Second Grave on the Left

Chapter Three

“This is one Froot Loop beyond certifiable.”

I stood in the shower, the water as hot as I could get it, and still goose bumps textured every inch of my body. That tended to happen when dead people showered with me. I looked up into the unseeing eyes of the departed homeless guy from Cookie’s trunk. He had shoulder-length hair, mop-water brown, a matted, ragged beard, and hazel green eyes. I was such a magnet for these types.

My breath fogged in the air, and vapor bounced off the shower walls. I resisted the urge to look toward the heavens and raise my arms slowly while steam rolled up around us in waves, but pretending to be an oceanic goddess would have been cool. I could totally have thrown in some opera for effect.

“Come here often?” I asked instead, humoring no one but myself. So it was totally worth it.

When he didn’t answer, I tested his lucidity by poking his chest with an index finger. The tip pressed into his tattered coat, as solid to me as the shower walls around us, yet the water dripping from my finger went straight through him to splash with all the others on the shower floor. My prodding didn’t elicit a reaction. His unseeing eyes stared straight through me. Which was odd. He’d seemed so sane huddled in Cookie’s trunk.

Reluctantly, I leaned back to rinse the conditioner from my hair, forcing my eyes to stay open, watching him watch me. Sort of. “Have you ever had one of those days that starts out like crazy on whole wheat and goes downhill from there?”

Obviously the insane silent type, he didn’t answer. I wondered how long he’d been dead. Maybe he’d been walking the Earth so long, he lost his mind. That happened in a movie once. Of course, if he was really homeless when he died, mental illness could’ve already played a big role in his life.

Just as I turned off the water, he looked up. I looked up, too. Mostly ’cause he did. “What is it, big guy?” When I glanced back, he was gone. Just disappeared as dead people are wont to do. No good-bye. No catch ya on the flip side. Just gone. “Go get ’em, boy.” Hopefully he’d stay that way. Freaking dead people.

I reached past the curtain for a towel and noticed droplets of crimson sliding down my arm. I looked back up at a dark red circle on my ceiling, slowly spreading like the bloodstain of someone who was still bleeding. Before I had time to say “What the f—,” someone fell through. Someone large. And heavy. And he landed pretty much right on top of me.

We tumbled to the shower floor, a heap of torsos and limbs. Unfortunately, I found myself plastered underneath a person made of solid steel, but I recognized one thing immediately. I recognized his heat, like a signature, like a harbinger announcing his arrival. I struggled out from under one of the most powerful beings in the universe, Reyes Farrow, and realized I was covered in blood from head to toe. His blood.

“Reyes,” I called out in alarm. He was unconscious, dressed in a blood-soaked T-shirt and jeans. “Reyes,” I said, clutching on to his head. His dark hair was dripping wet. Large scratches slashed across his face and neck as if something had been clawing at him, but most of the blood stemmed from wounds, deep and mortal, on his chest, back, and arms. He had been defending himself, but against what?

My heart thundered against my chest. “Reyes, please,” I said. I patted his face, and his lashes, now dark crimson and spiked with blood, fluttered. In an instant, he turned on me. With a growl, his black robe materialized around him, around us, and a hand thrust out and locked on to my throat. In the time it took my heart to beat again, I was thrown against the shower wall with a razor-sharp blade glistening in front of my face.

“Reyes,” I said weakly, already losing consciousness, the pressure around my throat so precise, so exact. I could no longer see his face, just blackness, the undulating robe that was so much a part of him protecting his identity even from me. The world blurred then spun. I fought his hold, his grip like a metal brace, and as much as I wanted to believe I fought the good fight, I felt my limbs going limp almost immediately, too weak to hold their own weight.

I felt him press against me as a total eclipse crept in. I heard him speak, his voice winding around me like smoke. “Beware the wounded animal.”

Then he was gone and gravity took hold and I collapsed onto the shower floor once again, this time face-first, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it was going to suck.

