“Quit macking on my man,” I said.
Drio nuzzled Rohan’s cheek, shooing me off. “Vai. You’re not needed anymore.”
Rohan mugged, one-arm hugging his bestie.
“First of all,” I snapped at Drio, “you’re about a month too late on that visual.”
“Only a month?” Ro said.
“And second, where were you half an hour ago when you would have been useful? The sushi joint is like five minutes away.”
Drio bared his teeth at me. “Next time, I will not feel sorry for your pathetic lack of friends and keep that PD from running out into a fight she was not equipped for.”
I shot him the finger. “Your concern is touching. Where’s Leo?”
He threw me a positively evil grin and spun away.
I leaned into Rohan with a sigh. “Rain check?”
He put his arm around my shoulders, briefly closing his eyes and burying his face in my hair. “They get five minutes to get their shit together, then you’re mine.”
His fierce growl sent Cuntessa swooning.
The mystery of what Drio had done with Leo was solved when we got within ten feet of Ro’s guest bathroom and heard the furious pounding and shrieked curses of what Leo was going to do to “that Italian douchecanoe.”
Drio smirked at the rattling bathroom door which now featured a chair wedged under its knob.
“That chair is a vintage Harry Panlow design. Scratch the finish and you’re paying to restore it,” Rohan said.
I placed my hand on his arm. “Or we could go with the more pressing concern which is that Drio locked my best friend in a bathroom and she’s gonna kill him.”
“We could leave them to fight it out and may the best person win,” Rohan said.
“Only if you want to break in a new best friend. That’s a pretty flimsy door,” I replied.
Drio made a dismissive noise and even Ro looked amused at my suggestion.
The door behind Drio splintered and a small hand with sparkly blue nail polish knocked the chair away. With a startled-bunny look, Drio scrambled back so fast he slipped, almost wiping out entirely.
Leo flung a toilet plunger at Drio.
He ducked and the plunger hit the wall. He yelled at her about contagious diseases but was cut off when she lobbed a roll of toilet paper at him instead.
Ro put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. “Yo! Homewreckers! Here’s the deal. I am going to take an hour to reunite with my girlfriend.”
“Fifteen minutes tops,” Leo said.
Drio grinned at her and, for a beautiful moment, they forgot how much they hated each other. But in the next instant, their mutual scowls returned.
“I’m good for half an hour at least,” Rohan insisted.
I patted Ro’s arm. “I was dead and you were burning alive in dark magic. There’s a lot of pent-up emotions to be released.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Rohan conceded. “During which time, you two will refrain from killing each other or interrupting us in any way, shape, or form.”
“And take care of any more demons that show up,” I said.
“Which I wouldn’t have to if somebody had warded up his place when he bought it,” Drio said.
Leo squeezed her fist twice at Drio to indicate his massive douchery for ignoring that if the property was warded, she couldn’t stay here.
“Be a Rasha and deal with it,” I said. “Besides, wards won’t do squat if Mandelbaum’s gun squad comes after us.”
Ro shot me a helpless glance.
“It’s been a long day. I’ll catch you up later,” I promised. “Right after my shower.”
“Shower?” Rohan pinched the bridge of his nose.
I didn’t want any of the filth from my captivity between us when we were finally alone. I brushed my lips against his ears. “The wait’ll be worth it.”
He looked slightly mollified.
“Yeah, a shower would be great for you,” Drio said, fanning his nose. “And some deodorant.”
I crossed my arms behind my back and pinched the inside of my elbow, welcoming the sharp flare, my cheeks flaming. “Sorry for being tortured and no longer able to tell if I smell normal or awful, okay?”
Ro had gone scarily still. His eyes flickered black, his breath coming in harsh gulps.
Fuck! How could I have dropped that on him? “Rohan? Babe, I’m okay.”
Shaking his head, he pushed past us out to his balcony.
I rubbed my forehead.
