Darkness Unmasked (Dark Angels 5)

“Do you want help?”

“No.” Especially given what had happened last time I’d found one of the keys. I was already in danger of losing Tao. I wasn’t about to risk losing Ilianna as well. I slapped the second piece of toast over the steak, then grabbed the sandwich one-handed and got off the counter. “If I don’t see you before tonight, enjoy your date.”

She snorted. “The only way that’ll happen is if I get totally plastered first. And I’ve promised Mirri I wouldn’t.”

“Tell her she’s a spoilsport.”

“Oh, I have, trust me.”

Grinning, I walked across to the dining table to transfer the search results from the computer to my phone, then walked into my bedroom to grab a coat and my purse.

Once I’d finished my sandwich, I stood in the middle of my room and said, “So, are you going to make an appearance, or is this snit going to continue?”

“As Ilianna has already noted,” he said, voice even, “I am never very far away.”

I swung around. He stood several feet away from me, his arms crossed and his expression back to its usual noncommittal self. “Then why couldn’t I sense you?”

“Because I didn’t allow it.”

I frowned. “If you’ve always had the ability to stop me from sensing you, why haven’t you?”

“Because I haven’t always been able to.”

I blinked. Definitely not the answer I’d been expecting. “Then why have you suddenly gained the ability?”

“For the same reason you are catching more of my thoughts and emotions than I might otherwise wish. The closer our link becomes, the more it opens some . . . abilities and closes down others.”

“Meaning it’s a two-way street?”

“Possibly.”

Meaning yes. I briefly wondered just what it meant for me other than more insight into his thoughts and feelings, but I knew him well enough by now to know he was never going to tell me that sort of information. “And you can’t stop it from happening?”

“No.” He regarded me steadily for a moment. “We are going in search of the next key?”

“Yes. As scary as Hunter is, she has nothing on the Raziq. If I don’t start actively trying to find the keys, they just might stop threatening and start doing.”

And Tao and Ilianna would be their first targets; of that I had no doubt.

A chill ran through me, although I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the thought of my friends coming under attack from the Raziq, or a premonition of trouble of another kind headed their way. Fast.

“How do you wish to travel to Ballarat?”

I hesitated, very tempted to ride the Ducati there and tell him where to shove it until he got over the moodiness, but I really didn’t have the luxury of time. Not if that premonition was to be believed.

“You can take me, if you’d like.”

Amusement briefly touched his lips, and there was something close to mischief shining in the blue of his eyes. “Oh, I would like.”

I raised an eyebrow. “If I didn’t know you better, reaper, I’d think not only was that a double entendre, but you were flirting.”

“Reapers don’t flirt.” He stepped close and wrapped an arm around my waist. His body was warm against mine, his touch tender and yet oddly possessive. “It is merely a truth I cannot deny.”

I rose up on my toes and said, my lips so close to his that I could almost taste him, “So you’re saying that you want me?”

“From the very first moment that I saw you,” he murmured; then his lips met mine and he kissed me fiercely and very thoroughly as his energy rose and swept us through the gray fields to the chill of Ballarat. Not that I actually felt, in any way, cold. Such a thing wasn’t possible when Azriel’s arms were still around me.

“God, get a room, will you?” a woman muttered as she walked past us.