Get There: (Originally Published in the Print Anthology a RED HOT VALENTINE'S DAY) (10 page)

“I know what they do,” he said.

“Is that what you want to risk?”

“No.”

Lira gripped the cold metal railing, time tick-tocking away from them, too fast. She’d be lucky to make it across the city before sunrise, at this point. “Nobody thinks less of you because you can’t go up there and do what I do. Not even me. Especially not me.”

They stared each other down, his mouth set in a grim line so unlike his usual expression it made him into a stranger. What she said was true, but she could see he didn’t believe her. Lira understood why—if she had been the one forced to stay here in the basement, barricaded away from everything that was happening above while Anthony went out and risked his life over and over . . . well. It would’ve driven her insane with worry too.

On the other hand, would she have traded this task for his? For any of theirs? In a heartbeat. In a breath.

“You won’t even let me . . .” Anthony’s shoulders hunched for a moment. This was worse than the look he’d given her because this wasn’t about his going outside and risking infection.

This was about her.

She didn’t want to or mean to move toward him; her body betrayed her when she took his face in her hands and brushed her mouth on his. “Shh.”

He put his arms around her, too tight. Too close. She couldn’t breathe, and for that moment, didn’t want to.

“Just let me love you, Lira. I can’t go out there with you and protect you, I know that. But in here . . . let me love you.”

She had no answer for that. They’d gone over this already. In the dark, twisting in the roughness of his sheets on his bone-achingly hard mattress, Anthony had told her he loved her. She believed him. They were the words she’d spent her lifetime waiting to hear from a man like him, ever since she’d been a little girl pretending to be a princess.

She believed him, but she couldn’t let him. Not with the world the way it was. Not with
her
the way she was, immune to whatever it was that infected the living and Resurrected them from the dead. The others who’d taken shelter in the basement would have no way of knowing if they were also immune until they were exposed, and that was a risk they’d all agreed nobody could take. She’d had the spores spewed in her face dozens of times and had not yet fallen ill, but she expected every day to wake up in a murderous rage, to need someone to put her down like a rabid dog. Would he be able to do that if he loved her?

Lira didn’t think so.

She had no answer for him that would feel honest, so she kissed him instead. But when he tried to pull her closer, Lira pushed his hands away from her hips and backed up the stairs. When Anthony opened his mouth to speak, she shook her head.

“No. I can’t give you what you want, Anthony. I’m sorry.”

“You think you’re protecting me,” he told her. “But you’re not.”

Now he’d made her angry. “I’m doing the best I can! You think this is what I want? Nobody wants this. So stop trying to make all of this into some lovey-dovey romantic thing between us, okay? It is what it is. A way to survive. When we don’t have to worry about just getting through one more day, then you can talk to me about hearts and flowers.”

He waited until she’d rounded the next landing before he called after her.

“Come back to me,” he said. “At least promise me you’ll do that.”

But, of course, she couldn’t give him that any more than she could give him the other thing he wanted, and so Lira left him behind without making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

Give in to your impulses . . .

Read on for a sneak peek at a brand-new

e-book original tale of romance from Avon Books.

Available now wherever e-books are sold.

SEDUCED BY THE GLADIATOR

By Lauren Hawkeye

An Excerpt from

by Lauren Hawkeye

In Lauren Hawkeye’s second erotic romance featuring the fierce gladiators of Ancient Rome, Lilia is the rarest of commodities—a champion female gladiator. When Christus, a warrior with the body of a god, is sold to the
ludus
that owns Lilia, she finds herself forced to defend her position and guard her body against the erotic sensations only he can bring. But beneath the tantalizing flesh of the gladiator, Lilia finds a man determined to protect her—and to love her—no matter the cost.

AN AVON RED NOVEL

“W
hat are you doing?” My words were a hiss as I looked frantically around the room. We were alone for the moment, thank the gods, but someone could come in at any moment.

