by Jessa Slade
He propped himself up. “Why are you being so dismissive?”
In the dim room, her gaze was murky with shadows. “I’m not. I had a mind-blowing orgasm. I just don’t want you to think it’s anything more than that.”
He stared at her, incredulous. “Are you telling me we should just be friends?”
“Well, I know you married young, and you probably didn’t date much before that. And not much since, far as I can tell. We actually call it friends with benefits now.”
He gritted his teeth. “So I’ve heard.”
She reached up to touch his jaw. “I just don’t want you to think I’m trying to take her place.”
“You couldn’t.” When hurt flared in her eyes—and vanished as quick as a minnow flash on the water—he captured her hand and pressed a kiss into the center. He longed to see that impish smile again. Truly impish, since it contained more than a touch of the devil. “Carine was my sweetheart, my inspiration, my reason to live. Quite literally. But she would not have survived what you did, either before or after the demon.”
She softened against him. His elbow slipped across the rumpled covers until he was lying beside her again. The heat of their bodies had cooled, and she reached to flip the edge of the coverlet over their hips.
He touched the wild tangle of her hair. “Do you want to shower again?”
“You’re insatiable,” she murmured. “Give me a minute.”
His cheeks warmed. “I meant . . .” But her breathing deepened. With the slow expansion of her chest, he felt something sink into his. Not love—God, not that again—and not pain. But some awkward mix of the two, tangled, as he’d said earlier, around a core of the desperation they held in common. She’d wanted to get out of her life. Never mind what she claimed—the demon had known. And he’d wanted to get back into the life lost to him along with his arm.
He’d wanted this encounter, too. Had longed for it since he walked into the Shimmy Shack and seen her draped only in a snake and her insolence. She didn’t care how exposed she was, how raw. Still, she’d held a piece of herself inviolate and wielded it against the world. He’d feared he’d lost that ability himself, even before he’d lost his hand, but now he knew he could get it back. Through her.
Friends did such things for each other.
When she’d settled into sleep, he eased away, tucking up the blanket to replace his warmth. She sighed and turned on her belly. He echoed the sigh as he eyed the dimples framing the base of her spine. He squelched the temptation to let his tongue travel the path again.
Leaving her side, the room felt colder, darker. Now that his attention widened, he realized it was getting late. The night-roaming talyan would be rising soon. He felt the restlessness gathering around them, one of the reasons most of the men had private retreats elsewhere. The talyan were trained to suspend their emotions, lest their excesses attract dark interests, and the league had invented energy sinks to hold any inadvertent spikes of violent fury. But it couldn’t all be held back. Not forever.
Which was why even the best fighters didn’t live eternally. Eventually, they all broke. If not physically, then from the weight of their accumulated pain and sorrow.
Evil, of course, lasted longer.
He washed up quietly in the bathroom, then dressed in a fresh T-shirt and jeans and strapped on the hook, and left a similar uniform, minus the hook, at the foot of the bed for when she awoke. He’d have to bother the other women for something better fitting, since he didn’t want to visit her apartment when the police might be watching. Although Jilly was too short and Sera too staid to provide anything similar to Nim’s usual attire.
For some reason, the thought made him sigh in regret, and he let himself out of the room before he could examine the impulse.
He left his shirt untucked, lest thinking of Nim and her clothes—or lack thereof—betray him.
He found Archer and Ecco in the kitchen. Archer was scowling at a map spread across the table, and Ecco was, inexplicably, at the stove, with a ladle in hand. The fragrance of chicken and herbs wafted from the open stew pot.
When Jonah arched his brow, the big talya shrugged. “Jilly will be hungry later.”
Just as well she cooked for the league ahead of time, then, since Jonah knew Ecco couldn’t boil water. Malice, yes; water, no. “How is she?”
Without straightening from the map, Archer grunted. “Sera is still with her.”
“Did Andre give you anything?”
“A few possibilities. I don’t know what your woman did to him, but he passed out again and his vitals are down in coma range.”
Jonah considered. “Do me a favor. Don’t mention that to her.”
