My pulse skyrocketed as Reyes stepped around the table. Even in a sand-colored T-shirt and simple blue jeans, he looked magnificent. Wide, powerful shoulders. Sinewy arms. Strong, almost elegant hands.
“You wouldn’t recommend what?” I asked him.
“Talking to my Brother. He’s … antisocial.”
“Must run in the family.” The molecules in my body began to vibrate with his nearness, desiring an encore of our earlier activity more than it desired air.
He reached down and caressed my face, his long fingers gentle.
I lifted my chin, refusing to be baited. If he wanted to talk, he’d sit down and we’d talk. I was finished chasing him.
A lopsided grin adorned his dark features. He bent until our mouths were almost touching, then asked, “Was it good for you?”
I jerked awake, blinking back to awareness, slowly realizing it was, once again, only a dream. I filled my lungs and slowly released the air. How the hell was he doing that?
“You weren’t burned.”
I turned to see Osh standing over me. Garrett walked in the door and headed toward us as Osh sank into the seat across the table.
“Your clothes were incinerated, every stitch of clothing gone, but you didn’t have a mark on you.”
“I can’t explain it,” I said.
“Can’t explain what?” Garrett asked, sitting beside me.
“Why I wasn’t burned.”
“Um, you’re a god?” He took a menu, pretending to peruse it, but I felt the uncertainty quaking beneath his steely exterior.
Osh was a little harder to read, but if I had to put a finger on his dominant emotion, I’d say it leaned toward a grim kind of acquiescence. If he had to take Rey’azikeen out, he would. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d do the job that was set forth the moment I sent Reyes into the god glass.
We ordered and ate in relative silence. Both Osh and Garrett were flirted with mercilessly, which would be good practice for later. Glances from across the room. Subtle innuendoes hidden in a smile.
Another potential suitor even bought all three of us a drink. Very diplomatic of her considering the fact that she only had eyes for Osh, but even more so considering the fact that she was in her late sixties. If she were older, say a few hundred years older, she’d be perfect for the immortal slave demon.
“Watch that one,” I told him, lifting my glass to her in salute.
She did the same as a wolfish grin widened Osh’s mouth. “Why? More sex and less complications.”
I slammed my eyes shut. There were just some things one did not need to know about one’s future son-in-law.
“Thanks for getting Misery back to me.”
They grunted as men are wont to do. But Garrett’s emotions were all over the place.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
He plastered a neutral expression on me that fooled no one. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I’m okay. You know that, right?”
He nodded silently, then downed the rest of his beer.
“Okay, then.” I put my hands on the table and rose. “Are we ready to do this?”
Garrett slammed his glass down and glared at me. “He took you.”
Osh and I both went stock still as one might do when facing an angry predator.
After a moment, I replied to him. “Yes, he did. But I’m okay.”
“Right out from under us. He took you, Charles.”
I nodded. Nothing I could say at that point was going to help his acceptance. He felt helpless. Which was about the worst feeling in the world.
His hand gripped the glass tighter as a server eased up to us. “Would you like another one?” she asked him.
“We can’t fight him,” he said to me.
I thanked the server before addressing him. “I know.”
“You’re right,” Osh said. “We can’t.” He turned a purposeful gaze on me. “But you can.”
“No, I can’t, Osh.”
“Not with that attitude, you can’t. You need to remember your place. You need to remember what you’re capable of.”
“I get it, Osh. I have a history. I used to apparently devour other gods.”
“You ate them like cotton candy at a carnival.”
I sat back and crossed my arms. “I can’t do that to my husband.”
“He’s not your husband,” he said softly.
I refused to listen. I knew Osh would take this course of action. He didn’t have much of a choice, but that didn’t stop me from resenting the implication.
“I’m not going there, Osh. Not yet.”
“Just keep it in the back of your mind. The time may come when you’ll need to cowboy up.”
When I didn’t respond, Osh sat back down, and both he and Garrett went back to nursing their drinks.
“Also,” Osh said, unable to help himself, “I wanted to address the fact that you give new meaning to the term smoking hot.”
Reluctantly, Garrett laughed, and the tension in the air evaporated. I was beginning to wonder if that wasn’t Osh’s superpower.
“Are we ready?” I asked them. We did have a job to do.
They both offered hesitant nods, before Garrett asked, his mouth half full of carne adovada, “What are we doing again?”
Osh took one last bite of his burrito and nodded his approval of Garrett’s question.
“We aren’t doing anything. You two are flirting.”
“Sweet,” Osh said.
It amazed me how he could look like a high school student one second and, well, an older high school student the next. Kid looked like a kid. I almost felt bad about pimping him out, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
I texted Cookie, and she met us in the parking lot, her all-black attire and black ski cap not at all suspicious considering she normally looked like a Jackson Pollock.
“Great choice,” I said. All that was missing was black face paint.
“You think?” Her nervousness was charming. She gave Garrett and Osh a quick hug. “I’ve never pulled off a heist before. Oh, and I have black face paint if we need some.”
Every ounce of strength. That’s what it took not to giggle. “Well, it’s not really a heist, and we haven’t actually pulled anything off, yet.”
“Right, right.” She drew in a deep, calming breath.
We started toward Misery while Osh and Garrett climbed into Garrett’s truck.
“And just so you know, I’ll have your six through this whole thing.”
“Good to know, Cook.”
“Or, say, your seven thirty. Whatever you need.”
Every ounce of strength. “So, what did you tell Uncle Bob?” I asked, unlocking Misery’s secrets. And her doors.
“That we were going to a movie.”
I bit my lip, then asked, “And he bought that?”
“Of course, only his exact words were, ‘Tell that niece of mine if she gets you arrested, I’ll make sure she never sees the light of day.’”
“So, he totally bought it. Awesome.”
We hopped in Misery and headed to a little place I liked to call Pari’s Plausible Deniability.
“Want to tell me what happened tonight?” she asked.
“Oh, right, well, I had green chile chicken enchiladas, and Garrett—”
“Okay, fine. You don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to talk about it. But just so you know, when my best friend comes back from a mission to capture a god naked with her hair on fire—”
“My hair was on fire?”
“—I’m going to ask questions.”
After a quick hair check, I took a left on San Mateo and headed north. “I’m sorry, Cook. I was going to tell you. It didn’t go as planned.”
“I assumed that. Did you learn anything, at least?”
“I learned that Rey’azikeen is just as good at coitus as his alter ego.”
Cookie gasped, then her eyes glazed over and a tiny corner of her mouth twitched. I let her stew in her own thoughts.
About thirty seconds later, she leaned close and said, “Tell me everything.”
I laughed and, well, told her everything, enjoying every sharp intake of breath, every sigh of pleasure, every “Oh, my God” and “Oh, no, he didn’t.” I knew I could count on the Cook to make me feel better.
Speaking of which, while Cookie was in the throes of amazement, I asked her if I could call her Walter. As in Walter White. As in the Cook.
She didn’t answer. I took that as a yes.
As we got closer to our destination, Walter sat stewing again, only this time she stewed in a stock made of sautéed astonishment, pureed bewilderment, and raw, undiluted desire. After all we’d been through, I loved that I could still dazzle her. I was worried she’d grow tired of my tales and my life would become mundane in her eyes. But so far, so good.
“I know it’s here somewhere,” I said, trying to find the place.
Garrett was following me, and I couldn’t help but find it reminiscent of the blind leading the sexy-but-also-blind. Which would explain the phone call I received from that very man.