Nim danced over it. “Oh, you really like that idea.” Her hand settled on the fly of his jeans. “I can tell.”
He spun her again, and a half dozen pikes clattered against one another. The last in the row fell off the wall and clanged into a suit of armor that, as far as he’d known, had never been worn. The polished steel rocked on its stand. He reached out to steady it. “I think the league elders would consider this battle far too kinky.”
“Isn’t it fun?”
“You are fun.” He pushed her wild hair from her face and smiled as the curls fell back over his knuckles. “Every day with you is an adventure.”
“Every day that doesn’t get you killed,” she agreed. “Good thing you love adventure.”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s you. Nim, I love you.”
She froze. Her breasts were tight against his chest. She didn’t breathe, but the racing of her heartbeat rattled him.
Maybe she’d misheard him. Although what she might have heard instead . . . “I love you, Nim.”
With each frantic pulse of her heart, she shook her head. “You love my body.”
“Yes. And your hair. And your wicked smile—”
“You can’t. . . . It’s the lure.”
He scowled, half-amused, half-irate. “It’s you.”
Her fingers wrapped around his biceps, as if she’d fall without him, and her eyes were wide. “But I’m . . .”
“You’re what? You’re killing me here.”
“Yes,” she burst out. She tried to squirm away, but he pinned her with his knee between her legs. “I could do that, kill you. I’m bad that way.”
“No, wicked maybe. But wicked isn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought.” He kissed her, and she moaned. “See? I’m learning.” He wedged his thigh a little higher, and she writhed against him. He set his lips against her rushing pulse, then nipped her.
She shivered. “But you don’t know—”
“So show me again.”
With another moan, she popped his fly. “Oh yes, being good is so hard. Too hard.”
The armor crashed to the floor.
He and Nim were a heartbeat behind.
CHAPTER 20
Nim stood in the first light of the rising sun, watching the talyan return on the still-dark street below. From the slump of all those broad shoulders, sagging as if the humidity melted their bones, she knew they’d had no luck again.
“We can’t keep sending them out like this,” Jilly murmured. “With that black energy they’re emoting, they’ll spawn as many tenebrae as they destroy.”
“At least they are going out,” Sera said. “One more night under guard and I was going to have to start my own battle.”
The two women turned away from the edge of the roof. Nim lingered a moment until she picked Jonah’s blond head from the crowd. She studied his gait. Steady, strong, uninjured. She breathed a silent sigh of relief.
She caught up with the others as they headed inside. “When is Liam going to finish the modifications to the executioner’s sword?”
Jilly pulled a face. “Soon. Setting up his forge again was a great idea. He was thrilled. But if I live forever and never work the bellows again, I’ll die an ecstatic woman.”
“Better than being under computer-lab arrest,” Sera said. “Ferris had me downloading every reference to heretical talya women in the league archives. I guess he thought making me write ‘I will never crack open the Veil between the realms without broody male talya supervision again’ on the chalkboard a hundred times was too juvenile.”
“Don’t bet on it.” Jilly stumped down the stairs, her combat boots unlaced in concession to the heat. “The league adores old school. That’s why Liam built a forge like the one his father used two hundred years ago instead of upgrading to something not Jilly powered.”
Sera skipped a step ahead of Nim. “How’d Jonah decide to keep you out of trouble?”
Nim struggled to keep the heat out of her cheeks, glad when they exited into the dark main hall. “Oh, I had to straighten up the weapons room.”
“Lucky you,” Jilly said. “Find anything you like?”
“A couple times. Things, I mean.” Nim cleared her throat. “Anyway, it’ll be good to join the guys. Maybe we can lure Corvus out.”
When the two women straightened in alarm, she clarified, “Not ‘lure’ as in ‘almost get ourselves killed again.’ Just tempt him out of hiding with the way he’s always been interested in us, ever since Sera’s demon first crossed over.”
During the two nights of their house arrest, she’d gotten the full stories of Sera’s and Jilly’s possessions, how Corvus’s attempt to break through the Veil had summoned Sera’s teshuva, and how he had almost trapped Jilly while trying to circumvent the mated talya bond.
Sera sighed. “It is frustrating how he seems to respect us more than the league ever did.”
“He might have been around when the last female talya fell out of the archived records,” Jilly said. “Maybe he knows he should be careful. Anyway, the crews have been out every night around the airports and haven’t found the tiniest smear of demon sign.” She echoed Sera’s sigh. “I have to finish breakfast for the guys. I don’t want them crashing in and deflating my soufflé.”
Nim managed not to snicker as they dropped Jilly off at the kitchen. As if somebody might fight her for the territory she’d claimed, she slipped into an apron that read DON’T FUCK WITH THE COOK over a stenciled cleaver.
Sera waved an absent good-bye as she continued down the hall. “I’d better get back to the computer before Ferris comes looking for me. Maybe I’ll find something we can actually use. Like an ancient scroll of easy Crock-Pot recipes for when we’re too busy slaughtering demons to sauté.”
Nim smiled. “Three hundred and sixty-five centuries of cream of chicken.”
Sera shuddered. “That would be hell on earth. Don’t let Jonah catch you looking idle.”
“Oh, I keep my hands busy.” Nim blinked innocently when Sera peered at her. When the other woman had gone, she continued on.
The hiss of water running through the pipes accompanied her down the hall. All the talyan in their rooms, washing the ichor and blood away. She paused outside Jonah’s door. Her room too, she supposed.
She’d never lived with someone before. Well, not for longer than a couple weeks. Not that she’d broken that record with Jonah yet. But eternity stretched before them.
Assuming she didn’t do anything stupid.
Like believe him when he said he loved her.
She let herself into the room, into the bathroom, into the shower, into his arms.
“I saw you on the roof,” he murmured, after he’d finished with a long, lingering kiss that stole her breath and redoubled her pulse.
“I was waiting for you.” She worked the bar of soap between her hands and slicked her palms over his chest as the water sluiced around them. Her fingers satisfied her of the truth her eyes had seen from the roof; he was unmarked, other than his quiescent reven. Whatever tenebrae the talyan had encountered had gone to their end without excessive fuss. “I missed you.”
“I missed the feel of two soapy hands on my skin.”
She smacked him, a loud, fishy sound in the confines of the shower, and suds flew. “Naughty boy.”
“I was missing your hands. I just didn’t know it before.”
The murmured words, soft and warm as the touch of the water, carved a little space in her heart. “How could you? You didn’t know me then.” And if he had, he wouldn’t have liked her. She hadn’t particularly liked her.
“Maybe my demon knew.”
Of course. One creature of shady mortal character to another. She busied herself with a washcloth. “Jilly says Liam is almost done modifying the executioner’s sword.”