He held back a groan as he straightened. He was getting roundly pummeled by all sorts of demons. And he deserved it.
He extended his flattened palm. “Give me the knife, please.”
For the space of a blink, he stared into her frozen eyes and saw the demon looking back almost as if it were contemplating stabbing him—for what sin, he wasn’t sure.
Alyce handed him the scalpel.
She handed it to him nicely—not as the demon would have, through the center of his palm, if not his heart—and still the breath whooshed out of him.
Despite what he had done to her—well, he hadn’t done that much, but despite what he’d wanted to do—still she trusted him. The obligation weighed heavily on his shoulders, which were almost twice as wide as hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said. To her. To Liam. To the raging erection trapped behind his fly. “It won’t happen again.”
Liam grunted. “If one of the other talyan had found you manhandling her like that, there’d be hell to pay. And hell does not come cheap around here.”
Sid wished the other man hadn’t said come.
Alyce made a low noise deep in her throat. The growl wasn’t anywhere near as sexy as the moan, but his pulse still ratcheted up in a crazily eager response that ranked danger at the top of some heretofore unimagined list of things that apparently turned him on.
Or maybe it was just because she made the noise.
Damn.
She glowered at Liam. “I have lived without you for … for a long time. I do not need another master.”
“The league has archaic traditions,” Sid reassured her, “but nothing that barbaric.”
Except for the symballein bond, of course, uniting male and female talyan through unpredictable and uncontrollable forces they hadn’t yet identified. If the link wasn’t voluntarily chosen, was that so different from slavery?
But he wasn’t here to judge—merely to study. If only he could keep his hands off his primary source.
He bent down in front of Alyce and grabbed the torn housedress, now with a few more holes where the surgical staples had ripped out. His head swam as he stood again, and it was everything he could do not to brace himself—against her.
He took a steadying breath. Even that was fraught with the scent of her—no perfume or lotion or bath wash, but just the simple fragrance of her skin. He wrapped the threadbare dress around her without his fingers roaming a millimeter from their careful course.
She looked up at him—Alyce did, not the demon—and he knew the quelling aspect of Liam’s presence had only the faintest power.
Liam crossed his arms in a disapproving stance, gripping his biceps as if he were still imagining Sid’s neck. “The storage room down the hall has extra clothing. Get some. Then feed the girl. I’ve seen more meat on a malice.” He spun on his heel and went to the lab door. He looked back. “Move it.”
The league leader obviously had more faith than Sid did in a bit of a reality check to break the spell between them. But moving away from her was the first step.
Covering her up was a good second step. Liam left them at the storeroom with a long, significant look at Sid. “I want you up in the kitchen in five minutes.”
Alyce didn’t watch him leave. She stood passively in the doorway while Sid rummaged across the shelves.
“What size are you?” He waited a moment. “Never mind. Small. Oh good, one of the other women must have insisted on more sizes or we’d never find anything to fit you. Here you go. A couple of each. Not much selection for color, but no holes.”
He turned to her, the folds of black fabric wrinkling in his arms as he clutched the clothing to his chest—as if that was what he wanted to hold.
She stared up at him through her lashes. In another woman, the effect might have been flirtatious. On her, the look was more arctic wolf behind a low, dark thicket.
He swallowed. “What I did was inappropriate. I know you aren’t ready for … for anything like that.”
“I have been alone longer than I have been possessed.”
The flat chill of her tone belied the churning depths of emotion underneath, in the same way as the frozen scrim of a winter-bound river hid the dangerous undertow. And still, everything in him wanted to step out onto the ice, to reach out a rescuing hand.
But he was a scholar, not a hero—not even a damned hero.
“You aren’t alone anymore,” he said. “You have the entire league.”
She turned away, the white line of her spine like an accusation glaring through the tatters of her dress.
He took her upstairs and found her an empty room down a long hall with other talyan on both sides. The demon-possessed usually kept solitary, secret retreats elsewhere, he knew, like Alyce’s bolt-holes, although undoubtedly nicer. But every league maintained a place for them to come together. Private and taciturn they might be, and still they needed one another. Alyce would come to appreciate the companionship they offered.
More than companionship—the thought tightened every muscle in him until the ache in his bashed head and bitten shoulder made him think he was falling into pieces.
He’d already witnessed the first stages of a talya courtship. He’d personally felt the temptation of demonic power. From now on, he’d have to keep his mechanical pencil and clipboard as sword and shield against his unacceptable attraction.
Alyce was not his. She belonged to the league, to the unwitting city, and to the fight. He had his own fight ahead of him if he was going to finally win London’s approval. He just had to keep his eye on the prize.
But it was a nearly unwinnable battle with his wayward gaze to lead her to the bathroom, turn on the shower, place the clean clothes on the sink, and back away without looking for another glimpse of her pale skin.
“I’ll wait for you in the kitchen,” he said.
And he fled, because flight had always been the underappreciated younger brother of fight.
Liam waited in the kitchen, as promised—threatened, really.
The league leader, one hip perched near the humming microwave, eyed him. “Where’s Alyce?”
“In the shower, hopefully.”
“You aren’t sure?”
Sid scraped a hand through his hair. “I’m not stupid.”
“And staying to make sure would have been stupid.” Liam nodded. “Throughout mythology, demon-touched women have been portrayed as overwhelmingly alluring. And that was just when the portrayals were merely in words or pictures. In the flesh …” He whistled under his breath.
A flare of anger made Sid’s hands clench. “Well, the flesh will be properly covered now, in your commando fatigues.”
Commando. That made him remember there had been no underthings in the pile he left for Alyce. And that reminded him he wasn’t going to think of it anymore. The angry heat converted in a flash to something far less manageable.
Liam watched him with too-knowing eyes. “We might not know how the symballein bond works, but I can tell you from experience that it makes a hash of good intentions.”
Sid thrust his hands into his front pockets, to hide the white knuckles and release some of the pressure of denim on his prick. “You think the symballein link is somehow keyed to me, even though I’m not possessed?”
“Good God, no.” Liam straightened. “You can’t have Alyce.”
“Obviously not,” he said, even though the devil’s advocate in him asked, Why not? And another part—the part that wasn’t an advocate and was just a devil—whispered, Fuck you.
But Liam seemed satisfied with the words said aloud. “Good you agree. Because I don’t think I could keep murderous talya hands off you. So make sure you keep Alyce’s hands off you too.”