Departed had been showing up for about a week, standing in what would be considered our front lawn. If we had a lawn. If this were a house and not a converted convent.
A worried expression flashed across Reyes’s face so fast, I almost missed it. Almost. “I wish I knew.”
He’d been worried a lot lately. I could tell the situation was draining him, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he didn’t feel like he was in prison again. He’d spent ten years there for a crime he didn’t commit. And now once again, for all intents and purposes, he was incarcerated. We both were. We were prisoners of a sort, stuck in this place, and while I was certainly going a bit stir-crazy, my restlessness couldn’t compare to his. Still, one foot across that invisible line, the one that marked the sacred, blessed ground from the rest of the area, and that foot would be gone. Along with part of a leg.
We’d fought the Twelve before, and while we didn’t exactly lose, we sure didn’t win. They came back angrier than ever. Their snarls every time I stepped too close to the border were proof of that. They wanted a piece of me, but it was hard to blame them. I did have a killer ass. Or, well, I used to.
I walked back to the mirror and held up the dress, the one that had to be let out due to the fact that my ass had grown in sync with my belly. Reyes stayed close behind, his hand warm at the small of my back, his heat seeping in and easing the ache there. He was very therapeutic, especially now that the nights were getting cooler.
“They won’t talk to me,” I said, trying to decide if cinnamon had been my color all along and I just didn’t know it. It did match my eyes quite nicely, which were the color of the amber in which the mosquito was preserved in Jurassic Park, but it also made me look a little deader than I liked. “The departed on the lawn. I keep thinking they need help to cross, but they just stare straight ahead, their expressions completely blank. Maybe they’re zombies.” I turned this way and that. “Either way, it’s unsettling.”
Reyes pressed into my backside and rubbed my shoulders with what I’d come to realize were magic hands. He was clearly the Magic Man Heart had sung about. I’d had no idea anything could feel that good. On bad days—the days there was just no settling Beep—it rivaled an orgasm.
Wait, no, it didn’t. Nothing rivaled an orgasm. But it came damned close.
“You’re bright,” he said, bending until his breath fanned across my cheek.
“I know, but—”
“You’re really bright.”
I laughed and turned into him. “I know, but—”
“No,” he said, his eyes sparkling with humor, “you’re even brighter than normal. Your light is so bright, it fills every corner of the house.”
Of course, only he would know that. I couldn’t see my light, which was probably a good thing because how would I put on makeup if all I saw was a bright light? No, wait, he wasn’t the only one who would know that. There were others who could see it. The departed, obviously, but also Osh, our resident Daeva, a slave demon who’d escaped from hell centuries ago. And Quentin, a Deaf kid we’d adopted as part of our gang, who mostly hung out with Cookie’s daughter, Amber. And Pari, one of my best friends. And Angel, my departed thirteen-year-old sidekick and lead investigator.
I blinked, realizing all the people who would have known that my brightness levels needed adjusting. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
He lifted a shoulder. “There’s not anything you can do about it, right?”
“Right.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“It’s important, that’s why. Maybe there’s a reason. Maybe I’m sick.” I felt my forehead. My cheeks. My chest. Then I lifted Reyes’s hand and pressed it to my chest, glancing up from beneath my lashes as impishly as I possibly could. “Do I feel feverish?”
He darkened instantly. His gaze dropped to Danger and Will Robinson, aka my breasts. His gaze did that often, unruly thing that it was. Danger and Will loved the attention.
“You shouldn’t tempt me,” he said, his voice growing ragged.
A tingle of desire sparked to life, causing a warmth to pool in my abdomen. “You’re the only one I should tempt, seeing as how we’re hitched.”
He wrapped a hand around my throat ever so softly and led me back against the mirror. It wasn’t his actions that jump-started my heart, but the raw lust that consumed him. The dark need in his eyes. The severity of his drawn brows. The sensuality of his parted mouth. My girl parts tightened when he dipped his hand into my shirt. His thumb grazed over a hardened nipple, and a jolt of pleasure shot straight to my core.
“I’m here!” Cookie called from down the hall, her voice breathy, winded from the stairs.
I almost groaned aloud at the interruption. Reyes’s grip on my throat tightened. He tilted my face up to his and whispered, “We’ll continue this later.”
“Promise?” I asked, unwilling to relinquish the impish bit.
He covered my mouth with his, his tongue hot as it dived inside me, as he melted my knees and stole my breath. Then, a microsecond before Cookie walked in, he pushed off me with a wink and strolled to look out the window. Still weak from his kiss, I almost stumbled forward.
“I’m here,” said Cookie Kowalski, my assistant who moonlighted as my best friend, as she rushed into the room.
It took me a sec, but I finally tore my gaze off my husband. Cookie’s short black hair had been flattened on one side, making her look lopsided. Her mismatched clothes were rumpled and a purple scarf dangled off one shoulder, perilously close to falling to the floor. Though Cook was considered large by society’s standards, she wore her size well. She had the beauty and confidence of an eccentric, wardrobe-challenged countess. Normally. Today she looked more like a frazzled scullery maid.