The shower faucet squeaked off. Seconds later, a wonderfully wet and very naked man emerged from a transitory cloud of steam like a scene out of a ’70s porno flick. He was beautifully built, all lean muscle and golden skin—more golden above the waist than below, I noticed. His outdoor shoot in Mexico must have been spent sans shirt. Good thing he was shooting travel ads and not women in bikinis, or I might’ve been jealous.

My eyes lingered over his taut stomach and followed the enticing dip of muscle curving over his hipbone, then lower. When he stopped toweling his hair, I glanced up, meeting his gaze. My heart hammered and a warm happiness spread through my chest. An easy grin parted his lips, outlined by the thin pirate mustache that trailed down past the corners of his mouth and matched a roguish triangle in the center of his chin. When he smiled, small wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes deepened. I found this strangely enchanting.

“Morning, witch.”

“Hello, devil.” I raised my head and leaned on my elbows. “If this is a dream, it’s a pretty good one,” I rasped, clearing my throat. “What’s going on? Why are you here early?”

“Caught a red-eye,” he said, sounding weary.

“What about your shoot?”

“I got all the night shots before I left.”

“Why?” I repeated.

He finished drying his shoulder-length light brown hair. “Why what?”

“Why did you come back early? You look exhausted.”

“I caught a couple hours of sleep on the plane,” he said with a shrug. “I came home because I got a call from Ambrose Dare.”

That took a couple seconds to register. “Dare? The head of the Hellfire Club?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He flung the wet towel on the floor and stepped to the edge of the bed. I reached out to run my hand over the soft hair on his thigh, still damp from the shower. He smelled good. He looked good. I’d missed him in all sorts of ways.

He made a small noise, one that told me he was listening to my emotions with his empathic knack. Until I met him, I paid little attention to my own feelings. But he did. He often pointed out nuances I’d never considered . . . like arousal. He said that my accompanying emotions sounded like a song going up an octave, and he could identify it even when I was ogling him from several feet away.

“Dare wants to see us,” he said.

“Us,” I repeated languidly. My wandering hand stilled. “Wait, us?”

“About those missing kids.”

“Huh?” I tried my damnedest to process this information. What in the world did we have to do with two missing kids in La Sirena?

“Tomorrow afternoon. Wants some favor from you. Probably magick. He wanted us to come today, but I told him you were working a shift later.” His eyes flicked to Mr. Piggy curled up by my feet. He scooped up the sleeping hedgie, toted him across the room, and set him down inside his open suitcase.

“You could’ve called. And if the meeting’s tomorrow, then why did you leave the shoot early?”

In answer, he returned to the bed and lay down on top of me over the covers. The box spring groaned with his added weight, dipping lower when he shimmied to wedge his thighs between mine. He immediately kissed me several times in quick succession before I could protest.

“Do I have disgusting morning breath?” I asked after the assault, slightly breathless, but unable to stop smiling. Damp locks of wavy hair fell around his face. I tucked it behind his ears.

“No worse than your evening breath.” As I laughed, he slipped his arms around me, gathering me close to bury his face in my neck. “God, I missed you,” he murmured near my ear in a voice that was alluringly deep.

Tiny jolts of happiness surged through me. His warm weight resting on me felt so good. He was startlingly firm between my legs, even through the heavy quilt between us. His beautiful halo swirled in my vision, forest-green flecked with bits of golden light. When he held me close like that, our halos mingled around the edges. I wrapped my arm around his broad shoulders, holding up my hand in the middle of the cloudy haze. Gold, silver, and green lazily curled around my fingers like smoke.

“You kinda look like a sexy Jesus,” I whispered, running a slow hand down his back.

“Would you like to reenact the Gospels?” His mustache tickled the sensitive skin behind my ear. “You could be Magdalene and wash my feet with your hair.”

“Pfft. You could wash mine instead.”

“Or you could pretend to be paralytic. I’ll heal you.”

“With what? Your cock?”

He pulled back to look at me, slitted green eyes shining as he grinned. “The night before I left for Mexico, you said it was a gift from God.”

That coaxed a laugh out of me. “Hmm . . . this does sound better than Nurse and Doctor.”

“How thin are the walls here?”

I sighed. “Paper.”

“Your Silence spell?” he asked with hope.

He referred to a handy sigil that, when charged, would create a field of white noise a few feet around a door. It was too small to help here, and not worth the trouble to set up several in a perimeter along the wall. I’d be so tired by the time I finished, I’d be too nauseous to do anything else. I shook my head no.

“Damn. I was looking forward to hearing you wail.”

My jaw dropped indignantly. “Wail?”

“Mmm-hmm. Like a cat giving birth.”

I squeezed one eye shut, considering. “Wow . . . that’s what I call romantic. I guess I should thank you for choosing cat over hippopotamus or some other sort of extra-degrading analogy.”