“I got shot today. You deny me dibs on the remote, I’ll punch you in the balls.”
“So sweet.” Stripping in front of her should have been hot. He liked the way she looked at him most of the time, her gaze sliding over his skin like she didn’t even see his ink. But with her scars so visible, so
new
, his own felt like a brand.
Two wounded, pathetic suckers. That’s what they were.
The water began to run, and Anna glanced back at him. “Warm or hot?”
Cold would be smart. Too bad he wasn’t smart. “As hot as you like it.”
Steam billowed up from the tub. Anna let him help her climb in and immediately backed under the weak spray, letting it flow down over her head and face.
It should have been sexy, but when Patrick followed her into the shower, tenderness rose in place of lust. She looked ragged around the edges, weak and hurt, and he wished he’d thought to grab some decent shampoo or a bar of soap that didn’t smell like it belonged in a cheap motel.
She deserved better for saving his life. “Turn around, honey, and I’ll get your hair.”
Anna turned, but not before sighing. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like you’re not immortal?” The tiny bottle of shampoo bent under his annoyed grip, and he gritted his teeth and tried to relax. “If you don’t want gratitude and worry, don’t throw yourself in front of bullets. Being a hero sucks.”
“I know, that’s why I don’t do the hero thing.” She leaned back against him. “I couldn’t just stand there, Patrick. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” Her skin was slippery against his. Warm and soft, and his body reacted without his permission. His only option was to ignore the inconvenient arousal and dump half the contents of the shampoo bottle onto her tangled, bloody hair. “This is why I keep my hair short, Lenoir. Easier to wash the blood out.”
She tilted her head into his touch. “I like my hair.”
He liked it too. It was one of the incongruities of Anna—soft, pretty hair on a hard-edged woman. He liked her contradictions, the way she always did exactly what she wanted whether it spit in the face of convention or embraced it. Not Kat’s brand of overly earnest feminism, but the honest-to-God independence that only came with not giving a shit.
He massaged Anna’s scalp a little more than he had to and smiled as she relaxed. “I’m lucky Sera’s on her honeymoon. There’s no telling what she’ll do to me when she finds out you got shot three times saving my ass. Pregnancy hormones are terrifying.”
“Mmm. If we laugh about it, she’ll be so confused she won’t know
what
to think. Let’s do that.”
He watched water and soap slide down her shoulders and over her breasts, a beautiful damn sight even if he
wasn’t
going to get his hands on them. “Tricky girl. Does that mean I don’t get to shout at you, even a little?”
“Not one bit.” She rubbed the back of her head against his shoulder and moaned softly.
Bullet wounds. He had to remember the bullet wounds, and not think about her slippery skin rubbing all over him. Naked, wet Anna, and he was so hard it hurt. “You’re not playing fair.”
“I tried.” She twisted in the circle of his arms and stared up at him. “Does that count for anything?”
Patrick smoothed his hands through her hair, sending suds flowing down her back. “I think maybe we better both keep on trying. You’re hurt.”
“Right.” She closed her eyes and dipped her head back under the water.
He brushed her hair back from her forehead and ran his thumb along her jaw. “You know, you take my breath away.”
“Stop it.” Anna leaned away from his touch. “Do you get off on it? On pushing me away and then saying things like that? What the hell is your
game
, McNamara?”
He tangled his fingers in her hair to hold her still, and the barely healed skin on her throat ratcheted his temper up. “You know what? You’re a coward. You’re a damn coward, because you don’t even have the guts to blow me off. You try to fuck me when only an evil bastard would climb on top of you, and then tell yourself I’m the one who rejected you.”
“So it’s all
me
,” she whispered fiercely. “I may be running scared, but so are you, damn it. And you’re a liar too, because you like to pretend everything would be peachy if only I wasn’t so fucked up and skittish.”
“When have I run?” His voice was rising, and he couldn’t stop it. “I chase you.”
“No, you don’t.” She tensed, her eyes cooling to chips of blue ice. “You
pretend
to chase me, but every time I tried—every time I needed you—” Her words cut off with a growl.
His heart jackknifed toward his throat. Need. The one thing he’d never felt from her. “Yeah, maybe I’m scared to catch you at the wrong time, because I don’t know if you’d give me a second chance.”
“A second chance?” Anna covered her face and laughed.
That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting. “I’m glad I’m funny.”
“You’re not,” she snapped, dropping her hands. “You’re infuriating, and you don’t understand me at all.”
He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know what else to
say
, so he snarled her name and kissed her under the rapidly cooling water.
Her lips trembled under his, and she bumped into him as she fumbled with the lever and shut off the water. Then she moaned and slipped her arms around his waist.
Moving slowly was paramount. It took every scrap of concentration, every higher mental function that wasn’t distracted by the press of her body or the reality of her breasts against his chest. He smoothed his hands up to cup her face, holding her steady because it would be so easy to forget that her shoulder and neck had been torn apart by bullets.
Slow. Slow, but
hell
would hurt less than slow when he licked across her lips and coaxed them apart.
She scratched her nails up his back to his shoulders and bit his tongue. “You’re doing it now,” she panted. “Deciding all by yourself how I get to have you.”
“Welcome to the world of fucking people who can handle you.” He licked her lip again. “I always get to decide how much I’m going to give. And you get to decide how much you want to offer. It’s called meeting in the middle, honey.”
“And it only works if what you want comes anywhere near what I want.” Anna pushed at his chest. “I want sex, and you want more. One of us would have to give.”
“Believe it or not, sex is pretty much the only thing on my mind right now. Second only to the fact that you’re not fucking healed yet.”
“I’m
alive
,” she told him archly. “So are you. Doesn’t it seem like a good goddamn time to prove it?”
