. Oh, fuck. How long? Jillian, how long has it been?”

“A few days.”

“No, can’t be. Months, it’s been months.”

How horrible must his torment have been to make him think he’d been stuck in this room for months? “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

He pulled back just enough to kiss her, and yes, it had felt like months. “I’ve missed you. I’ve been… I’ve been…”

“I know.” She traced his lower lip with the pad of her finger, skimming lightly over a freshly healed cut. “When’s the last time you ate?”

He frowned. “Dinner. That night with you.”

“You haven’t eaten in over a week? Shit. Okay, hold on.” She started to stand, but he gripped her wrist.

“Don’t… don’t leave me.” His plea skinned her alive.

“I won’t be out of your sight.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. She hurried to the door and shouted for Limos, who came running.

“You okay?”

“I need food and something to drink. I think I can get him to eat.”

Limos’s raven brows shot up. “Seriously? You got it. One sec.”

Jillian went back to Reseph, who took her hand the moment she was within reach. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.” He looked down at himself. “I should shower.”

“Let me help you.”

For once, he didn’t make a joke of it with something suggestive, which only emphasized how serious this situation was.

“You don’t have to help.” Sluggishly, he pushed to his feet. “But… could you stay in the bathroom with me?”

“Of course. But I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

He nodded and moved to the bathroom, wobbly at first, but his strength returned with every step. His body had been terribly abused, but its grace and power had in no way been diminished. She sat on the toilet while he showered and brushed his teeth, the infernal chains clanking with every movement.

There was a light tap on the door. “That’s the food. I’ll get it.” When she opened the door, Ares stood there with a tray. There were three sandwiches piled high with meat and cheese, two plates of cake, and two bottles of water.

“See if you can get him to drink all of the water. There’s a sedative in it. It won’t make him go to sleep, but it should help him relax.”

“Thanks.”

“Also, fair warning. The sedative might have a mild aphrodisiac effect.”

“Aphrodisiac?”

“Thanks to our mother’s side of the family, when we have side-effects, they’re usually of a sexual nature.”

Huh. Well, if someone had to have a side-effect from a medication, she supposed arousal would be better than dry mouth, nausea, stroke, or heart attack.

She thanked Ares again, but just as it occurred to her to ask why their mother’s side would influence medical side-effects, he walked away. Well, she could ask later.

When she turned around, Reseph was sitting in the corner, naked, his back to the wall.

“I just realized you must have cut my hair when you found me.” His gaze was downcast, his face partially concealed by said hair.

“It was too tangled to brush,” she explained, hoping he wasn’t upset that she’d taken scissors to his long mane before he’d thawed from his snowbank ordeal. “I’m sorry.”

He looked up, smiling a little. “I like it. Kind of cuts away some of… what I was.”

Whew. “We don’t need to sit on the floor,” she said. “There’s a perfectly good bed.”

He eyed it sadly. “I don’t belong there.” His gaze fell to the floor again. “I belong in hell, Jillian.”

“Don’t say that.” She crossed the room and sank to her knees next to him. “From what I understand, you aren’t responsible for the things that happened.”

“Pestilence is part of me,” he rasped. “Even now, I can feel his ugliness. I felt it at your farm, but I didn’t know what it was.” He shuddered, and she took his hand as if that one lame gesture could fix everything. “It’s… it’s like an abscess on my soul.”

Her throat squeezed closed, clogged with emotion. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how that must feel.” She pulled the tray closer. “Please eat. It might not help your soul, but it’ll help your stomach.”

He looked at the food as if it were poison. “I can’t.”

“If your stomach’s upset, try some water.”

“Can’t, Jillian.”

“You don’t think you don’t deserve it, do you?” Her heart broke wide open. “Don’t punish yourself like this. Please, Reseph. Do it for me.” When he made no move for the tray, she unscrewed the cap from one of the bottles and put it to his lips. “Please. I hate seeing you like this.”

Closing his eyes, he whispered, “For you, love. For you.”

Jillian had changed Reseph’s life. First, she’d given him sanctuary and showed him that it wasn’t necessary to fill every moment with people and parties. For the first time in five thousand years, he’d been content. Happy. And now she was giving him a distraction from the prison inside his head. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve any of this—water, food, a room in Ares’s house, kindness—not after all the things he’d done.

Hell, if his siblings and their mates wanted to string him up and torture the everliving fuck out of him for years on end, he’d deserve it. He certainly wouldn’t fight it. Instead, they were trying to help him. He couldn’t believe they’d even brought Jillian.

Jillian, who didn’t belong with the likes of him. But he was just selfish enough to be glad she was here, coaxing him to eat and talking to him in a low, soothing voice as she told him about things back at home. When his mind would suddenly jump back into his horrific deeds, she knew, and she’d tap his cheek and force him back to the present.