The strangest thing happened on the day I was born. A dark figure was waiting for me just outside my mother’s womb. He wore a hooded cloak. It undulated around him, filling the entire delivery room with rolling black waves, like smoke in a soft breeze. Though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was watching when the doctor cut the cord. Though I couldn’t feel his fingers, I knew he touched me when the nurses cleaned my skin. Though I couldn’t hear his voice, I knew he whispered my name, the sound deep and husky.

He was so powerful, his mere presence weakened me, made air difficult to draw into my lungs, and I was afraid of him. As I grew older, I realized he was the only thing I was afraid of. I’d never been plagued with the normal phobias of childhood, probably a good thing, since dead people gathered around me en masse. But him, I was afraid of. And yet he showed himself only in times of dire need. He’d saved me, saved my life more than once. So why was I afraid? Why had I dubbed him the Big Bad growing up when he seemed anything but?

Perhaps it was the power that radiated off him, that seemed to absorb a part of me when he was near.

Jump ahead fifteen years to a frigid night on the streets of Albuquerque, the first time I’d seen Reyes Farrow. My older sister, Gemma, and I had been on recon for a school project in a rather bad part of town when we noticed movement in the window of a small apartment. We realized in horror that a man was beating a teenaged boy. At that moment, my only thought was to save him. Some way. Somehow. Out of desperation, I threw a brick through the man’s window. It worked. He stopped hitting the boy. Unfortunately, he came after us. We tore down a dark alley and were searching for an opening along a fence when we realized the boy had escaped as well. We saw him doubled over behind the apartment building.

We went back. Blood streaked down his face, dripped from his incredible mouth. We found out his name was Reyes and tried to help, but he refused our offer, even going so far as to threaten us if we didn’t leave. That was my first lesson in the absurdities of the male mind. But because of that incident, I wasn’t completely surprised when I found out more than a decade later that Reyes had spent the last ten years in prison for killing that very man.

That was only one of several truths I’d recently found out about him, not the least of which was the fact that Reyes and the Big Bad, the dark being that had been following me, watching over me since the day of my birth, were one and the same. He had been the thing that saved my life over and over. The thing that studied me from the shadows, a mere shadow himself, and protected me from afar. The thing I was most afraid of growing up. Hell, the only thing I was afraid of growing up.

It was mind numbing to realize the smoky being from my childhood was a man made of flesh and blood. Yet he could leave his physical body and travel through space and time as an incorporeal presence, one that could dematerialize in the span of a heartbeat. One that could draw a sword and sever a man’s spinal column within the blink of an eye. One that could melt the polar ice caps with a single glance from underneath his dark lashes.

And yet every revelation brought more questions. Only a week ago, I found out where his supernatural abilities stemmed from. I saw into his world when his fingertips brushed down my arm, when his mouth scorched flames over my skin, and when he sank inside me, causing the surge of orgasm to unlock his past and pull back the curtains for me to see. I watched the birth of the universe unfold before my eyes as his father — his real father, the most beautiful angel ever created — was thrown from the halls of heaven. Lucifer fought back, his army vast, and in this time of great turmoil, Reyes was born. Forged from the heat of a supernova, he rose quickly through the ranks to become a respected leader. Second only to his father, he commanded millions of soldiers, a general among thieves, even more beautiful and powerful than his father, with the key to the gates of hell scored into his body.

But his father’s pride would not be subdued. He wanted the heavens. He wanted complete control over every living thing in the universe. He wanted God’s throne.

Reyes followed his father’s every command, waited and watched for a portal to be born upon the Earth, a direct passage to heaven, a way out of hell. A tracker of flawless stealth and skill, he negotiated his way through the gates of the underworld and found the portals in the farthest reaches of the universe, a thousand lights identical in shape and form. A thousand reapers hoping for the privilege to serve on Earth.

But Reyes looked harder and saw one made of spun gold, a daughter of the sun, shimmering and glistening. Me. I turned and saw him and smiled. And Reyes was lost.