“Can you lift your arms above your head without crying?”
“No.” Anna groaned and leaned her head against the tile. “You win. I’m an asshole, you’re right, and I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”
Patrick laughed and brushed her hair away from her injured shoulder. “Maybe I’m the asshole, for assuming you wanted me to fuck you into the tile. Maybe I’ve spent a little too much time imagining how hard you’d tear things up.”
“Stop,” she said again, more quietly, an entreaty this time. “It’s not funny anymore.”
“I’m not joking.” He wrapped his discarded towel around his hips and offered her the clean one. “I’m laughing at myself because you’re right. The only thing I’m good at these days is taking a moment and choking the hot right out of it.”
“I just need to sleep it off. I’ll be square in the morning.”
Once she’d folded the towel around her body, Patrick took his life in his hands and swung her carefully up into his arms. “Food first. Then sleep.”
She grumbled but leaned her head on his shoulder. “The pizza does smell good. Did you get black olives?”
“Of course I did.” At least he’d known that much about her. “I got your back, Lenoir.”
She hesitated, then lifted her head and smiled. “Partners. Maybe we can’t be friends or fuck buddies or whatever, but we can be partners.”
It felt hollow. Like it wasn’t enough, and he couldn’t tell if he was aching at the knowledge that sex was off the table, or hurting that friendship was. But partners, that was different. Maybe he couldn’t navigate a conversation with her, but he’d walk into a trap and trust her to keep him alive.
She’d take bullets for him.
“Partners,” he said, low enough to hope that she wouldn’t notice how rough his voice was. “We’re damn good partners already.”
“Yeah, we are. And it’s nothing to sneeze at.”
Partners. Maybe, someday, it’d be enough.
Chapter Seven
Anna woke with a tingling ache in her shoulder and a pounding pressure right behind her eyes. She’d lain awake too long, far after the mild narcotic effects of her pain medication had worn off, and she was paying for it with a lingering hangover.
She rotated her arm as she sat up in bed, and only a mild twinge greeted the movement. She sighed in relief, stretched and ran her fingertips over the healing scar on the side of her neck.
Patrick was sprawled across the other bed on his stomach, the sheet tangled around his legs and his boxers slung low on his hips. The scars from the night of Ben’s death cut a mangled path through the intricate inkwork on his shoulders and back, bisecting half a dozen shapes and intruding into even more.
She moved toward him as if compelled, and she supposed that was as good a word as any. She
had
to look, had to examine the legacy of the burns he’d suffered.
Her fingertips touched one raised ridge of silvered flesh, and he shifted with a grumbling noise but didn’t jerk to his feet. They’d been on the road together long enough for her to know he was a light sleeper, so he must have been exhausted.
She backed off and went searching through one of her bags for a pair of jeans. The sooner she had a cup of coffee, the better.
“Anna?” His voice came out rasping. “You okay?”
“Got a headache because of the pain meds,” she murmured. “Nothing some caffeine won’t fix.”
Jesus, it hurt to look at him.
Getting shot had been nothing compared to facing the realization that whatever little dance they’d been doing for the last year was absurd, futile, because he was right. They’d hurtled past any hope of a casual relationship, and the hurt feelings and rejection that hovered between them precluded the possibility of friendship too.
The only thing left was love, an impossibility under the best of circumstances. She didn’t know how to do it, pure and simple. So that left them back at square one, fighting to ignore an ill-advised attraction.
Eventually, it had to work.
Patrick rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve got Advil in my bag, if you want some.”
“I have some aspirin.”
“All right.” A few more moments staring up, and Patrick rolled upright with a wince and dragged his bag across the floor. “We probably need to get on out of here. The doc paid for one night, but I’d just as soon take off before they get a look at us.”
Anna didn’t even know where they were. Instead of asking, she picked up the preprinted restaurant delivery card hanging from the doorknob. “We made it all the way to Carlsbad, huh?”
He grunted as he pulled on a shirt. “I drove fast. Your car may be ridiculous, but it can move.”
“It’s only ridiculous because you’re seven feet tall. It’s perfect for me.”
The bottle of Advil rattled as he shook out three capsules. “I’m six foot nothing in my socks, honey. Must be my looming personality.”
“Must be.” Banter was simple. She could go back and forth all day with breezy comebacks that said little and meant even less. So what if the clever exchanges had lost their ease?
His phone vibrated, skittering across the pocked tabletop. Anna snatched it up, grateful for the distraction, and tossed it to him.
He swiped his thumb across the screen and frowned as he read the message. “Well, shit.”
“What is it?”
“My friend in Albuquerque’s been looking for Oscar.” Patrick held up his phone. “Dead guy just turned up who matches his general build, but they’re having trouble getting an ID because he’s been skinned.”
“
Skinned?
” As ways to disguise a murder victim went, it left a lot to be desired. It was messy, time-consuming and apt to leave more trace evidence on the corpse than it eliminated. “Does he have his teeth?”
“Yeah.”
“Dental records should make for a simple identification, assuming we can’t get a medium in there.”
He stared at the phone. “She’s pretty sure magic was involved.”
Anna turned it over in her mind, trying to pinpoint what was off about the situation. “It doesn’t sound like any ritual I’ve ever heard of. There’s nothing inherently powerful about
skin
. Why take it?”
“Some sort of twisted skinwalker shit?” As soon as he said it, he shook his head. “No, because if they knew what Oscar was and they used magic, they’d know the skin wouldn’t do them any good.”
“No.” All the magic, everything intangible that made shapeshifters who and what they were, vanished at the moment of death. “Best thing to do is check it out. We can make Albuquerque in—what, five hours?”