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The stark reminder that the world had been very close to total destruction cast unwelcome clarity on her post-coital haze. The real world was just on the other side of the wall surrounding the compound, and she wasn’t ready for it yet.
“How old is Amber?” she asked, desperate to stay engaged in pillow talk, as if that would keep everything else at bay.
He arched an eyebrow. “You mean there’re some details about my family’s life The Aegis doesn’t know?”
“Shocking, I know.” The Aegis knew of Amber’s existence, but they only had a broad idea of her age.
“She’s thirty,” he said. “Three years younger than I am. But she looks like she’s twenty. We immortals age slowly and then stop aging at around twenty-five or thirty.”
“You suck.”
He laughed. “If it makes you feel any better, since my mom is human, I get hurt easier than my dad, it takes longer to heal, and according to the angels I train with, I can die.” He paused to take a drink, but she was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that he trained with angels.Angels. “Fortunately, my bond with Cujo helps me heal faster than I would without him. My sister and I both broke our arms when we were kids, and mine was almost fully healed before my parents could even get me to Underworld General. But it took four days for my sister’s arm to heal because she refused to go to the hospital, and she wouldn’t let a doctor touch her. She’s so stubborn.”
“Still. Four days to heal a broken arm? That’s amazing. Does she have a job or any interests?”
“Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. She’s interested in everything. If she’s not writing, she’s reading. Or trying new recipes. Or using the game room to go places virtually.”
“So, she’s a writer?”
He hesitated for a heartbeat and then gave the tiniest shrug, just a twitch of the shoulder, really, as if he’d decided it was okay to keep talking. “She’s actually a bestselling author, but she writes under a pseudonym. And, no, I can’t tell you what it is. You can ask her about it if you want when you meet her tomorrow.”
She sat up so fast she whacked her cheek into Logan’s chin. “Ouch. What? I’m meeting her?”
“You’re meeting everyone,” he said. “It’s a big family get-together. We do it once or twice a month. It’s at Limos’s place this time. We were going to cancel because we’re concentrating on finding Draven and Lilith, but I guess everyone figured we could meet tomorrow and share info. So, it won’t be a party as much as a battle-planning session. With burgers and beer.”
Oh, God. Her stomach was already churning with nervous energy. The idea of meeting not just one Horseman but all of them, plus their kids and friends…she might actually throw up for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“Your family is going to hate me.”
He took her hand so tenderly her heart fluttered. “They have reason to despise The Aegis, but they have no problems with humans. All the Horsemen’s mates are human.”
“What about you?” It suddenly occurred to her—now that she knew who she thought was Logan’s ex was actually his lunatic grandmother—that the ex he’d spoken about must have been human. “Your ex was human, wasn’t she? And clearly, she didn’t react well to finding out who you were.”
“She exposed me to a local demon hate group and got me expelled from college.” He threw his head back into the pillow. “That was after she tried to stab me.
“What a bitch. How long were you together?”
“Almost a year.” He tossed his empty bottle into a trash can near the door. “I guess I should have told her sooner. I just didn’t think she’d freak as bad as she did.”
She stroked his arm, letting her fingers play along the hills and valleys of his hard muscles. “When I asked how you discovered you had a gift for capturing spirits, you said it involved a girl. Was it her?”
He snorted. “Yeah. Before college, the only thing I could do was summon a sword.” Suddenly, there was a sword in his hand.So cool. “But I was at a restaurant one night with her, and I saw a demon’s soul floating around our waitress.” The sword disappeared, and he dropped his hand to hers. “I kind of freaked out. And I couldn’t tell her the truth, so she thought I was drunk or high or something. We had a huge fight. Almost broke up. I wish we had.”
His ex sounded like a controlling twat. “Why couldn’t you tell her? What was her attitude toward supernaturals?”
“She was curious at first. Not hostile. I should have told her at the beginning, but I wasn’t sure I could trust her. Then she started hanging out with radical anti-demon groups and going to Aegis-hosted events. I got worried about how she was talking about not just demons, but weres and vamps too. Then, one day, she suggested that The Aegis should have imprisoned the Horsemen and held them until Armageddon, and I had to tell her the truth. Wanted to convince her that we aren’t all monsters. I mean, she’d known me for a year. SheknewI wasn’t a monster, you know?”
“Do you still love her?”
“She tried to stab me and have me captured by extremists.”
“That’s not a no. Maybe you’re into that kind of thing.”
His deep laughter shook the bed. “No. Hell, no.”
She liked that answer. “But you’re still angry?”
He blew out a breath. “I was for a long time.” He twined his fingers with hers. “But I think I’ve finally made my peace with it.” Leaning over, he kissed her, a fleeting, tender kiss that made her eyes sting with the emotion that passed through it. “Thank you.”
