“You’re leaving in the morning, aren’t you,” she whispered with sudden dread.

His nod was slow and steady.

Mels closed her eyes and fell back against the pillows. Putting her forearm under her head, she stared at the ceiling.

Man…this hurt—

“I’m in love with you,” he said quietly.

Her head jerked around. Matthias was still staring at her, those eyes level and penetrating, his harsh face dead serious.

For a moment of pure stupidity, she just wanted to slap him. He was pulling out of town for parts unknown, never to return, and he hit her with that?

Fuck. Him.

“I just wanted you to know.”

“Before you leave,” she muttered.

“Some things are worth saying.”

She turned back to him and tucked her hands in—in the event they acted on that impulse. “If that’s true, then why leave?”

“It’s not up to me.”

“So someone else is buying your bus ticket and forcing you on a Greyhound?” God, she sounded like a bitch. “Ah, hell…look, I don’t want you to go. But you know that—so, we are where we are.”

He loved her.

And as she looked into his face, her feelings were crystal-clear as well.

Reaching out, she put her hand on his cheek—and not in a slap. “What am I going to do without you?”

And P.S., how the hell had someone she’d just met come to mean this much? It wasn’t like she was a teenager in the heat of the crush years, when any passing guy could become a tragedy of Romeo and Juliet proportions. Yet here she was, on the verge of tears because she had nearly no time left with him.

“Will I ever hear from you?” she asked.

His answer was to kiss her, and as he did, her eyes stung so badly she had to blink fast.

This time the sex was slow and gentle, but no less devastating than the passion had been: As he touched her, as he reentered her, as they moved as one, she told her brain to remember every single gasp and groan, each and every shift and sigh.

It was going to have to last for a lifetime.

44

Sitting buck na**d on the dock at the boathouse, Jim took his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket with hands that shook. Same thing with his lighter. And putting the flame to the tip wasn’t a coordination party either.

All the while, the sound of the Hudson lapping at the undersides of the empty slips crowded in on him, making him feel like there were bars on all four sides.

“She’s not actually the key to this,” Devina said from behind him.

Man, his hearing was just way too acute: Her zipper going up was like a scream in his head, and no one should ever take note of feet being slipped into stilettos.

“The reporter,” the demon prompted, like she was looking for a reply. “Matthias is so far gone, nothing can save him.”

Jim tapped his cig and watched the ash float off in the water.

Devina was right about one thing: She had managed to make him feel worse than before. He was positively stained, inside and out—from his anger, from the sex, from the game.

Saviors were not supposed to be hopeless—but here he was, completely surrounded by an utter lack of optimism.

Devina’s fancy-schmancy heels marched over and parked themselves in his peripheral vision, the bright blue alligator something-or-anothers burning his retinas.

He hadn’t intended on f**king her.

But he had. Twice.

The clash had been of biblical proportions—and it showed. The rowboats that had been so carefully stacked up were all over the place, pushed out of whack when he’d shoved her face-first against them. The buoys were scattered around. A number of life preservers had been torn, their fluffy stuffing like blood on a battlefield.

Looked like a hurricane had come up the Hudson.

Maybe it had been three times?

The demon knelt down, her perfect lie of a face intruding on him. “Jim? You in there?”

He wasn’t so sure about that.

“We’re getting down to the end of this round,” she said softly. “Maybe afterward, you and I can have a little vacation together? Go somewhere hot and make it hotter?”

“I’d rather die.”

She smiled, truly smiled, as if all was well in her world. “Then it’s a date.”

The demon straightened, and his eyes followed her as she stood to her full height. So beautiful, so evil.

“You want me to leave the reporter alone?” she said. “Okay. I will. Because I think the game is already won—I was just belt-and-suspendering it with her. The truth about that woman? Matthias and his past are going to take care of her by themselves—after all, he’s one of mine. He’s a liar and a megalomaniac, and his choices are going to mow her right over, even if you try to sweet-talk him and ply him with morality—hell, even if you frame the argument for goodness in terms of her? You won’t get the stains out of his soul, and his past deeds are going to come back to haunt him.”

Jim took another drag on his cigarette.

“Just remember, we can do this again,” she said with satisfaction. “When you need your exercise. Bye for now, enemy mine.”

Devina disappeared into thin air, leaving him to the river’s constant chatter and the chill of the night.

As he flicked his butt into the water, he thought about all the environmentalists who would be pissed off that he’d littered.

He merely fired up another.

Smoked.

Went back for a third.

As he lit Marlboro after Marlboro, he wasn’t sure exactly how long he sat there with his nuts in the breeze, making smoke rings and being disgusted with himself. The reality was, however, that what had just gone down was so much worse than the stuff she’d tortured him with in her Well of Souls.

This had been voluntary. At least the prior time he’d been with her, it had been against his will.

Staring out of the boat slip at the river beyond, he watched the moonlight tickle the tops of the ripples in the water, the current, or maybe the night wind, creating just enough of a disturbance so that the illumination had something to play with.

It was so beautiful, even though the water was filthy from the spring rain runoff. Even though his mood was foul. Even though he hated himself and the game to the point where he was tempted to quit…

That light was pure grace on the water….

