“Are those my clothes?” Sylvie asked.
Marah licked her lips clean of brown sauce, wiped her fingers—again—on a very familiar pair of jeans. “Mine smelled really bad. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I mind,” Sylvie said. “I mind a lot.”
“Ungracious,” Marah said. “I even brought you the mother of all hostess gifts. Thought you’d be pleased. But no, I get bitched at for borrowing your clothes, eating some really, frankly, mediocre takeout, and a gun in my fucking face!”
Sylvie stepped back, holstered the gun, raised her hands, a my-bad, sorry gesture.
Simple rule to stay alive by: Don’t piss off the assassin.
If Marah had wanted her dead, she’d be dead. Which meant this was exactly what she claimed it was. A visit.
Marah’s marked hand slowly unclenched from where it was white-knuckled around the bowl, visibly backing away from the urge to throw it at Sylvie.
“Fine,” Sylvie said. “You’ve had a bad day. So have I. Let’s not take it out on each other. I’m going to go take a nap. You can…
Get out of my house.
“… occupy yourself.”
“I’d take a shower first, if I were you,” Marah said. The last vestiges of temper in her face faded, shifted to a maddening smirk. “I left your hostess gift in there.”
Sylvie belatedly realized that the noise she heard in the background was not the leftover aural trauma of the mermaids’ watery attack, not even the homely sound of the dishwasher churning its slow way through its cycle, but the shower running.
The splash of the water was muted, not just crashing down on tile and curtain; something intercepted the spray.
Sylvie felt her nerves jangle, tighten. What an assassin considered a hostess gift might be something she really didn’t want.
“Brought it all the way from Chicago,” Marah said.
Sylvie’s attention jerked.
“Chicago?” Her voice was hungry, vulnerable.
“I told you I had a crappy day, told you I had to dig my way out. Never said I was alone. I wanted to go straight to a nice hotel with a Jacuzzi and complimentary robes, but no, he insisted on coming here—”
Sylvie, heart in her mouth, headed for the bathroom, half-terrified, half-hopeful. Marah wouldn’t have, couldn’t have brought her a corpse. She might be dangerous, but she was mercenary enough to want something from Sylvie. And Sylvie would owe her one for this.
Even though the crash and sputter of water made Sylvie’s gut churn, she couldn’t stop herself. A hand on the doorknob, her pulse ricocheting in her throat, and she flung the door open.
“Hey, Stone, a little privacy? Near death and a road trip doesn’t make us that close—”
Demalion stuck his head out from the curtain, blond hair damp and darkened, slicked to his skull, bruising on his cheek, his shoulder, but alive… His lips parted, moved silently. Sylvie.
Sylvie crashed into the shower stall with him; his arms tightened around her even as she slid and slipped on the soapy tile, trying to get closer.
Alive.
She was laughing, wild, triumphant. Surprised.
Though she’d talked a good game with Alex, she’d been most of the way convinced to thinking him dead. She clutched him closer, the sleek, wet warmth of him making her think of selkie lovers, bit his shoulder, trying to hang on.
“Sylvie,” he murmured, dragged her mouth up to his. Laughed low and hungry in his throat when she whined at having to release him from her teeth. “Too much time with werewolves?”
“Shut up,” she said and smothered that laughter with her breath. She pressed closer, bare feet unsteady on slick tiles, hanging her weight from his shoulders. He caught her around the waist, snagging her belt loops, holding her tight, holding her up.
Sylvie, who normally relegated shower sex to something best left in the movies, felt his hands pressing into the small of her back, the dip of fingertips tracing heat beneath her waistband, and thought, The hell with it. She pulled away, grabbed the hem of her tee, and eeled out of it, all awkward elbows and jutting angles in the small space.
He caught her wrists while they were overhead, leaned in, pressed her back against the cool tiles. She arched into him, hissing, and he kissed her wrists, her palms, his breath as heated as the water splashing her skin.
“Clothes in the shower, Sylvie, really?” He ducked his head; the light in his eyes familiar even in Wright’s paler shade, making it no surprise when the next kiss hovered at her mouth without connecting before descending to her throat, the rasp of his stubbled chin waking a thousand tiny nerve endings to singing pleasure.
“Tease,” she said, tangling her hands in his hair—different, she cataloged. Demalion’s hair used to feel like mink to her, back when he was original recipe. Now, it felt like raw silk, equal parts coarse and soft. Different, but wonderful.
He popped the button on her pants; she released his hair to help shimmy them off her hips. Both of them were breathless with effort and desire by the time the clinging fabric was peeled off, abandoned on the floor of the shower stall.
His hands closed on her hips, wordlessly urging her closer, tighter. She tried to climb him, cracked her knee against the tile, and swore, staggering backward, losing that brief press of connection. Missing it immediately. She whined in frustration—but that was shower sex for you, bumps and bruises and awkward clinches that broke just when they were getting really good, terrible footing, and someone’s back always got slapped up against the chilly tiles.
Her tongue tangling with his, tasting heat and the bitterness of soapy foam, Sylvie thought, awkward or not, she wouldn’t trade this moment for all the silk sheets and scented candles in the world.
At last braced, balanced, they rocked against each other, trading breathless frustration for laughter, and finally for a pleasure that had their voices cracking against the ceramic tiles, saw them sprawling in the morass of water and discarded clothes that soaked the floor. Her shampoo bottle had tipped, overlaying the scent of sex and the sea in the room with a lashing of citrus foam.
Sylvie kicked feebly at her pants, unblocked the drain, and put her head back to Demalion’s shoulder and listened to the gurgle of water receding. In a moment, she was going to get up, shake this lassitude from her veins, drag Demalion with her to the bedroom, and never mind the assassin in the living room.
He stroked her wet hair, smoothing it from the wild kinks and curls it had worked its way into. “I should check in with the locals.”
Sylvie stiffened, rolled away from him. “About that.”
He propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”
“You haven’t been watching the news.”
He rolled up to sit cross-legged. He looked tired suddenly, and past the first flush of their reunion, she saw dark bruises on his arms, his hands, his shins. Marah’s words came back to her—had to dig out of a premature grave—mixed with the memory of the collapsed ISI building in Chicago.
“The Miami ISI, too?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Mermaids.”
He shoved his hair out of his face, scrubbed a hand over a jaw rough with stubble. “Mermaids. Fuck. What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t know,” Sylvie said. She shrugged. “Beyond my pay grade. I got my ass kicked and for nothing. I’m sitting this one out. I’ve got a client who needs me more than the ISI does.”
He stiffened all over, and said, “Are you shitting me? You’re sitting this one out? My coworkers died, crushed or ripped apart by a sand wraith, and you’re sitting this one out? What, just because we’re government, we don’t rate?”
Wow, she thought. Forty minutes, give or take, and they were at odds again.
Gunfire in the next room derailed their argument. Four shots, quickly fired, and a roar of something inhuman. They scrambled for the towel—the last towel; Sylvie grabbed Demalion’s discarded shirt, draped over her sink, yanked it on, and bolted for the living room, Demalion crying out for her to Be careful!