He defied his father’s wishes for him to return to hell with our location, waited centuries for me to be sent, and was born upon the Earth himself, forsaking all that he knew for me. Because the day he was born in human form was the day he forgot who he was, what he was. And more important, what he was capable of. He gave up everything to be with me, but a cruel twist in fate sent him into the arms of a monster, and Reyes grew up with his every move dictated by a predator of the worst kind. Slowly, he began to remember his past. Who he was. What he was. But by that time, he’d been sent to prison for killing the man who raised him.

I awoke with a start on the floor of my bathtub and bolted upright. The hard slippery surface being what it was, mostly hard and slippery, I dropped just as quickly, my palms sliding out from under me. I hit hard. Thus, on my second attempt, I took it a bit slower, glancing around for Reyes and swearing to get some nonslip bath appliqués.

There was no blood. No signs of a struggle. And no Reyes. What had happened to him? Why was he so mutilated? I fought the image of him in my mind. Mostly because I grew faint the moment it appeared. Queasy.

Then I remembered what he said to me: Beware the wounded animal. Only he’d spoken in Aramaic — one of the thousands of languages I’d known inherently from the moment of my birth. His voice had been a low, pain-filled growl. I had to find him.

After hustling into a pair of jeans and a sweater, I threw on some boots and gathered my hair into a ponytail. I had so many questions. So many concerns. For the last month, Reyes had been in a coma. He’d been shot by a prison guard firing warning shots near a gathering of inmates who looked like they were going to riot. The day the state was going to disconnect life support, Reyes seemed to magically wake up, and he strolled out of the long-term-care unit in Santa Fe like he didn’t have a care in the world. That was a week ago, and nobody had seen or heard from him since. Not even me. Not until today.

Was he still alive? What had attacked him? What could? He was the son of Satan, for fuck’s sake. Who would mess with that? I had a couple of resources I could check out, but as I was leaving my apartment, my landline rang.

“Make it quick,” I said when I picked up.

“Okay. Two men from the FBI are here,” Cookie said. Quickly.

Crap. “Men in black are at the office?”

“Well, yes, but they’re actually in more of a navy.”

Crapola. I so didn’t have time for men. In any color. “Okay, two questions. Do they look mad, and are they hot?”

After a long, long pause, Cookie said, “One, not really. Two, no comment at this time. And three, you’re on speakerphone.”

After another long, long pause, I said, “Okie dokie then. Be there in a jiff.”

Before I could do it myself, a long arm reached over my shoulder and disconnected the call. Reyes stood behind me. The heat that forever radiated off him soaked into my clothes, saturated me in warmth. He eased closer, allowing the length of his body to press into my backside. I responded to his nearness with a flush of adrenaline, and when he bent his head, his breath fanning across my cheek, my knees almost gave beneath my weight.

“Nice catch, Dutch,” he said softly, his voice like a caress.

A rush of delight rippled down my spine and pooled in my abdomen. Reyes had been calling me Dutch since the day I was born, and I had yet to find out why. He was like the desert, stark and beautiful, harsh and unforgiving, with the promise of treasure behind every dune, the allure of water hidden just beneath the surface.

I twisted around to face him. He refused to give up any ground he’d gained, and I had to lean back to look at him, to drink him in. His dark hair curled over an ear and hung slightly mussed over his forehead. His lashes — so thick, he always looked like he’d just woken up — shadowed liquid brown eyes. They sparkled with mischief nonetheless. He let his gaze wander at will, let it slow when it reached my mouth, dip when it reached the valley between Danger and Will Robinson. Then it rose and locked with mine, and I knew in that moment the true meaning of perfection.

“You look better,” I said, my tone airy. The wounds that had been so deep, so potentially fatal, had all but vanished. My head spun with a mixture of relief and concern.

He lifted my chin and brushed his fingers over my throat where it was still swollen from his momentary lapse of reason in the shower. He had a strong grip. “Sorry about that.”