Back when he’d accepted the role of savior, he’d never considered it would eat him alive. Hell, after having worked with and for Matthias for all those years in XOps, he had assumed he’d seen the worst of himself—and humanity.

He hadn’t expected this low point.

And what he needed was something to believe in.

Something tangible, something greater even than fear for his mother’s eternity—and his own.

Getting to his feet, he felt ancient as he went over to the two-sizes-too-small sweatpants he’d borrowed from Matthias. Devina had ripped them off his legs at some point, and they’d ended up underneath one of those damn rowboats. At least they hadn’t gone into the river, though.

Picking up the wad, he grabbed the waistband and gave them a good shake to get them in put-on-able condition—

Something went flying out of the pocket.

And he knew what it was the instant he saw it—even in the darkness, he knew what it was.

He pulled the pants on as he went over and picked the thing up.

The folded-up newspaper article had landed a thin inch away from the open water of the slip, almost lost.

He didn’t want to look at it. Had no interest in seeing that photograph he’d memorized. Didn’t want to measure even one word of the text he knew by heart.

His hands had other ideas, though.

Next thing he knew, he was staring at Sissy’s face, that beautiful, smart, young face. And as he couldn’t look away, he told himself that he was captivated by the image because it was a symbol of everything he hated about Devina.

But it wasn’t all that. Not completely.

Running his fingertips over the pixelated composite of light and dark pinpoints, he touched the delicate gold necklace he wore around his neck, the one given to him by Sissy’s mother…and he thought of those moments he’d been with his girl, talking about his dog, trying to give her something to hold on to, something to believe in when she felt like nothing was ever going to get better….

In a moment of vicious clarity, he realized that Devina was winning. In spite of the score being two to one, the shit she’d been pulling with those blondes had gotten to him, keeping the bitterness and rage about Sissy right in the forefront of his mind.

Excellent strategy.

That girl truly was his Achilles’ heel.

Jim looked out to the river, to that light. Looked back at the printout.

Devina wasn’t going to change. She was going to continue to exploit the weakness; it was, as she’d said, what she’d been designed to do.

So he was going to have to be different.

With a curse, he folded up the article and walked along the slip. At the far edge of it, out from under the boathouse’s roof, he paused in the moonlight.

Grasping the article at the top, he started to rip the piece of paper in half, one hand drawing away from the other—

He didn’t make it very far before he stopped.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Do it—just f**king do it!”

Except something was clogging the nerves to his appendages, the order from his brain diverted somewhere else.

Dragging a hand through his hair, he wanted to let Sissy go. He really did.

He actually prayed for it.

The only thing that came to him, however, was the reality that she was not just suffering down in that demon’s living room. She was under Devina’s control—and that meant she wasn’t safe.

His enemy was capable of anything.

What he needed was to get Sissy out of there….

45

Mels woke up with a jerk, the darkness that surrounded her taking her back into the river and the water’s suffocation—

The instant she saw the glowing strip across the way at floor level, reality returned. The hotel room. Matthias…

Rolling over to face him, she found him deep asleep, his chest under the duvet rising and falling slowly. He was on his back, his arms on the outside of the covers, his hands down by his sides. He looked like he was ready to get out of bed on an instant’s notice.

Either that or as if he were lying in a coffin.

Happy thought.

God, what a night.

Thanks to her having made a quick trip down to the twenty-four-hour gift shop, the evening had passed the way their other one had, with episodes of erotic connection alternating with the kind of sleep that comes when you’re passed out cold.

Well, except for the fact that they’d been able to go so much farther this time.

Abruptly, his eyes opened. “You okay?”

“How did you know I was awake?”

He shrugged one bare shoulder. “I don’t really sleep.”

“I guess so.”

As Matthias shifted his eyes away and stared up at the ceiling, he was so still, it appeared as though he wasn’t breathing—and that was when she knew for sure that they had been together for the last time. But like all that aerobic exercise had changed his mind?

Then again, it had been so much more than just sex, she thought. At least on her side….

In the horrible silence that followed, she gave herself permission to feel the loss, and as if he knew exactly what she was thinking about, his hand found hers and squeezed.

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” he said.

He leaned over and gave her a kiss that lingered, but then he was up on his feet so fast, she recoiled.

Talk about turning over a new leaf. It was as if he’d never had the limp.

Especially as he stalked through the darkness into the bathroom.

A second later, a light came on and then so did the shower.

A quick check of the hour told her it was seven o’clock.

Time to head home, have her own shower, and get dressed. With any luck, this would be a Pilates morning for her mother, and they could both be spared the walk of shame—not that Mels regretted the night. She just wasn’t too happy this morning.

Except that was because things were over, not because she was sorry it happened.

Getting out of the warm bed, she went over and turned on the desk lamp—and remembered, joy of joys, that she had no underwear or real clothes.

God, that fall into the river seemed like it had happened to someone else—at least until she felt the aches in her ribs and her forearms from when she’d dragged herself out of the Hudson.

Glancing to the sound of the running water, she thought maybe she should join him—no, it might look like she was chicking out, trying to make a come-on in hopes of changing his mind.