“That she might have killed him?”
“That she didn’t get everything we needed first.”
Archer gave him a lopsided grin. “Ah, the gentler sex.”
“I am reconsidering the illusion, yes,” Jonah said. “If Andre regains consciousness, we should let him go.”
Ecco rumbled. “Since when are you the forgiving type, missionary man?”
Jonah ignored the other talya. “He’ll run back to Corvus, given the chance.”
Archer drummed his fingers. “Niall would okay that. He won’t kill a child, even one who’s sold out to the devil.”
“Assuming Nim didn’t already kill him.” Jonah lifted one of the sticky notes on the map. “Andre said ‘flying,’ so you’re thinking airports.”
“Niall said we aren’t to make a move without him. So I’m not thinking anything, officially.” When Jonah gave him a long look, Archer shrugged. “But since Jilly is down and our fearless leader is distracted, unofficially, I’m thinking a small team on a quick reconnaissance—”
Ecco shook his head. “Better wait for the boss.”
“Since when do you obey the rules?” Archer asked.
“Since the girls started coming round and breaking them. Playing with them is more fun. And way scarier.” Ecco glowered at Jonah. “The next one was supposed to be mine.”
Jonah’s hackles rose in atavistic response to the challenge. “They aren’t trading cards.”
Ecco tapped the spoon against the side of the pot and turned slowly. “They should go to the strongest fighters.”
Jonah flexed his fingers. “They did.”
“Knock it off, you two,” Archer snapped. “We don’t understand the mechanism of the bond, but you can be sure there’s more to it than muscle.” He gave Ecco a long stare.
The big talya returned the look, and in his hands, the spoon seemed suddenly lethal.
Jonah smoothed his hand down the back of his neck. The short hairs prickled against his palm. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t the sort to beat his chest and crow. But the incense scent of Nim was still on his skin. This was why saints renounced the temptations of the flesh.
“I’d join that advance team,” he said. “If Nim is in danger from her demon’s strength, I want that anklet.”
“Not to mention, who knows what havoc Corvus could wreak with the artifact at his disposal.” Archer swept his hand over the map again, encompassing the city with his gesture.
Jonah remembered the pull of Nim’s allure. “I think the artifact does the djinn-man no good without the matching demon. Which is why Corvus went after Sera last winter.” He flattened his palm on the map. “Which is why we’ll have no trouble finding him again.”
Ecco stirred the soup with unnecessary vigor. “Because he’ll be coming for Nim. And you don’t seem to care.”
Jonah stared at him from beneath lowered brows. “Tell me again how you think you could have her, and I’ll show you how much I care.”
Archer sighed. “Your mark is on her, Jonah, as surely as the demon’s. Ecco is just teasing you about taking her.”
“No, he’s not,” Jonah said, just as Ecco protested, “No, I’m not.”
“No one is taking anyone.” Sera stood in the kitchen doorway, her voice more threatening than her mate’s. She cast an
admonitory eye over all of them, lingering on Ecco. “Stop stirring so hard. You’re going to puree that chicken. Jilly only broke a few ribs, not her jaw.”
Archer went to her side. The tender way he brushed her blond hair behind her ear made Jonah avert his gaze. “How’s she doing?”
“Oh, you know how a sucking chest wound sounds worse than it is, at least when the teshuva are involved. All that gasping and bloody foam and turning blue, even though the demon is working its magic. The B team actually took a harder hit than we did. Haji will be down for three days at least with a compound femur fracture. The shattered bone did a lot of damage on the way out. And Nando almost lost an eye, which would have been . . .” Her glance went to his hook, and she stopped herself.
Jonah waited for the gut-curdling shame that usually followed those mortified shifts of gaze. But it seemed carnal relations had an undermining effect on shame. “It’s always funny until someone almost loses an eye.”
Sera drew her chin back in surprise. “Your mate is rubbing off on you.”
“She has made rubbing an art.” The words popped off his tongue with Nim-flavored tartness.
Ecco made a pained sound, slammed the spoon into the pot, and stalked out.
