“Then the least I could do was my job. My old job.” She closed her eyes when he brushed his lips over her temple. “Do you think it mattered to him?”
He was silent a moment, which made her realize that she trusted him to tell her the truth. “We can’t know what it was like for him. But you made a difference for everyone else in that room. They all hoped they might someday go as gently into that dark night.”
“I suppose that has to be enough.”
His slick hands skimmed over her shoulders. She leaned back as he dug his thumbs into tight muscles.
“It’s hard work, isn’t it?”
“Harder because Zane didn’t have to die.” She shrugged, lifting his hands. “In a way, I was glad to leave it behind. I want to do more.”
He didn’t answer. He moved in front of her, and knelt. She stared at his bowed head as he ran his hands down her legs.
“Why don’t you sing outside the vigils?”
She shifted. “How do you know I don’t? This last week hasn’t exactly been much to sing about.”
He looked up at her, not blinking despite the droplets of water beading his face. His eyes shone silver.
Those eyes would burn through her if she didn’t answer. “I sang with my mother in my father’s choir at church. When she got too sick to go, I led the group. After she disappeared, I gave it up. I didn’t start again until I heard how severely I sucked on harp. But singing got tangled up with death.”
He reached up toward her belly. “You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thank you,” she said, a little breathless as his hands stroked over her hips.
“Beautiful like the rest of you.” His hands framed her pelvis, thumbs brushing the points of the reven curling over her hip bones. The mark gleamed a brilliant amethyst in the nimbus of demon light. “Even this is beautiful. So graceful and intricate.”
She thought the bold, powerful lines of his reven suited him perfectly. She took his arms and pulled him upright. Where she touched him, silver pinwheels struck off his skin.
“I see why you left the lights off,” she murmured.
He shook his head. “I didn’t know. I just thought. . . .”
She waited a moment. “That I’m shy?”
“Maybe I am.”
“We’ll see.” She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. He followed as she padded, dripping wet, to the bed.
He yanked the blanket half off the bed, but she avoided the wrap he tried to make. “You’ll get cold.”
“You’ll warm me.” She stepped into him. Silver sparked before she even touched him.
His arms closed around her, tentatively, as if she might break.
She threaded her fingers through his short hair and pulled him down to her kiss. He breathed out against her mouth, and his arms tightened around her, pulling her up onto her toes.
They fell backward onto the already-rumpled bed, mouths locked.
When he lifted himself above her, he was breathing hard. “Why did you invite me in? You aren’t afraid to be alone.”
She stared up at him. “Not afraid, no. I wanted life. I want you.”
He stilled. “The two aren’t necessarily the same.”
She slipped her hand between their bodies to press against the base of his erection. “You’re not dead.”
He groaned, half laughter, half desire. “Not yet.”
“I won’t hurt you.” She stroked her fingers down the length of him.
“Make me feel. . . .”
“What?”
“Just make me feel.”
She adjusted her hand, cradling the heft of him in her palm, burnishing her thumb over the hot flesh.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“Very.” His breath caught as her grip tightened sensuously. Then he caught her hands. “Too much.”
“No such thing as too alive.”
“Too good, then.” He stretched her arms over her head.
In retaliation, she locked her heels behind his back. Her thighs slicked wet over his flanks. His cock pointed at her, shining with his aura like a burning brand.
He put a hand under the curve of her behind and pulled her up hard against him. She gasped at the friction of him sliding into the shadow space between her legs, grazing the pulsing nub at her core. He held her there, his heat radiating through her, silver whorls spi raling over his skin.
She writhed against him, driving herself toward the brand that would mark her yet again. She had other marks. Accident victim. Demon possessed. This, Archer’s brand, she chose for herself.
And that would mark her as what, exactly?
She didn’t care. Alive was enough, wasn’t it?
She slid, wet skin on wet skin, impaling herself. Sweet heat soaked her from the inside out. She rocked against him, taught him the rhythm singing in her veins.
He loosed her wrists so she filled her hands with him, his shoulders, the taut muscles of his back, his buttocks clenching as he drove into her.
The impatient, rising sounds of his desire flared along her nerves, brighter than the aurora surrounding them. “I can’t wait,” he groaned.
“Don’t wait,” she whispered. “Now. Now.”
The heat and light and life she’d longed for spilled from him, rolling through her, vast and devastating as a tidal wave, carrying with it her own orgasm. Just when she thought she was doomed, it washed her up onto the safe shore of Archer’s chest and receded.
He was still gasping where he’d collapsed beside her. The storm of their racing heartbeats calmed.
“So, are we dead now?” he murmured against her neck.
“I could die happy.”
His arm tightened around her. “What just happened?”
“Classic life-affirming behavior after a catastrophe.”
“So you’re saying you do this for all your patients?”
“Don’t piss me off when I’m afterglowing.” She glanced down at their tangled limbs. “Actually, we’re not glowing anymore.”
“The sun’s coming up.”
She hadn’t noticed the square of the window beginning to lighten. With the mundane light and no threat in sight, her demon-enhanced vision faded, unneeded.
Now that they’d slacked their desire, what else was fading?
She sighed and sat up, finger-combing her hair. “We should get ready for the funeral.”
Archer pushed himself up onto one elbow. “No funeral. I told you, a talyan cadaver won’t last long once the demon’s gone. We’re lucky to get it in the ground.”
She twisted to look at him. “Doesn’t someone say a few words, something?”
“What is there to say?” Faint Southern sweetness in his low voice, he sang back to her, “ ‘Sleep deep, my child, and fuss no more.’ ”
Her fingers tangled in the knots of her hair. “What about good-bye?”
“It’s not a journey that needs your good-byes.” He captured her hands and smoothed the snarls she’d made. “It’s over, Sera.”
Of course it was. She went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face.
When she returned to find her clothes, he was on his phone, his expression grim. Speaking of cold water . . .
She dressed and waited until he’d put his jeans on to ask. “That call didn’t look good.”
“Just getting messages. Nothing new on the search for the djinn-man. But Bookie has some results from the malice draining. He said considering what Zane reported, he wants to run a few more tests with you.”
“Tests.” She grimaced. “But maybe Zane didn’t die in vain.”
“It’s always in vain.” He pulled on his shirt and rolled back the sleeves, exposing the wild, dark lines of his reven. “Bookie said the hotel still reeks of birnenston, but he needs only a few minutes with you in his lab, so you’ll be fine.”