Inferno-Kat 2 Read Free Page A

to feel again.
    Hades broke the kiss and took a distancing step back, his heart racing like his motorcycle, and sweat trickling down his back. Trying to control his breathing, he closed his eyes and sighed.
    “I don’t know, Kat. My life has changed.” He motioned around him at his cabin. The one he had built with his own hands while the anger and pain of her abandonment ate at him from the inside out. “I’m not the same man.”
    She slid off the table and stood defiantly in front of him. “Like hell you aren’t. I know the man I…” She paused, took in a ragged breath, and continued. “I know you, Hades. You’re here, standing in front of me, the same man I traveled to Van with, the same man I survived death with, the same man I fucked. You’re standing right in front of me. I could be blind and still see that.”
    She reached under the table, grabbed her pack, and slung it over her shoulder. “Think about it.
    I’ll be back tonight.”
    The moment she moved toward the door, he could feel the warmth in the cabin drop a few degrees. He didn’t realize how much heat she had been radiating until she no longer stood near him.
    Once again, emotion clamped around his heart and squeezed. He wondered if it would always be that way with Kat. If he would crave her with such intensity that it knocked the breath from him.
    He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out, but at the same time, he couldn’t stand to see her leave again.
    “Wait.”
    She paused, her hand on the doorknob.
    “You can stay here.”
    She turned and met his gaze.

    “My bed’s comfortable. And there’s only one window, so…there won’t be much light to bother you.”
    “Are you sure?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “Good.” She chuckled. “At least I know I still keep you on your toes.”
    “That you do, Hell Kat. That you do.” He motioned toward the open door leading to his bedroom.
    With her pack still slung over her shoulder, she strode past him and into the room. She gripped the door, but before she shut it, she looked at him. “I…” She paused. “Thank you.”
    He said nothing as she shut the door behind her. He didn’t know how long he stood there watching the closed door, expecting her to come out again. By the time he turned to finish preparations for his breakfast, the sun was streaming through the kitchen window, and birds were twittering on the branches of the apple tree just outside his door.

2
    T he moment Kat opened her eyes, she knew it was late in the afternoon, possibly nearing the time when most people ate their dinner. After several months of keenly observing the rise and fall of the sun, she knew when to stay asleep in the safety the indoors provided. On one occasion she had made the mistake of stepping outside too soon and paid for it. The brutal rays of the unforgiving sun had given her a sunburn that lasted a month.
    Sun glare had been brutal before, especially out on the outer rims and in the Wastelands, but now with the Dark Dweller virus encompassing her body, the sun was like acid to her retinas. She had to wear her tinted goggles even at sunset.
    Tossing back the bedcovers, Kat yawned lazily. Hades had been right about his bed and the room. She had slept peacefully. A rare occurrence, and one she hadn’t experienced since she had left him all those months ago, sated from sex in her run-down hovel.
    Dangling her legs over the mattress, she stood and stretched. Her back was sore from the long ride north. During the day, she camped, hiding out in her flimsy nylon tent. However, at night she drove her bike until the sun would start to pinken the sky. Her night vision was superior, and she never feared going off the road or running into anything. And if she did run into anything, be it human or beast, she came well prepared. She never went anywhere without her sawed-off shotgun, knives strapped to her legs, or the throwing stars attached to her belt.

    And if that didn’t work, because of the virus invading her