Weak was the least of the things that I would appear to be if someone were to come upon this scene, me flushed from the steam, Christus’ sure fingers lightly massaging the purpling skin of my ankle.

Every touch of his fingers sent a lick of fire straight between my legs. Though I tried to swallow it down, a groan escaped my lips.

His touch felt so incredibly
good.

“I cannot let myself be seen like this.” There was no point in denying that I found his touch pleasurable. Against my better judgment, I closed my eyes for a moment—just a moment—and let sensation wash over me.

When I again opened my eyes, Christus’ fingers had trailed upward to my calf. His eyes burned brightly and were fixed on my own.

“I told the men that anyone who bothered you while you bathed would find himself without a cock.” My mouth fell open at the words, and inexplicably a giggle bubbled up from my throat.

I clapped a hand over my mouth as it escaped. I never giggled. I rarely even laughed.

Sobering myself, I tried to tug my leg from Christus’ reach. “That does not mean they will listen.”

“I assure you they will.” Christus did not allow me to pull my flesh away, instead trailing his fingers ever higher. My breath caught in my throat as he stroked the tender skin beneath my knee.

“If it eases you, Darius is keeping watch. No one will disturb you. No one will disturb us.”

I heard the double meaning in his words, and though I felt as though I should run, I found myself doing nothing of the sort. Instead I reached out, my hand shaking, and ran uncertain fingers over the stripe of his cheekbone.

I shuddered as my fingers made contact with his skin. It had been so long since I had been touched with anything but violence or desire that was twisted at its root. Darius touched me sometimes, but his caresses were friendly and reassuring.

They did not affect me in nearly the same way that these small caresses did.

“Christus. I cannot do this.” I wanted to. I could no longer lie to myself. I wanted this man, wanted the moments of pleasure that he could bring to me in this strange life that I called my own. “If the men found out that I took you as a lover, we would both be under attack.”

My voice had a breathless quality to it, one that I had never heard before. I was feeling things that I had never felt before, too, as Christus lowered his head and laid his lips on my knee.

When he again looked up, the expression on his face—the longing, the desire—was my undoing.

“Why should anyone find out? It is no one’s business but our own.” The fingers that still softly stroked the skin beneath my knee moved with excruciating slowness, tracing a stripe up and up, until they found the edge where my leather wrap met my skin.

“Christus.” What was happening to me? I was not weak—I made my own decisions. Yet I could no more have stopped this encounter than I could have stopped breathing.

Slowly, giving me time to say no, Christus worked at the knot in my leather. When the fastening was loose, he pulled the garment away from my body, hanging it on the edge of the tub.

Leaving my skin bare from the waist down.

I felt my lower lip tremble, but apart from that small movement I was still, tensed, my breath caught in my throat with anticipation. With his eyes on my own, drinking in every nuance of my expression, he inched his fingers up, then up again, trailing them over my inner thighs as the muscles beneath quivered.

I inhaled sharply when those fingers grazed over the heated skin between my legs. Christus paused at the noise, again giving me time to say no.

I waited a long moment, my innermost thoughts whirling through my head in a great rush. Sex had been tied up with violence for so long, it had made me feel cheap at best. The idea that I could embrace it for pleasure was strange and oddly thrilling, if I could but take that leap.

My eyelids lowered, I looked down from the edge of the bath, where I still perched, looked at the god of a man who was rising out of the water at my feet. He was golden and sleek and beautiful, and he wore an expression of reverence and of need that looked to be nearly painful.

It was this exact combination that pushed me the last step. With an exhalation of the breath that I had been holding, I covered his wrist with my hand, holding his fingers in place even as I arched my hips to meet his touch.

“You are certain that we will not be disturbed?” I could not quite believe that I was prepared to accept his word when he nodded. The Lilia of even a day before would never have taken anything at face value, would have had to see for herself.

But this man inspired trust. Trust, as well as lust.

For the first time since I had come to the ludus, I decided to embrace the sensations.