Leo sighed. Then she glared at Drio. “Get some tact, Rossi. Nee, a shower might make you feel better. I brought some of your clothes here earlier. How about I grab them?”
“It’ll be faster if I get them.” The sneer that Drio had worn all this time was gone and his eyes were suffused with pity.
I half-shrugged, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt, wanting to run after Ro but completely at a loss as to how to make what had happened to me into a palatable anecdote.
“I’ll do it,” Leo said. “You’re not pawing through her lingerie.”
“Jealous?” he drawled.
“Already saw that movie, bello,” she said. “It wasn’t worth a re-watch.”
Drio watched her departure with his best poker face.
“What happened to the sushi?” I said.
“Your friend ate her body weight at the restaurant. Your order is in the fridge.”
I walked into the kitchen, keeping an eye on Ro.
He gripped the railing, his head bowed, taking deep breaths. Black magic sizzled a hole through the back of his shirt.
“He came back,” Drio said. “The rest will work itself out.”
“I heard what you said to him.” I got the sushi containers out of the fridge and ripped off the plastic lid. Bless Leo, she’d ordered me all my favorites: salmon sashimi, spicy dynamite rolls, and BBQ uni. I tore open three plastic packages of soya sauce and made a murky puddle in one corner of the lid with the soya and some wasabi.
Drio frowned at me. “Che cosa?”
I dunked a piece of sashimi and popped it in my mouth. “When he told you about Hybris, before the attack on the compound? About the hate killing you.”
“Of course, you did.” And hello, sneer.
“You and Leo—” I scarfed down a few more pieces.
“Are nothing. She’s a means to an end.”
Leo returned with her arms full of clothes. I couldn’t tell if she’d heard him or not.
“You get to pick.” She dumped the clothes on the counter and selected a green satin atrocity of a dress. “First choice.”
“That’s my old tap costume,” I said, pointing at it with the chopsticks.
Leo nodded.
“The one that you said made me look like a slutty frog fetishist.” I ate the last piece of dynamite roll.
“Technically, I said ‘slutty frog enthusiast.’ And you did win nationals with it.”
“Why is it here?” I glanced outside.
Rohan hadn’t moved from the balcony but the magic show had stopped.
“It started as a body retrieval mission,” she said. “Get your corpse, bring your family closure. Not jumping up and down and rushing you when I saw you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You said you were rescuing me.” I stuffed the last few pieces of sushi in my mouth, then dumped the trash in the can under the sink.
“I said it after I learned you were alive.”
Drio poked the ruched, shiny fabric in horrified fascination. The dress made a shuffling noise, like ten thousand regrets being unleashed at once.
I slapped his hand away. “That’s what you planned to dress my poor corpse in?”
“You would have made a lasting impression,” Leo said.
“Yeah, by traumatizing my family and friends. Please tell me you have other options.” I opened the wet wipe that came with the meal and cleaned my hands and face.
“How about this?” She held out my Punches like a girl. Kicks your ass. T-shir
t.
The girl who’d worn that had done so with a blithe and naïve confidence that I no longer possessed.
“Next.”
She handed me a pink tunic, pink leggings, and pink lingerie. I’d bought them with visions of doing some girly romantic date with Rohan that had never materialized.
“I’ll find something.” I rummaged through the rest of the clothes.
Leo hip-checked me. “You’re not wearing black.”
I rounded on her. “I have been tortured, Leo. I have been waterboarded, fed weird truth serum and non-fun trippy drugs, and made to sit in my own pee for hours. I have lost a hell of a lot of faith in the goodness of other people. So, I’m going to wear precisely whatever the fuck I want.”
She put a hand on my shoulders. “You know that’s exactly why I’m here, right?”
“Fashion advice on top of body retrieval?”
Leo sighed, picked up the pink clothes, and thrust them into my arms. “To remind you that you’re always worth saving, no matter what.”
