Heat flashed through me, and Asa smiled, his thumbs telling him exactly how my heart had leapt.
Goddess bless, I was still thinking about his horns. Clearly, I had problems. Two of them. A matched set.
“What are you thinking about now?” Asa murmured. “Your pulse keeps jumping.”
“That lasagna is turning me on,” I lied, jerking out of his grip. “Parmesan really does it for me.”
“Literally just said no kinks.” Clay spread out the food on the table and tossed me a plastic fork. “Keep them to yourself.”
“I was talking about food.”
“What did I tell you about daemons and food?”
“That food fights are foreplay.” I stabbed a meatball in Clay’s spaghetti and bit down. “Oh, baby.”
Asa moved in behind me, leaned over me, and took the fork from my fingers. His growl vibrated through my spine to rattle my teeth. I didn’t enjoy having my food taken from me, so I pinched another meatball in my fingers and popped the whole thing in my mouth, giving myself ultra-sexy chipmunk cheeks. Twisting to see over my shoulder, I dared Asa with a look as I chewed, swallowed, then smacked my lips.
“Don’t tempt me.” He ate the meatball off my fork. “You won’t like what happens.”
That was the whole problem. I was pretty sure I would like it. I might even ask him to do it again.
“Can you two fight over something besides my balls?” Clay snatched the fork. “Seriously. Not cool.”
A second knock on the door raised my eyebrows, and I checked with Clay. “You order dessert?”
Asa shrank back, giving me space, and fitted himself into the kitchen, as far from the door as possible.
After wiping my mouth clean of sauce, I scooted around the counter. “I’ll get it, I guess.”
I glanced back to check on him, but he was doing his invisible man impersonation. He must have scented the people on the other side of the door and recognized them. Black Hat. Must be. And they were early.
The zombified team could have called in an SOS before the witch took them out. That would account for a fresh secondary team arriving ahead of schedule. But the Kellies handled dispatch for all active agents.
They would have known.
They would have told us.
And that meant, whoever our guests were, they weren’t our backup team.
Tuning in, I picked out four heartbeats, but that was all I could tell. The door opened under my palm and revealed four agents dressed in their Black Hat best. I greeted them with an expression I used to wear as easy as I smiled these days. Total lack of interest meets an utter willingness for violence. “You have ID?”
The agent on point, a gorgeous redhead with an athletic figure, reached into her suit jacket and pulled out standard Black Hat-issued ID.
“Melissa Rivers,” I said loud enough for my voice to carry over the crunch of garlic bread to Clay’s ears.
“Hey, Lis.” He joined me at the door. “RJ, good to see you. Timothy, looking good. Vanessa, hey.”
“The director sent us.” Melissa made no move to cross the threshold. “He explained your problem.”
Her face didn’t ring any bells, but her voice struck me as familiar. I couldn’t place it, though.
“Come in.” He slung an arm around my shoulders and hauled me back. “Guys, this is Rue Hollis.”
“Any friend of Clay’s…” Melissa said to me while smiling at him. “It’s good to see you.”
The other three were less chatty, but I wasn’t sure if the problem was me or if they had noticed Asa.
How he managed to make himself smaller, less threatening, was a feat to behold, but it made me twitch how he put himself into a box and shut the lid around others to make them more comfortable. Maybe it made him a better person than me. He wouldn’t have to try hard to win that title. But I didn’t like how it made me feel. Which just proved that, yeah. He was a better person than me to put others’ comfort first.