“If.”
“And it’s an
“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.”
Chapter Four
IF IT HAS TIRES OR TESTICLES, IT’S GONNA GIVE YOU TROUBLE.
I locked the door behind me, essentially leaving the son of Satan in my apartment. Alone. Annoyed. And quite possibly sexually frustrated. A niggling in the back of my mind had me hoping I didn’t make him angry. I would hate for him to catch my bachelorette pad on hellfire.
But really, he was being ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. The whole thing reminded me of my elementary school days when my best friend said, “Boys are yucky and we should throw rocks at them.”
I stomped across the parking lot, allowing the cool breeze to calm my shaking desire, and cut through my dad’s bar to get to the interior set of stairs. My dad was an Albuquerque cop who, like my uncle Bob, skyrocketed through promotion after promotion until they both made detective. With my help, naturally. I’d been solving crimes for them since I was five, though
Dad was in early. A light from his office filtered into the dark lounge, so I wound around bistro tables, cornered the bar, and ducked my head inside.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, startling him. He jerked at the sound of my voice and turned toward me. He had been studying a picture on the far wall, his long thin frame resembling a Popsicle stick clothed in wrinkled Ken-wear. Cleary he’d been working all night. A bottle of Crown Royal sat open on his desk, and he held a near-empty goblet in his hand.
The emotion radiating off him took me by surprise. It was wrong somehow, like when a server once brought me iced tea after I’d ordered a diet soda. The normally mundane task of taking that first sip sent a shock to my system, the flavor unexpected. While Dad had his occasional off days, his flavor was different. Unexpected. A deep sorrow mixed with the overwhelming weight of hopelessness barreled toward me to steal the breath from my lungs.
I straightened in alarm. “Dad, what’s wrong?”
He forced a weathered smile across his face. “Nothing, hon, just getting some paperwork done,” he lied, the deception like a sour note in my ear. But I’d play along. If he didn’t want to talk about what was bothering him, I’d let it slide. For now.
“Have you been home?” I asked.
He put down the glass and lifted a tan jacket off the back of his chair. “Headed that way right now. Did you need anything?”
God, he was a bad liar. Maybe that’s where I got it from. “Nope, I’m good. Tell Denise hey for me.”
“Charley,” he said, a warning tone leveling his voice.
“What? I can’t say hey to my favorite stepmother?”
With a weary sigh, he shrugged into his jacket. “I need a shower before the lunch crowd descends. Sammy should be here soon if you want some breakfast.”
Sammy, Dad’s cook, made huevos rancheros to die for. “I may get something later.”
He was in a hurry to get out of there. Or, possibly, to get away from me. He slid past without making eye contact, despair rolling off him like a thick, muddy vapor. “Be back in a few,” he said, as cheerful as a mental patient on suicide watch.
“’Kay,” I said back, just as cheerfully. He smelled like honey-lemon cough drops, the scent lingering in his office. When he was gone, I strolled inside it and glanced at the picture he’d been looking at. It was a photo of me around the age of six. My bangs were crooked and both of my front teeth were missing. I was eating watermelon nonetheless. Juice dripped from my fingers and off my chin, but what caught my attention, what had caught my dad’s attention, was the dark shadow hovering just over my shoulder. A smudged fingerprint on the glass gave proof that Dad had been examining that same spot.
I glanced down to the top of a bookshelf housed underneath his montage of humorous family moments. He’d set out several photographs of me, each one featuring a dark shadow somewhere in the background, each one smudged with a fingerprint in that exact same spot. And I couldn’t help but wonder what Dad was doing. Well, that and what the dark shadow meant, ’cause even I didn’t know that one. Was it a by-product of grim reaperism? Or maybe, just maybe, it was Reyes, his dark robe almost visible, almost capturable. The thought intrigued me. Growing up, I’d seen him only a handful of times. Had he been there more often? Watching over me? Protecting me?
When I arrived at my office, sure enough, two men in crisp navy suits sat waiting. They stood, each offering a hand.
“Ms. Davidson,” one said. He showed his ID then tucked it away inside his jacket. Just like on TV. It was