I didn’t want to be saved. I wanted to save myself. But that would have sounded ungrateful so all I said was, “It’s clothes. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.” Drio picked up the leggings that had fallen to the ground and handed them to me. “Black isn’t always an armor. Sometimes it’s a shroud.”
“Fuck you. I only take hard truths from my friends.” Guilt warred with petty satisfaction at his flinch.
Rohan came back in. “Sorry about running out like that. I was just… not handling that well. But I’m okay now. Just getting water.”
His words were as tight as his jaw. The bottom of his shirt was bunched in his fist but I could see the scorch marks he was trying to hide.
Fuck it. Ro and I could do with some pink. I took the damn clothes and marched into the bathroom attached to Ro’s bedroom.
The reflection that stared out of the mirror was gaunt, my expression hollow and haunted. My matted strands were back to their regular brown, my too-large, too-wary eyes once more blue-gray, not obsidian black.
The outside was all me.
I turned on the shower with trembling hands, cranking the knob to boiling. I peeled my clothes off and draped them over the sink, sighing at removing one of the many layers of grime. The water sprayed cheerfully, but I couldn’t get under it, my fingers curled around the glass door.
Buck up, Nava. This baby is deluxe. Check out the river rocks on the floor and up the sides. Probably laid by magic elves with tiny fingers to get the placement just right. You got this. All of it.
But I didn’t move.
I now had more power than I’d started out with, but most of the epic stuff had been nulled for good in the Tomb. There was no longer any sweet rush of divinity as I became one with the cosmos. That sense of absolute power had faded to a dream-like quality and with it any certainty that I would ever truly be safe again. I’d barely escaped my human captor, what hope did I have now that Satan was after me?
Magic cascaded out of me and cracked the glass door beneath the smudges of my fingerprints.
I stepped into the shower before I brought the whole place down, turning my face into the spray—and lasted three seconds before I began to hyperventilate, memories of the waterboarding overwhelming me.
Stepping back, I took a deep breath, completely filling my lungs before exhaling slowly.
The rabbi wasn’t going to wreck showers for me. He wasn’t going to wreck any part of my life. None of them were.
I deliberately turned my face up to the spray. Whatever level of magic I now had was perfectly fine, and it didn’t come with a shortened life span or a target on my back. Closing my eyes, I let the water cascade over me, accepting it as a cleansing, not a torture.
If the water masked my tears, that was between me and the shower.
Chapter 4
The water that swirled down the drain had run black, gray, and finally clear once more before I felt free of my physical grime. Despite all that, there was something rejuvenating about a good cry and a good wash, especially since I liberally borrowed Rohan’s shampoo and conditioner. Wouldn’t hurt to smell like the person who was my anchor.
The pink clothes were ridiculous but also kind of great.
I hung my damp towel on the back of the door, stuffed the prisoner clothes in the trash, and went to get some head-banging sex.
We left Drio patrolling the grounds and Leo brazenly rummaging through everything Ro owned while Ro and I practically sprinted to his bedroom. He shut the door behind us with a quiet click, immersing us in darkness.
I skittered backward and turned on the light. I’d had enough darkness in the Tomb to last a lifetime. The room was cast in a dim glow, just enough to melt the shadows in the corners.
“I’m sorry I dumped what happened on you like that,” I said.
He lay his hand on my cheek with a resigned smile and a half-shrug. “No good way.”
“No.” I bit my lip. “Can I…” I reached for him, stopping just shy of contact.
He covered my hands with his, worming them under his clothes to splay them along his abs. Rohan’s muscles were tight, his battle to let me touch him made palpable under my fingertips.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” He curled my fingers into the hem of his shirt, yanking it off with his help. It got caught mid-pull and when the fabric tugged free with a pop, his hair stuck up in adorable tufts.
Eyes wide, I traced my fingers over his bicep. The one that no longer featured a heart tattoo. His original tattoo was gone, but he had a new one on his left pec: a heart with a lightning bolt in it.
Butterflies swooped in my chest. “Is this new tattoo your memorial to your fallen love?”