“Care to explain?”

He lowered his head. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Who else?”

In lieu of an answer, he put his fingertips on a pulse point. He seemed to revel in the feel of it, the proof of life flowing through my veins.

“Is it the demons you told me about?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said it so matter-of-fact, so casually, one would think demons tried to kill him on a regular basis. He’d told me about them only last week, when I found out who he really was. He’d said they were after me, but to get to me, they’d have to go through him. I thought he was speaking metaphorically. Apparently not.

“Are they—” I stopped midsentence and swallowed hard. “—are you okay?”

“I’m unconscious,” he said, edging closer, his tongue wetting his full mouth.

My stomach somersaulted, but only in part because of the tongue. “You’re unconscious? What do you mean?”

He had braced a hand against the countertop on either side of me, imprisoning me within his sinewy arms. “I mean, I’m not awake,” he said a heartbeat before nipping my earlobe with his teeth, just hard enough to send a quake skimming over the surface of my skin.

The deep tenor of his voice reverberated through my bones, liquefying them from the inside out. I fought hard to focus on his words instead of the turmoil each syllable generated, each touch. He was like chocolate-covered heroin, and I was an addict through and through.

I’d had him inside me before. I’d known heaven for a brief period of time, the experience so surreal, so earth-shattering, I was certain he’d ruined me to all other men forever. Seriously, who could compete with a being created from beauty and sin and fused together with the blistering heat of sensuality? He was a god among men. Damn it.

“Why aren’t you awake?” I asked, struggling to redirect my thoughts. “Reyes, what happened?”

He’d been busy nibbling his way to my collarbone, his hot mouth evoking seismic activity at each point of contact.

I really hated to interrupt, but … “Reyes, are you listening to me?”

He raised his head, a sensual grin playing at the corners of his mouth, and said, “I’m listening.”

“To what? The sound of blood rushing to your nether regions?”

“No,” he said with a husky chuckle that made me tingle everywhere. “To your heartbeat.” He leaned in again, began the aerial assault again.

“Seriously, Reyes, how did you get hurt?”

“Painfully,” he whispered into my ear.

My chest constricted with his answer. “Time-out,” I said, grabbing the wrist of a hand that was doing the most amazing things to my girl parts.

He twisted his hand around and wound his fingers into mine. “You’re putting me in time-out?”

“Yes,” I said as a shaky sigh slid through my lips.

“If I don’t go, do I get a spanking?”

A burst of laughter escaped before I could stop it. “Reyes,” I said in admonishment. “We need to talk.”

“So talk,” he said, stroking my wrist with his thumb.

I placed an index finger on his shoulder and nudged. “Let me rephrase that. You need to talk. Please tell me what happened. Why are you unconscious?”

He let out a slow breath and leaned back to focus his liquid brown eyes on mine. “I told you last week, they found me.”

“The demons.”

“Yes.”

“What do they want?”

“The same thing I want,” he said, his eyes raking over my body, “but perhaps for different reasons.”

He’d explained before that they wanted me, the portal, a way into heaven. I had no idea they would go to such lengths. “Are you still alive?”

“My corporeal body is like yours. It’s harder to kill, much harder, than most humans’.”

Relief flooded every cell in my body. I took a deep breath and said, “Tell me what’s going on. Exactly.”

“Exactly. Okay, they’re waiting for exactly one of two things to happen.”

“Which are?”

“For my body to die so they can take me back to hell or for you to find me. One would give them access to the key,” he said, indicating the smooth, flowing lines of his tattoos with a nod. Amazingly, his tattoos were a map to the gates of hell. Without it, the hazardous journey through the void of eternity rarely ended well for any entities trying to escape. “And the other would give them access to heaven.” He looked at me point-blank. “Either would make them exceedingly happy.”

“Then tell me where your physical form is, and we can … I don’t know, hide you.”

He shook his head in regret. “Afraid I can’t do that.”

