Free Darkness Descending by Devyn Quinn Page B

feel the heat behind her gaze sliding over his naked flesh.
    He turned and smiled. “Like what you see?”
    Guilty as a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Jesse immediately turned her head. She pressed a hand across her eyes in embarrassment. “I wasn’t looking,” she mumbled.
    Maddox stepped into his jeans, hitching them up around his hips. “I don’t mind if you were. It’s not as though any man is born with his ass covered.”
    Jesse raised her head, angling her chin at a defiant angle. “I wasn’t thinking about your stupid naked body.” Despite her words, a reddish blush shaded her pale cheeks and forehead.
    Slipping a clean gray T-shirt over his head, he quirked a brow. “Oh? Is there something better than me to look at?”
    Jesse stared longingly. “Your clothes,” she admitted. “They look halfway decent.”
    Maddox glanced down. Though he’d gotten them in a used-clothing shop, the items were as clean as living with limited facilities would allow. They were a far cry from the ratty things she’d probably scavenged from flood-ravaged houses. Other people, equally as desperate to recover their belongings after the storm, had combed through the remnants first. Anything that was left was hardly worth salvaging, but when you had nothing, anything would do.
    Realization finally sank in. It dimly occurred to him the girl had little beyond the clothes on her back. In short, she had nothing. She probably didn’t have two pennies to rub together in her pocket.
    Retrieving a pair of socks and work boots, Maddox sat down at the kitchen table. “I suppose you could use a few things,” he allowed, slipping on a sock and stomping his foot into the ankle-hugging lace ups. “But for now you’ll have to make do with what you can find here. I have to get to work.”
    Her brows rose. “Work?”
    He shot her a look. “Yeah, you know. I sell eight hours of my labor in return for”—he rubbed his thumb against his fingers—“that green stuff that keeps a roof over my head.”
    She rolled her eyes. “You live in a ruined hotel,” she reminded him. “The place is rent-free, right? And you’ve already told me you’re stealing water from the city. If you have money, why don’t you live in a proper place?”
    Maddox raked his hands through his damp hair. “Supporting my after-hours pursuits takes cash. The less I spend on the finer comforts in life means I can buy the weapons we need off the black market now that the laws are so restricted. Money is also freedom because it keeps the cops’ eyes off you. Getting busted for burglary wouldn’t help our cause.”
    His explanation seemed to make sense to her. “Except for the job I had before we were attacked, I haven’t been employed since.”
    Maddox grunted and put on his other boot. He suspected she existed on the fringes of society. He wouldn’t be surprised if her meals were cadged from the Dumpsters behind fast-food joints. The key to getting something to eat was getting there before other homeless vultures descended.
    “I guess that makes sense,” he allowed. He was amazed she’d managed as one of the infected to keep functioning in a halfway-normal manner. Putting her around people all day would be like locking a fat kid in a candy store.
    “What do you do?”
    Maddox laced up his work boots. “Construction. Laying brick, drywall, roofing—a little bit of everything.”
    “Plenty of work with the reconstruction, I suppose.”
    He nodded. “During the day it’s best to go about your business, and that means not attracting any notice. We live our lives and do our jobs and go home like the rest of the people lucky enough to be holding on to what they’ve got. At night . . .” He let his words trail off.
    He didn’t have to say more. After sundown, the weapons would come out, and he’d hit the streets in pursuit of darker, scarier beasts.
    She mirrored his movement. “I understand.”
    He glanced toward a small windup alarm clock