Sam shrugged and sat on the second bed. “Better than some of the places we’ve stayed in. I’m sure Nick’s seen much worse.” Nick used to spend all his time on the road, and whenever Sam complained about a crappy motel during the weeks they’d chased after Anson, he’d called Sam a diva.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her. “And tell the truth. I can see it’s not good.” She’d seemed to rally after the last stop they’d made for her to sleep a little, and the food had given her more energy. But she looked wan and pale now, and moved even more gingerly than before.
“I pulled the energy apart, and it isn’t very happy.” She twisted and stretched with a grimace.
“You talk like it’s sentient,” Sam accused. “Is it?”
But Quinn waved a dismissive hand. “I’m anthropomorphizing. It’s just energy. No sentience or emotion.”
“But.”
“It won’t stop churning. It’s like when you drink too much coffee and get all hyper, but it’s deeper than that. It’s making me nauseous. Like I have the flu.” She gave a chuckle that turned into a cough, and checked her hand not surreptitiously enough. She realized he’d caught her and shook her head. “No blood. And don’t worry, Nick is watching me hard enough for all of you.”
“He knows all this?” He felt a little better when she nodded.
“If we finish this,” he asked, “give Tanda and Chloe their powers back, will it settle?”
“I think so.”
Sam thought about Beth. Quinn couldn’t give her power back, and had said she couldn’t return Marley’s, either. So what would happen when they were all done, and that remaining bit warred with Quinn’s natural capacity?
He was too scared to ask her right now.
“So tell me about Riley.” Quinn folded her arms and slid down in her seat to rest her head on the back of it. She looked tired but not as ill as she had earlier.
“You know about Riley.”
Quinn snorted. “I want to know about your Riley. You like her.”
“She’s likeable.” He tried not to fidget under her stare, but his fortitude crumbled in seconds. “I was trying not to.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “She’s young.” Of course Quinn laughed, and even he had to smile. “Younger than I was,” he tried, but he couldn’t keep it up. “Okay, the age doesn’t matter.”
“Not unless you want to be a hypocrite.” She bounced her knee to rock the chair. “I talked to Marley about her. She’s tough. Riley, I mean. Pretty strong considering all she’s been through.”
“Yeah.” He told Quinn about the night they’d met and everything that had happened since. “I think she’s still not sure who to trust, especially anyone tied to the Society.”
Quinn grinned. “And yet she followed you there, and you’re the first person she called when she was in trouble again.”
“Well, I convinced her to give them a chance. That’s all.”
“Nick would say it’s your puppy-dog eyes, but I know it’s more than that.” Her eyes twinkled, and she briefly looked less tired. “The attraction’s not one-sided.”
Hell, no, not according to the way she’d kissed him back in Boston. But things had changed with the first transfer. Sam didn’t think it was fair to let things deepen with Riley when he had no idea what he was in for, but he wasn’t having any luck resisting the attraction, either. Riley had been in the shower a long time now, and he didn’t want her to overhear them talking about her. “Maybe. But it’s complicated,” he warned. “The last time I fell for someone I thought needed me was a disaster.”
“That’s harsh.” Quinn pushed to her feet. “It’s okay to take it slow. But don’t lose out on something great because you’re overcautious.” She winked at him as she disappeared through the connecting door. The bolt clicked just as the shower turned off.
He dug a first aid kit out of his bag and laid it on the desk. A few minutes later, Riley emerged from the bathroom fully dressed. She played with her towel as if planning to fold it, but kept it positioned so Sam couldn’t see her arms.
Not that he looked that hard. The steam rolling out of the bathroom behind her caused the thin, gray tank top to cling to her upper body, while the soft, well-worn cutoff sweats hugged her hips and ass. Her nipples pressed against the fabric, her breasts so round and perfect Sam’s mouth went drier than sand. A bolt of lust gave him the hard-on he’d been fighting since they’d hugged.
The lust had a hard edge to it this time. A craving hunger too close to what he’d felt during the power transfer. He swallowed and stood, his feet taking him across the room, his hands tingling.
Riley glanced at him from the corner of her eye and turned away to hang the towel on the bar. “I’m beat,” she said. “I’m gonna hit the hay, if—hey!” She spun toward Sam when he grabbed her hands and twisted her arms up.
The haze of need vanished when he saw the red, raw rings on her skin. They were much worse than he’d assumed. “What the fuck? Why didn’t you say something?”
Riley shrugged. “There were more important things going on. They didn’t bother me much.”
“Bullshit. These have to hurt like a son of a bitch. I can’t believe you acted like nothing was wrong.” He pulled her across the room and pushed her down to the bed while he sat in the chair. “What the hell happened?”
Riley sighed and pulled her legs up under her, resting her elbows on her knees so her forearms hung in open space. Sam looked more closely at the stripes twisting around her delicate skin. Some of it was merely red, some glistening with blood in a dashed pattern carved—no, burned through the first couple of layers of skin. “Were you chained?” He looked up at her, aghast. “Did Anson chain you?”
“No! I told you, he let me go without trying to stop me. I did the chaining.”
Sam released her hands and unscrewed the cap on a tube of antiseptic cream. “What are you talking about?” He carefully dabbed ointment on the raw wounds while Riley explained about needing constant contact with metal to draw on while she was at Millinger.
“I’ve never held contact and drawn energy for that long. Not even before I knew what I was doing. I’m not sure if it was the constant draw that was the problem, or if I just pulled too much at once, or a combination of the two. Once it seared the skin, any time I tapped energy, it hurt.” She rotated her arms to give him better access. “No one told me doing this could damage me.” She sounded resentful, and Sam couldn’t blame her.
“No one knew,” he said apologetically. “Remember, we don’t have a lot of goddesses who use it.”
Riley winced and shifted her arms again. “So…other sources don’t give this kind of backlash?”
“Not that I’ve heard. But any energy can generate heat, and metal is a conductor.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “Especially the kind I wrapped around myself. And I thought I was being so smart.”
“You were.” He stroked carefully, barely touching the wounds, but his fingers brushed undamaged skin and Riley hissed in a breath. When he looked up, she was biting her lip.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She met his eyes, and instead of the pain he expected to find in them, he saw desire.
His lust spiked again. His cock filled, twisting uncomfortably under the fly of his jeans. He ignored it—or tried to. Somehow, he managed to operate on two levels. In his head, he kissed her and pressed her back onto the bed, covering her body with his. She wrapped her luscious legs around his hips, and he buried his face in her breasts. His nostrils filled with the scent of soap, and he could feel the pebble of her nipple on his tongue.