My brows shot together. “What do you mean, you can’t do that? Reyes, where are you?”

A humorless grin tipped one corner of his mouth. “In a safe place.”

“You’re safe from the demons?” I asked, my voice full of hope.

“No,” he answered. “You’re safe from the demons.”

When he went for a jugular again, I pulled back. “So, they know where you are? They’re trying to kill you?” What he was proposing sounded like my worst nightmare. Injured and helpless somewhere, with a madman trying to kill me. I’d never considered the culprit to be demonic, but now that I had new fodder, surely my reoccurring nightmare would update its software to reflect an evil presence. Wonderful.

With a loud sigh, he stepped back and sank into the chair at my computer desk, propping his feet up and crossing them at the ankles. “Do we really have to do this now? I may not have much time.”

My heart stumbled in my chest. I wondered how much time he had. How much time we had. I didn’t have a table and chairs, but I had a snack bar with a couple of barstools. I sat at one and turned to him. “Why won’t you tell me where you are?”

“Lots of different reasons.” His gaze slid over me like a veil of fire. He could ignite my deepest desires with a single glance. I decided right then and there no more reading romance novels by candlelight.

“Can you tell me what those reasons are, or should I guess?”

“Since I probably can’t stay all day, I’ll tell you.”

“At least we’re getting somewhere.”

“The first one is because it’s a trap, Dutch. Set for you and you alone. Why do you think they haven’t killed me yet? They want you to look for me, to find me. Remember, you don’t see them, they don’t see you.” He’d mentioned that before, but the truth was difficult to comprehend. Not to mention disturbing.

“And if I see them?” I asked.

He let his gaze travel over me once more. “Let’s just say, you’re hard to miss.”

“So, we’ll do this incognito. You know, like Navy SEALs or SWAT or something.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“That’s not good enough for me.” My hands curled into fists. “We have to try. We can’t just let them kill you.”

“You haven’t heard the second reason.”

That sounded foreboding. “Okay, so tell me.” I crossed my arms and waited.

“You won’t like it.”

“I’m a big girl,” I said, raising my chin a notch. “I can handle it.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to let my corporeal body pass away.”

Every muscle in my body stilled.

“It’s not like I need it,” he continued with a callous shrug. “It slows me down and, as you have witnessed yourself, makes me vulnerable to attack.”

“But in the camera, when you woke up from the coma, you disappeared. You dematerialized your human body.”

“Dutch,” he said, casting me a chastising gaze from underneath his dark lashes, “not even I can do that.”

“Then how did you just disappear? I saw the tape.”

“I can interfere with electrical devices anytime I want to. So can you, if you concentrate.”

I never knew that. “I just thought—”

“Wrong,” he said, his tone absolute. He was so testy when he was being tortured.

“Fine. I was wrong. It’s not like being a supernatural entity came with a manual.”

“True.”

“But that’s no reason to let your corporeal body pass away. I mean, what will happen to you? You just said that if you die, they’ll take you back to hell.”

“Even they don’t know if they can take me back to hell or not. That’s simply what they’re hoping for. There’s one surefire way to find out, I guess,” he said, raising his brows at the challenge.

“Wait, you don’t know what will happen? If they can take you back?”

He shrugged. “Not a clue. But it’s doubtful.”

“But what if they can? What if you’re sent back?”

“That’s not likely to happen,” he insisted. “Who would do the sending?”

“Oh, my god. I can’t believe you’re willing to take such a risk.”

“It’s riskier being alive here on Earth, Dutch,” he said, an angry edge to his voice. “And it’s a risk I am no longer willing to take.”

“Riskier for who?”

“Riskier for you.”

His answer frustrated me even more. “I don’t understand. Why is it riskier for me?”

He raked both hands through his dark hair. The gesture left it more mussed, sexy, and it took me a moment to refocus. “They’re demons, Dutch. And there is only one thing in this universe they want more than human souls.”

“The breakfast burritos at Macho Taco?”