Sera watched him go. “What’s his problem?”
Jonah grimaced. “Where to start . . . ?” He’d taken his share of needling from the big talya over the decades and rarely found ways to return the favor. Another disreputable Nim skill he’d acquired with their demonic resonance.
He rather liked it.
“Start with the part where you believe Nim is a menace without the anklet,” Archer interrupted.
Jonah gestured at the pendant hanging from the cord around Sera’s neck. “Did you ever try your tenebraeternum trick without the teshuva’s talisman?”
“I never had reason to.” Sullen rainbows gleamed under Sera’s fingers when she touched the etherically mutated stone. “I’ve had the necklace ever since the demon first came to me, even before its first ascension.”
Archer pulled her under his arm. “We always thought the desolator numinis was the weapon and Sera was the trigger. The same with Jilly and her knot-work trap.”
“Jilly had her bracelet from the beginning too,” Sera said.
Jonah wondered if he should be proud that his demon-matched cohort was the first to pawn her artifact and thus reveal a new facet of the female talyan. “Nim shows every sign of being as dangerously unstable as league records warn about in the few references we have to female talyan.” When Archer and Sera stiffened as one, he waved his hand. “Don’t bristle. I didn’t write those books.”
“No,” Archer growled. “But your brand of dogma may have lost us our other halves for the last few millennia.”
“Not dogma,” Jonah said. “Just the truth of what I’m finding. Nim is a lure, just as Jilly makes herself a trap, and Sera is an exit from our realm through demonic emanations. But Nim did it without the anklet. Which makes us stronger than we knew.”
“Not if she destroys herself—or us—in the discovery process,” Archer said.
“And not if you think of her like that,” Sera added.
Jonah scowled. “Like what? A weapon? That’s what we all are.”
“That’s not all she is,” Sera said. “Not to you.” But her tone wavered uncertainly.
Archer completed her unspoken thought. “At least she’d better not be. Or maybe Ecco was right.”
Jonah straightened. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. You don’t know anything more than I do about how this bond works.”
“Love,” Sera said. Again, her tone lacked conviction.
Jonah shook his head. “They call it the mated-talyan bond. Nothing in there about love.” He narrowed his eyes at Archer. “You didn’t believe in love.”
“No more than I believed in demons. And look where that got me.” He unfurled his fingers toward Sera in an oddly courtly gesture, but the smirk he turned on Jonah was decidedly fiendish. “Tell yourself what you will, if it helps seal your bond. But watch your sacrifices don’t cut too deep.”
He ladled out bowls of soup while Sera rifled through the silverware drawer. Then she whisked herself out of the kitchen with the tray balanced in her arms. Off to feed the invalid and the hovering mate, no doubt.
Caring and cooking pots. Before women had returned to the league, the talyan had been a tribe of taciturn loners, united only by their mission. After Carine was gone and they’d found him, their habitual solitude—bordering on the monkish—had suited him well. The loss of his arm, though . . . that had set him apart in a way he couldn’t abide.
And when exactly had his separation—him from his arm, him from the league—ceased to eat at him? He thought he knew.
“Nim is mine,” he said. “I won’t risk her, even for my own salvation.”
Archer lingered, his hip propped against the counter. “Isn’t that why you were in Africa? To save others and thus save yourself? The demon lets you make the same mistake over and over. Until you don’t.”
Having told Nim the story already, Jonah found the admission slipped from him more easily this time. “Actually, I became a missionary for the adventure.”
“Well, she’ll give you that too.” Archer’s grin flashed and faded. “We’re not perfect, Jonah. In fact, we’re as far from it as a mob of selfish, frightened, brutal bastards can be. The sooner you admit that, the sooner you can be something else.”
He headed for the door, and Jonah waited until the other talya had gotten halfway out before he spoke. “And what will I be? The man I was?”
Archer didn’t look back. “Your list of sins is long enough. Don’t add stupidity.”
Behind him, a half dozen talyan—looking lethal and hungry and all sleepy-eyed, except for Nando, who was wearing an eye patch and looked only half-sleepy-eyed—filed into the kitchen.
