I moved to the counter.
A note was propped on the register.
Welcome home, Ms. Lane.
“Arrogant, overconfident jackass.” Keys lay on the counter beside it.
I wondered what car he’d left me this time. I was reaching for the keys when, out of the blue, emotions bombarded me, intense and confusing. They were accompanied by a barrage of memories: the day I’d stumbled into this place, my anxiety at being lost, meeting Barrons for the first time, my naïve conviction that he was exactly the kind of man I would never date.
“And we haven’t dated.” I crushed the note in my fist. Just had completely uninhibited raw sex. Months of it.
I closed my eyes, more memories of this place crashing over me: the night I’d seen the Gray Man devour a woman’s beauty and had rushed here for answers, with no idea what was wrong with me but already suspecting it was permanent; the night I’d accepted his offer of a fourth-floor bedroom overlooking the back alley and moved in; the day my daddy had come looking for me and I’d realized I could never go home to Ashford until the madness in Dublin was over and I’d either succeeded or didn’t care because I’d be going home the same way as Alina, in a box; the night I’d given Barrons a birthday cake, then eaten it alone, after it had splatted from the ceiling.
I inhaled his scent. He was near, a few feet away. Lust nearly buckled my knees. He was a tireless lover. There was nothing off-limits with him.
“Ms. Lane.”
I fisted my hands in my pockets and opened my eyes. He stood across the counter, eyes dark, features impassive.
“Barrons.”
“It’s a Hummer.”
“Alpha?” I said hopefully.
His obsidian gaze mocked. Would I waste my time with anything less?
“Dani’s moving in,” I told him.
“Dani’s going back to the abbey.”
“Then I am, too.”
“I hear you’re not welcome there.”
“I will be soon. I have plans. And I need her.”
“You need me,” he said flatly. “I thought you’d have figured that out by now.”
I had. I kept getting knocked down. And I kept getting back up again, a little stronger each time. But I still wasn’t strong enough. One day I would be. Until then, Barrons was the only one that scared all my enemies away. If IYD really would have worked on Halloween, he definitely guaranteed me the highest odds of survival. I was done hopping from swell to swell, trying to avoid the tidals. Right or wrong, good or bad, I’d chosen: Barrons was my wave. But there was no way I was living alone with him. I needed a buffer, and my buffer needed a place to live, too.
“What’s wrong with Dani staying here?”
“She’s in more danger at your side.”
“I don’t think she’ll go. She has a mind of her own.”
“Then figure out how to convince her it’s best for both of you.”
“It might take a few days.” According to the LM, I had only three, anyway. “Give me that much, at least.” Once she was here, I’d work on keeping her here. And put her to work with her super -hearing and other senses at figuring out what was under his garage and how to get us down there. He might be my wave, but he wasn’t my surfboard. Knowledge and usefulness were all that stood between me and the riptide.
He studied me for a moment, then nodded tightly. “Forty-eight hours. Keep the kid under control and out of my way. And there are new rules. One: Stay away from Chester’s. That means a ten-block radius. Two: You share all pertinent information with me without my having to ask. Three: Keep the kid away from my garage. Four: If you try to force yourself into my head, I will force myself into your pants.”
“Oh! That’s total bullshit!”
“Tit for tat.” His gaze dropped to my breasts, and I had a sudden, much-too-detailed memory of yanking my shirt up while he’d watched them pop out, jiggling. “Or would that be tit for tit?”
“There’s no need to be rude.”
“I can think of endless needs to be rude.”
“Keep them to yourself.”
“Such a different tune you whistle now.”
“You sound angry, Barrons. Frustrated. What’s wrong? You get a little addicted to me?”
His lips drew back, baring his teeth. I’d felt them on my nipples. I could almost feel them there now.
“We fucked, Ms. Lane. Even cockroaches fuck. They eat each other, too.”
“Same page, Barrons.”
“Same bloody word,” he agreed.
Oh, yes, here we were, working together again. All was well—or at least back to normal—at Barrons Books and Baubles.
“I really get to live at Barrons’? With, like, Barrons?” Dani exclaimed, bounding from foot to foot backward as we walked through Temple Bar. We were on our way to intercept the sidhe-seers. Dani had learned that a group of several dozen, led by Kat, was coming into the city tonight, to scout it out.
“No,” I said dryly, “with, like, the LM and his minions.” “I’m living with Barrons! Holy fecking shit! Way cool!”
“Doesn’t it bother you that we have no idea what he is or whether he’s good or bad?”
“Nope. Not a bit.” Her eyes sparkled.
I snorted. She was completely serious. I wished I could be so uncomplicated. But I couldn’t. Right and wrong, good and bad mattered to me. Blame it on my parents. They endowed me with a massively inconvenient sense of ethics.
“We’re almost there, Mac. I hear ‘em dead ahead.” She cocked her head, then her eyes widened. “Aw, Ro’s gonna be wicked pissed! She told ‘em not to fight, no matter what! Just to suss out what’s goin’ down and how many are where. We gotta hurry, Mac. It don’t sound like it’s goin’ good!”
I didn’t have time to brace myself for the rough ride. Her hand was on my arm, and we were gone.
Dani slammed us to a stop, directly in the middle of the fight. It was huge, messy, and filled the street from one end of the block to the next. Dani loves the action. Unfortunately, she forgets that the rest of us aren’t as fast as she is. She arrived with her sword drawn, perfectly at ease moving in hyperspeed mode, but it took me a moment to fumble my spear from my shoulder holster. In that moment, I got slammed in the back of my head so hard that I saw stars, and brackets from my MacHalo went flying in three different directions. Snarling, I spun around and drove my spear into an Unseelie’s … head, I think. It had three roundish things on its shoulders with dozens of slits that spewed icy, stinging liquid as it fell.