Hot and Haunted Read Free

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.
     

 
    Chapter Two
    S HE CROUCHED, HANDS up to fend off the thing bending over her, the thing that used to be her boss. Jim had never been the best boss, but this was beyond abuse, this was crazy. Attacking her because she forgot to cc him on a memo? His face was red, spittle flying; he slapped her face with the sheaf of papers in his hand. It was a story about the freak tornado that wrecked the city a few days ago, the one that