He hesitated another moment, then popped the lock on the door. Modern and well kept, it yielded easily to his brute strength. They slipped out into the bright summer afternoon, and Jonah eased the door shut.
They’d gone only a few steps when a brusque, officious voice called out, “You there.”
They turned to face the park ranger striding toward them.
“Oh, great,” Nim said.
“I told you,” Jonah said.
“Shut up.” She spun him against the wall of the control booth and kissed him.
CHAPTER 11
Jonah had a split second to realize what she intended. He’d had split seconds to make life-and-death decisions before, and yet somehow this one sneaked by him. A soft, cool, sighing sneak. The flare of heat that blazed through him had nothing to do with the August sun beating on his shoulders.
Or maybe that wasn’t the sun, but the cop tapping on his shoulder. “Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to move along.”
He wasn’t moving, not with Nim’s lithe frame pressed tight against his, one long leg thrust between his thighs. And her lips, heating now but still closed, almost sweet beneath his own.
The cop cleared his throat. “Sir?”
Nim slid away from him, a torture of friction over his skin. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Officer. We didn’t hear you.” She cast her eyes downward and curved one shoulder with demure bashfulness.
Jonah tried not to choke. Bashful fit her as well as his shirt did.
The park ranger frowned at them, sweaty despite his short sleeves and more than a little annoyed. “This isn’t the place for a free-for-all.”
Jonah flinched when Nim grabbed his hook and clutched it to her chest. “No, sir,” she said fervently. “Freedom is never free, is it?”
Jonah swore he could feel her breasts yielding against his nonexistent hand. Just one more of her breathy gasps, and the pulse raging in his elbow would probably blast the hook right off his arm.
The ranger straightened. “You’re a soldier?”
Before Jonah could answer, Nim said, “Just back from the war. I mean, just.”
“Well, God bless you, son.”
Jonah hunched against a possible lightning strike. “He’s behind me every day, sir.”
After a last warning that they better not be swimming in the fountain, the ranger moved on toward a group of preteens screeching like ferales at the edge of the water.
Jonah let out a breath. “I prefer to get through my days without lying.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” Nim said. “He just heard what he wanted to hear.”
“I’m not a soldier.”
“Maybe not by choice.”
He squinted. She’d bought into the horrors of this new life as carelessly as she’d shrugged off the ugliness of her old. Was there no skin she couldn’t slip into—or out of—on a whim?
Shame pinched in his gut. The thought was unfair. Just because he was still wrestling with his demon almost a century later was no reason to condemn her to the same fate. Although how her teshuva had called to his when they were so unsuited baffled him. “Let’s find a phone and see if we won this battle or not.”
Pay phones were harder to find in a cellular world, but Nim brazenly interrupted the park ranger from scolding the kids to ask where they could make a call. She sauntered to Jonah. “Give me your wallet.”
“Again?” He hauled the sodden leather billfold out of his pocket.
She plucked two twenties from the interior and handed it to him with a long-suffering sigh. “For the phone call.”
“Since when is a local call forty bucks?”
“The commemorative T-shirt is twenty.” She dragged him across the park to the nearest vendor. “I wish the snow cones were spiked. I could use a drink.”
She dickered with the vendor for a shirt and two pairs of plastic sunglasses. “Do you want the fake rhinestones or the grandpa glasses?”
“No.”
“Grandpa glasses it is.” She tossed him the blue-tinted wraparound shades.
He pulled the shirt over his head and tucked in the hem. “Why’d you get me a small?”
“It’s not small; it’s stylish. And better shows off your muscles.” She plucked at the limp, stained material of her shirt. “So people won’t look at me.”
“Since when do you not want people to look at you?”
“Since I was branded, drowned, and smudged off the last of my eyeliner.”
She’d all but invited him, so he let his gaze roam over her. With her hair in ropes and his T-shirt hanging like a gunnysack, she looked . . . wild. Terrifying in the same way he’d felt the one night he stepped into the jungle for a moment alone and realized he’d lost the path. He’d calmed his racing heart with the reminder that he’d been smart enough, at least, to bring a lamp. When he cranked up the wick, he’d been dazzled by the light of bright, twin stars shining through the impenetrable canopy.
Only to realize the stars were the cold, unblinking eyes of a night-roaming cat.
The predator hadn’t been hungry, or maybe the light had dissuaded it from attack. The twin stars had winked out and he’d been very alone. He didn’t think his heart had started beating again until a voice called him from the way he had come and he stumbled back into the circle of the village, saved by his little lamp and his worried wife.
Nothing would save him this time. He tugged at the neck of his too-tight T-shirt.
She scowled at him. “The long stare . . . the silent treatment . . . You really know how to make a girl feel special.”
He shook his head. “You are special. One of only three female talya we know of.”
She sighed. “Right, one of your harem.”
Unlike that long-ago leopard watching him from the jungle, she would never give up the attack. He turned and walked away. Which might invite an assault, but her nails weren’t that long.
They found a pay phone across the street. He lifted the receiver. The dial tone seemed disturbingly loud, bordering on ominous.
Nim pushed her tacky sunglasses up on her head. In the daylight, her turbulent eyes had settled to clear cyan. “There’s only one way to find out what happened to them.” Her voice barely carried over the flat buzz.
He punched in the @1 number.
The phone didn’t finish a full ring before Liam was on the line. “You’re both alive?”
“Yes.” Jonah watched both of Nim’s fists unclench. She’d been worried no one would answer. He turned to face the wall. “You all? And the second team?”
A longer hesitation than before he’d picked up the phone. “The teshuva will earn their keep tonight,” Liam said.
Jonah closed his eyes a moment. He, of all the talyan, knew how the demons’ healing powers, the knitting of flesh and bone, never touched the pain. He opened his eyes again when he felt the brush of Nim’s fingers against his arm. He’d dug the hook into the mortar between the bricks. A sharp tug pulled it free. He said to Liam, “Bonus points for breathing.”
Nim gave him her best devil-may-care-but-what-business-is-it-of-his? smile.
Jungle cat, warrior woman, heathen, temptress. Dear God in heaven, he wanted to kiss her again.
“Take her home,” Liam said. For a heartbeat, Jonah’s cheeks heated; then Liam continued. “Not her apartment. Take her to the warehouse. The police will no doubt be interviewing everyone on the books at the strip club, and I’d rather work out a script with her first.”
“She’d do fine on her own,” Jonah said. He’d seen her in action.
“The demons prefer us on our own,” Liam agreed. “But she doesn’t have to be alone, because she has us now.”
Jonah tried to believe that was better. He had to believe the battle was worth the cost. After all, he was almost a league poster child for fighting on, never mind the odds.