He rose and stood in front of me, towering over me. “They want you, Dutch. They want the portal. Do you know what will happen if they find you?”

I bit my lower lip and offered a one-shouldered shrug. “They’ll have a way into heaven.”

“I can’t let that happen.”

“Right,” I said sadly. “I forgot, you’ll have to kill me.”

He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “And I will, Dutch. In a heartbeat.”

Great. It was nice to know he had my back.

“You’re hurt?” he asked, lifting my chin with his fingers.

“Stop reading my mind,” I said defensively.

“I can’t read your mind. I’m like you: I read emotions, feelings. And you’re hurt.”

“How did a demon find its way onto this plane in the first place?” I asked, pulling away from him. I stood and started pacing. He sat back down, propped his feet again. For the first time I noticed the boots he was wearing. They were black, part cowboy and part motorcycle. I liked them. “I thought it was almost impossible for demons to get through the gate.”

“Yes, almost impossible. Every once in a while, a demon braves the void and searches for a way through the maze. It’s hazardous and they rarely make it. Most are lost in the oblivion of eternity.” He nudged my mouse and my computer came alive. Which meant my wallpaper popped up. Which meant Reyes’s picture popped up, his mug shot, the only picture I had of him. He frowned.

I resisted the urge to crawl under the barstool. He could probably still have seen me anyway. “You were saying?”

“Right.” He refocused on me. “If one miraculously makes it through the gate, it still isn’t really here. It has to piggyback onto the soul of a newborn. It’s the only way for them to gain access to this plane. The plane that you and I happen to be on,” he reminded me.

“But that’s not what you did when you escaped from hell. You didn’t have to piggyback.”

“I was different. Once I escaped, I could navigate between the planes as easily as you walk through a doorway.”

“How is that possible?”

“It just is,” he said evasively. “I was made different. I was created for a reason. When the fallen were thrown from heaven, they were banished from the light, thus the need for me. I was a tool. A means to an end. But being born on Earth was perhaps not the wisest decision I’ve ever made. My corporeal body has made me too vulnerable and should be destroyed. The physical evidence of the key hidden.”

When Reyes was born in human form, the key, the map to hell that was imprinted on his body when he was created, appeared on his human body as well. I wondered what his human parents had thought of it. What the doctors had thought. A tattoo on a newborn. I wasn’t sure how it all worked, but apparently the tattoo was the means for Satan to escape from hell. He didn’t want to escape, to render himself vulnerable, until a portal was born. And he sent his son to this plane to wait for one. Reyes was supposed to retrieve Satan and all his armies the minute I was born. Instead, he was born upon the Earth as well. To be with me. To grow up with me. But he was kidnapped from his birth parents long before his dream could come to fruition.

“If those demons make it back through the gate,” he continued, “they’ll have the key and my father can escape. Which is exactly what he’ll do.” He leaned back in the chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “You know how people have prophesied about the end of time since pretty much the beginning of time?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing instinctively his anecdote would end badly.

“They have no idea what hell awaits them if my father gets this key.” He dropped his hands and leaned forward. “And the first thing he would do is come after you.”

“I don’t care.”

He fixed a dubious scowl on me. “Of course you do.”

“No. I don’t. You can’t just let your body die. We don’t know what’ll happen. They could get you either way.”

“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, they were no longer a threat, that you were able to vanquish them all.”

“Me?”

“There’s still this one little problem I have called life behind bars. I’m not going back to prison, Dutch.”

What? He was worried about that? “I don’t understand. You can leave your body anytime you want. It’s not like those bars can hold you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

He was being evasive again, holding something back. “Reyes, please tell me.”

“It’s not important.” He reached up and turned my computer screen off as if it suddenly bothered him.

“Reyes.” I placed a hand on his arm, coaxed him back to me. “Why isn’t it that simple?”

He worked his jaw and glanced down at his boots. “There’s … a side effect.”

“When you leave your body?”