I said it half in jest, but Rohan answered in a serious voice. “I had a moment when I was standing on this precipice. Below me was a void worse than anything I’d ever felt with Asha and it would have been so easy to jump. Except I couldn’t insult you that way. You saved me, and while I couldn’t save you, I could honor you, so I had them remove the original heart tattoo and give me this one.”
There was a crash and Leo called out, “Just a glass!”
Then came the annoyed murmur of Drio’s voice. I couldn’t make out their conversation, but it didn’t escalate to homicidal levels, so I tuned them out.
“What happened to you, Snowflake?”
Rohan stroked the heart and lightning bolt tattoo. “Raquel made it to the compound and rescued me and I spent the next few days in a magically-induced coma to heal, but it was more like I was lost in Hell.” The threads in his eyes shifted and his expression blanked.
“Love?”
Dark magic shot out of him, blistering my forearm and knocking me to the floor. I scrambled to my feet.
Rohan was in fighter stance, his blades extended, slashing out, engaged in a duel with the magic that crackled out of him. There was no awareness in his eyes.
Using my magic, I pinned him against the wall, increasing the pressure until he stopped fighting himself. He shuddered, focus drifting back into his gaze, and swallowed hard. “Sorry.”
I released my hold on him and sat down on the bed, patting the mattress. When he didn’t take me up on my offer, I kept him talking to relax him. “And after the coma?”
“The dark magic wasn’t gone. I came out of that nightmare into a worse one because I thought you were dead. I couldn’t even get any relief sleeping because I kept dreaming about you.” His voice broke.
“Same. Mine were more drug-induced hallucinations, but still.” I smiled, then swallowed over the lump in my throat. “I never doubted us. Even when things were the worst, when I didn’t think I was going to ever be okay again, you came back for me.”
Ro sat down next to me, his side brushing mine. “When I heard your voice, I couldn’t stay away. It’s selfish and dangerous.”
“It’s what I want and I’m in no danger from you.” There were hordes of deadly things outside that
door coming for me, but Ro was everything warm and vital to my existence.
“You sure?” He pushed his jeans down. His left hip was covered in white raised scars. “The first time I blacked out, I came to covered in glass and blood. Every window in the safe house that Raquel had brought me to was smashed. I can’t even heal my scars. I’m a wild card.” Impatience was stamped on his tight features. “I’m grateful Raquel wasn’t there when this happened. I could have seriously hurt her.”
“There is no gift basket in the world expensive enough to repay her.” My gaze snagged on the dip between his stomach and his hip. I wanted to lick my way across his injuries, map them. Ro was my kink. I could live with that. But I also wanted my touch to take away his pain and suffering. Funny thing, love. I’d endure torments a million times over so that he wouldn’t have to.
“She said we could name our first kid after her,” he said.
A little boy or girl with their father’s eyes and their mother’s snark, wreaking havoc and wrapping all the adults in their life around their imperious little finger. I stilled.
Satan was coming for me.
“If you’re my first baby daddy, then it’s a deal.” I mustered up a half-smile for him.
Rohan kissed the top of my head, his arms tightening around me.
“Don’t worry, Snowflake. I may be cheap, but I’m not easy.” I skipped my fingers down his spine, pulling him closer until we fit together like two puzzle pieces.
Our kiss was an ineffable pull. It was slow and sweet, unfurling deep inside me to nourish the weedy patch that my soul had become, sending it into a riotous bloom of wildflowers.
His kiss was my salvation.
Ro reached for me, but I rolled off the bed with a saucy grin. Very slowly, I teased my tunic off, cupping my breasts through the lace of my cute pink bra.
“Too slow,” he said, and sliced the bra off, pitching it across the room. He lowered his mouth to my nipple, flicking his tongue against it.
“Tease.” I pressed my palm into his hard cock and he rolled his hips.
Cuntessa was sopping. I wriggled out of the rest of my clothes then attacked his belt buckle. “Take it off.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 150
