His eyes shimmered with mischief in the low light. “I never claimed to be a Boy Scout.”
I could feel the heat of his gaze, and all I could think was, My god, he’s beautiful. I took the chance to assess just how badly he was injured. Raising my hands to his waist, I felt the ridges of duct tape along his rib cage and pressed gently. He sucked air in through his teeth and grabbed hold of my wrist. But blood gushed from under the tape and soaked the tips of my fingers through his shirt.
“Reyes, what the hell? What happened?”
He captured my gaze with a determined expression. “If anything happens to me, you need to know they hunt in twos. If you see one, if one comes after you, Dutch, I promise you, there is another one nearby. If you see three, there will be one more waiting in the wings. Never, ever trust them.”
“Can’t I just do what I did last time when I flashed my nuclear light on them?”
“No.” He pulled me toward him until my forehead was on his. “While they’re inside a human, they’re protected from light. Even from yours.”
I hated feeling so vulnerable, so paper thin. “I can’t fight them, Reyes. They’re too strong.”
“You could if you knew how, but you aren’t there yet, so don’t even try. Just call your guardian and run.”
I lay beside him and kept my hand on his ribs. “I’m pretty good at running. I mean, I’m not fast or anything, and I wind easily … never mind.”
He could’ve been the poster boy for seriousness when he said, “There’s something really motivating about having a bunch of demons on your ass.”
“I’m sure there is.”
“Just run and don’t stop. Promise me.”
“I promise I’ll try to run without stopping, but I really do wind easily.”
I’d managed to wrench a soft laugh out of him. He leaned in to nibble on my ear. Sharp ripples of desire shot through me at lightning-quick speed and pooled low in my abdomen. I couldn’t believe it. I finally had Reyes Farrow in the flesh, alone in a hotel room, and he was bleeding profusely. I was the one who would’ve taken advantage of him given the chance, but now was hardly the time. And it killed me to admit that.
As his mouth moved down my neck, I wrapped my arm around his head and whispered, “Tell me a story about my ancestors. About another grim reaper.”
He was quiet for so long, I thought he wouldn’t oblige. Then he lay back in thought. “There was a boy named Cynric whose father took him to his village elders. The man claimed the boy was possessed. That he saw spirits and knew things no one could know. After an inquisition that lasted for days, the boy still wouldn’t talk. He was stoned to death.”
I cringed. “So this isn’t a happy story?”
“Not many of them are. Afterwards, the village suffered a rash of sicknesses and deaths. They thought the boy had cursed them before he died.”
“Did he?”
“No, another did. He’d only been repeating what his little sister had told him. She was the reaper, not the boy. But she had suffered an illness as a baby and couldn’t talk. Only he could understand her.” He pointed to his head. “They spoke with their minds and their hearts. In her grief, she became crazed and unleashed her powers without realizing what she was doing. A reaper does not always know what he or she is capable of until great emotional trauma.”
“Did the girl live very long?”
He nodded. “Compared to most reapers, yes. Into her seventies, if I remember right. But she had to live with what she’d done. She became a recluse, and eventually insanity took hold.”
“That’s awful. If she was a celestial being, how could she kill so many? How could she get away with that?”
“Reapers are given agency at birth. They are the seekers of souls, but they may—” He thought a moment. “—they may, on occasion, hunt them down, for lack of a better phrase. It is their right.”
“Well, that’s a right I’m certainly never taking advantage of.”
To lead us no longer into temptation, I tossed my pillow at his ankles, plopped my head at his booted feet, and lay perpendicular to him across the bed. He had given me so much information, I wanted some time to absorb it all, but I didn’t want to leave him. Not like this. Not ever, as long as I lived. Or until I had to get back on the case. Whichever came first.
I had another family. An otherworldly family. How cool was that? And I could kill people with my mind. Okay, that part I wasn’t actually buying, but I had an otherworldly family. I wondered what their names were. Maybe I had an aunt Myrtle. Or an uncle named Boaz. I’d tried to convince Uncle Bob to change his name to Boaz once, but he refused. Not sure why.
As I lay there, contemplating all the advantages of having an otherworldly family, I felt my lids grow heavy. Reyes’s heat was making me sleepy. Having him close by was comforting, and I’d almost fallen asleep when he said, “You could move farther up. You’d be more comfortable if you were farther up.”
I chuckled. “No, you’d be more comfortable if I were farther up. Perv.”
And before I knew it, I was dreaming of Reyes and beaches and Cookie-a-ritas with little umbrellas brushing across my palm. That’s when I felt Reyes’s fingers brush across my palm. I wondered if he’d done it on purpose. When he rolled on top of me with a growl, pinning me down with his immense weight, I was pretty sure he had. But before I could protest, his mouth was at my ear.