“I smelled soup,” Nando said. He squinted around the eye patch, as if somebody might be trying to hide his supper.
Lex jostled him. “Out of my way, pirate boy. You’re missing an eye, not a leg.” One of the other talyan elbowed him, and he ducked his head with a rueful grunt.
Jonah left them to their dinner and jibes, and took his muddled thoughts with him.
CHAPTER 13
Nim awoke and knew she was alone. She stretched until her spine cracked, then settled on the one pillow.
Not surprisingly, Jonah had sneaked out of their bed. If only she’d gotten around to lashing him to the four posters at the corners. He had too many hang-ups—some might call them morals—to do what he wanted without feeling bad about it. And he had wanted it, she knew, even though she had pushed him a little. Well, pushed him past his hang-ups—okay, morals—which had been a little further than a little.
But she’d made a nice living teasing men out of their morals, so what was this curdling sensation in her chest that made her want to pull the covers up over her head? Did she actually feel guilty?
If Jonah hadn’t stopped her, she would have taken Andre’s soul. And she hadn’t even cared that much for the one she already had. But Jonah had stopped her. Still saving souls, Andre’s and hers.
And she’d thanked the missionary man by seducing him.
With friends like her, who needed fire and brimstone?
When she shoved the blanket away, the dark lines on her thighs startled her. Not that she had forgotten the demon’s mark. Not exactly. But somehow, her night with Jonah seemed unrelated, which was so completely delusional she almost laughed at herself.
The only thing more pathetic than a john falling for a hooker was a stripper falling for the guy in the back row.
Not that she was falling for Jonah, but she could see how some poor girl might, like the long-dead-and-turned-to-African-worm-food Carine—young, innocent, idealistic. Good thing Nim was none of those things. Only a heart as scarred as the insides of her thighs would keep her safe.
Except the demon had all but erased those. Stupid dem
on.
She grabbed the T-shirt and sweatpants at the bottom of the bed, refusing to think how sweet he’d been to remember that she didn’t have any clean clothes. Most men were thinking of ways to get her out of her clothes.
“He’s not most men,” she reminded herself. Then she saw her thong neatly draped over the shower-curtain rail. The black cotton was still faintly damp, but the soap had been rinsed out. She shook her head. “He even does laundry. He is definitely not most men.”
She kicked her sneakers around the bottom of the tub while she showered, knocking most of the muck off. Good thing they were already black. Afterward, she dressed in the clothes he’d laid out. She propped the wet shoes on the windowsill behind the thick curtain that blocked out the heat and light. Then she went snooping through his room.
Or would have. But there wasn’t much to snoop. Her earlier impression of simplicity bordering on austerity was unchanged. No pictures on the dresser. No books except a copy of the Bible beside the table, but the binding wasn’t even cracked and there was nothing tucked between the pages. She went through the drawers and found only more T-shirts and jeans and briefs, until she yanked open the bottom drawer. She choked and jumped back before she realized the severed hand with forearm was fake.
She poked it. The naturalistic skin was eerily soft and unmarred, quite unlike his calluses. Obviously, Jonah had decided the hook was more serviceable.
Or maybe that was just another example of his painful integrity. Not even a fake hand for him. Thank God she’d never gotten around to buying fake tits.
She slammed the drawer closed and headed for the door. Hand on the knob, she hesitated, took a breath, and pulled it open.
She’d half expected to find Jonah on the other side, glowering. But the hall was empty. For a warehouse full of men, it was surprisingly clean. Maybe Jonah was in charge of housekeeping too. Unlike the basement, where all the haphazard decorations hung, the walls here were as bare as her feet. As if the league had saved all its focus for its mission of fighting evil.
Which made a certain amount of sense, she supposed. But didn’t they hold anything back for themselves? Even the fresh-meat stripper knew better than to give it all away, no matter how loudly the crowd clamored for more, or there’d be nothing left at the end of the night. How much worse for the talyan who fought for years and years?