“Yes. When I leave, my body mimics a seizurelike state. If I do it too often, the prison doctors put me on drugs that keep me from seizing. Drugs that have an unacceptable side effect.” His gaze traveled back to mine. “They keep me from separating. I’m stuck in prison and you are completely vulnerable.”

Oh. “Well, then keep running. I’ll help you. But let me get you medical attention for now. I have a friend who’s a doctor, and I know a couple of nurses. They would see you for me. They wouldn’t turn us in, I promise. Let me find you and we can worry about prison later.”

“Because if you find me, he finds me. And I go back to prison no matter who you know.”

That again? “Who finds you?”

“The guy your uncle has glued to your tail.”

That took me by surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Your uncle put a tail on you, probably in the hopes that I’d show up.”

“Uncle Bob put a tail on me?” I asked, appalled.

“Aren’t you supposed to notice those types of things? You know, to detect them?” He winked teasingly.

“You’re changing the subject,” I said, trying to recover from the wink.

“Sorry.” He sobered. “Okay, so you want me to stay alive because there is a slight possibility I could be sent back to hell. Does that about sum it up?”

“Reyes, you escaped from there. The same being that was created with the map to the gates of hell on his body. You’re the key to their freedom, and you absconded with it. You were their general, their most powerful warrior, and you betrayed them. What do you think will happen to you if you’re sent back? Not to mention the fact that if you are sent back, your father — who just happens to be Satan, by the way — will have the key to escape from hell himself.”

“If.”

“And it’s an if I’m not willing to risk. Hell has to be torturous enough without being public enemy number one. And to risk Satan getting out?” I crossed my arms. “Tell me where you are.”

“Dutch, you can’t just come after me. Even if you could vanquish them all—”

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked, exasperated. “I’m a bright light that lures the departed in so they can cross through me. I’m kind of like one of those bug zappers, if you think about it. And I’m fairly certain Vanquisher of Demons is not in my job description.”

A soft grin slipped across his handsome face and somehow managed to melt my kneecaps. “If you had even an inkling of what you were capable of, the world would be a dangerous place indeed.”

That wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a thing, and worded just as vaguely. “Okay, why don’t you tell me, then?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t.

“If I told you what you were capable of, you would have the advantage. That’s a risk I can’t take.”

“What on planet Earth could I do to you?”

With a growl he stood and pulled me to him. “God, the things you ask, Dutch.”

He wrapped his long fingers around my neck and tilted my chin up with his thumb a split second before he captured my mouth with his own. The kiss skyrocketed from hesitant to demanding instantly. His tongue dived inside my mouth, and I reveled in the taste of him, the earthy smell of him. I leaned into his embrace, tilted my head to allow the kiss to deepen, then held on to his wide shoulders for dear life.

One hand wound around the nape of my neck while the other held me to him as he walked me back, pressed me against the wall. Taking both my hands into one of his, he fastened them against the wall above my head as his other hand explored at will. He cupped Danger, brushed over her peak until it hardened beneath him and I couldn’t stop a soft moan from escaping my lips.

He grinned, dipped his head, and pressed his hot mouth against my pulse. Molten lava swirled in my abdomen, causing sensual quakes to shudder through me. I fought for the strength to stop him. Seriously, this was ridiculous. My utter lack of control where Reyes was concerned bordered on deplorable. So what if he was the son of Satan, reportedly the most beautiful being ever to have walked the paths of heaven? So what if he was formed from the heat of a thousand stars? So what if he made my insides gooey?

I had to get a grip. And it needed to be on something other than Reyes’s manly parts.

“Wait,” I said when his tongue sent a shiver straight to my core. “I have to give you fair warning.”

“Oh?” He leaned back and leveled a lazy, sensual gaze on me.

“I’m not going to allow you to let your corporeal body die.”

“And you’re going to stop me?” he asked, his voice skeptical.

I pushed him away, picked up my bag, and headed out the door. Just before I closed it, I looked back at him and said, “I’m going to find you.”