“You’re done with the first sandwich. Faster than I expected.”

He glanced down at the crumbs on the plate. “It isn’t your chili,” he said, “but it’s not bad. Ares has always had good cooks on staff.”

“You’re saying you miss my chili,” she teased.

“Yeah.” He missed her chili, her house… he missed her.

Holy shit, he was pathetic, wasn’t he? He’d fallen for her so hard. His brothers and sister must be laughing their asses off at him after all his blustering about how he’d never fall in love or even limit himself to one female. But he wanted Jillian and only Jillian. That fact had been made real clear when Than and Ares had tried bringing in a few of his regular bedmates in an attempt to entice him out of what they had termed his “delirium.”

The females had distracted him, all right, but only long enough for him to kick them out. Their touch had actually disgusted him and made him invoke Jillian’s name like a ward or some shit.

Yep, his sibs had to be choking on their laughter.

“How are you feeling?” Jillian looked at him like a doctor might look at a patient, and he wondered if he looked as beat up as he felt. He had no idea. He’d broken all of the mirrors in the bedroom and bathroom a while ago.

“Better,” he said. “But I think it’s more because of you than because of the food.” He paused. “Thank you for coming. Most people wouldn’t.”

“Then most people are assholes.” She said it so forcefully that he smiled.

“I wouldn’t dare argue with you when you’re riled.”

“Very wise, Horseman.” She shook her head, making her dark hair sweep against her jaw. He’d missed the feel of her silky bob on his skin, and he reached out to rub a stray lock between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m still kind of reeling about the Horseman thing.”

“You’re taking it well,” he said, pride swelling in his chest. His Jillian was strong, but he’d known that. “Humans tend to have bad reactions. Usually the human-realm dwellers do, too.”

“Human-realm dwellers?”

He shrugged. “Vampires, werewolves, some shapeshifters. Anyone who resides exclusively in the human world instead of in Sheoul. They’re usually a little more grounded in the human world than the demon one.”

“Vampires and werewolves are real?” She blinked. “Guess it makes sense if demons and Horsemen exist, but wow. It’s crazy finding out that legends are real. You said people in the human realm have bad reactions to finding out Horsemen exist, but what about the beings in Sheoul?”

“Demons are pretty much raised on stories about us. You know, ‘Be a good demonling and eat your veggies, and someday the Horsemen might want you at their sides during the Apocalypse.’ ”

“Wow.” Her hands, so capable on the farm, fluttered awkwardly up to the collar of her button-up Henley. God, he hated seeing her so out of her element. “So all those… females… outside? Where do they come from?”

“There are females outside?”

“A lot. I didn’t count, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say there’s easily a hundred.”

Oh, damn. He’d give anything for Jillian not to have seen that.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “To underworlders, my siblings and I are like movie stars. We have groupies. They even classify themselves according to which Horseman they like best. Ares has War Mongers. Than has Reapers. Limos never really had any who were open about it, though, since she was engaged to Satan, and no one wanted to fuck with her. Literally.”

“Satan?” Jillian’s voice was strangled. He’d have smiled if this whole thing wasn’t so screwed up.

“The very demon.”

“I’m glad I’m sitting,” she muttered. “What about you? What are your groupies called?”

Aw, shit, he should have seen that question coming, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Jillian.

“Hey.” Her soft voice, so full of strength, humbled him. “You can tell me. You can tell me anything.”

How had he been lucky enough to have her be the one to find him in a snowbank? He owed her so much, and that included the truth.

“Reseph’s Riders,” he said miserably. “My groupies are called Reseph’s Riders.” He hung his head, staring into his lap, and he was suddenly ashamed of his entire life. “Jillian, I was a total whore.”

“When your Seal was broken?” She sounded hopeful, as if there would be a way to forgive that.

He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “Yeah, then too. Only it was… different.” He shuddered and tried to drag himself out of the pit of those particular sick and twisted memories.

“Reseph? It’s okay. Take a breath.”

Shit, he was hyperventilating.

“Listen to me.” She took his hands and squeezed hard. “It doesn’t matter what you were like before. I didn’t know that man. The one I know didn’t so much as look at other women.” She gave him a sultry smile. “And besides, after everything we’ve done, I guess I can call myself a Reseph Rider, too.”

He was on her so fast he didn’t realize he’d moved until he was on top of her, kissing her with everything he had. She kissed him back, wrapping her arms around his neck and bringing her legs up to cradle his hips.

“You’re so perfect,” he said, as he kissed a trail along her jaw. “How did I not find you before?”

“I guess you weren’t looking.”

No, he wasn’t. “I promise you, Jillian, I’ll never look again.”