having contact with another person. Yes, Pandora was with me in the other realm, and, yes, we constantly fought, but we rarely touched. Now my skin feels as if my every nerve ending is exposed.”
Okay. That made sense. “But you’ve slept your way through a baker’s dozen and—”
“Only one part of my anatomy has to touch a woman,” Baden interjected, “and with a condom, we aren’t exactly skin-to-skin. Besides, the pleasure is worth the agony.”
Maddox considered the things he would do to get inside Ashlyn. Actually, what wouldn’t he do? With her, any amount of pleasure would be worth any amount of agony.
“What about your new temper?” he asked.
Baden hung his head. “I’m not demon-possessed anymore, but I feel an evil presence inside me.”
“Because of the wreaths?”
“That, or something was done to me during my stint inside Lucifer’s prison. Like Cameo, my memory is fading.”
Lucifer was the worst of the worst, evil in its purest form, and certainly capable of doing something horrible to Baden. “Take off the wreaths. Return to the spirit world. We can find another way to get you back.” Even as he spoke the words, denial screamed through his head. Just got my friend back. Can’t lose him.
“I can’t. I’ve tried.”
Relief poured through him, as did fear. Baden wanted to leave them? “Is the evil constant or can you pinpoint triggers?”
“There are definitely triggers, and they start and end with my temper, which is getting worse by the day. That’s the main reason I wanted to talk with you. How do you control yours?”
Maddox laughed without humor. “I don’t. Not anymore.” And now that he thought about it, whatever Baden was dealing with might be the root cause of his own problem. Evil fed off evil, after all. The more it consumed, the more it wanted.
That impending sense of doom...
If evil overtook Baden... Yeah, they’d all be in danger. In more ways than one.
The guy would have to be locked away. For his own good, yeah, but also for the rest of the world. And if that didn’t work, he’d have to be killed. Again. Neither idea appealed to Maddox.
Baden’s thoughts must have taken a similar journey. “I don’t know what I’ve brought into your house. Maybe I should leave the fortress. I could be putting you guys—your families—at risk.”
“Not my house, our house. You’re staying.” The words blasted from Maddox with the force of a cannonball. “We finally got you back. We can’t lose you again. Whatever’s going on with you, we’ll figure it out. Together. We’ll fight it together.”
Silence.
He sighed. “In the meantime, have you tried deep breathing?”
“No. Because I’m a moron,” Baden snapped. He paused to punch the wall, dust pluming the air as cracks formed in the stone. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Please. This little man fit was nothing. “Don’t worry about it.”
They descended the stairs and veered right, soon entering the kitchen.
“There is one thing that has always helped me, no matter how far gone I am,” Maddox said.
Baden stepped in front of him, consuming his personal space. Desperation radiated from him as he said, “Tell me.”
“I think of Ashlyn, Urban and Ever.” His wife and his twin babies, the top three reasons he breathed.
Disappointed, Baden turned to brace against the marble countertop. “You love them. You know they’re fragile, that you could hurt them, but you don’t want to hurt them so you do whatever it takes to protect them. I can’t do the same because I love no one.”
“You love me.” Maddox bumped his shoulder—screw lack of contact—before heading into the closest pantry to grab a package of popcorn. “You love my family. And don’t try to deny it. I’ve seen you with the twins.”
Maddox’s heart had nearly burst out of his chest as the big, bad warrior had sat down to play beauty shop with Ever, allowing her to braid his hair, lacquer his face with makeup and paint his toenails princess pink. Afterward, he’d played chess with Urban. Game after game, teaching the boy strategy—the only thing Urban loved as much as his girls, as he called them. His mama and his sister.
“Why don’t you start looking for companionship rather than sex, so you can fall in love with a female?” Maddox asked. “Let the girls put your profile up on E-ternity or something.”
“The dating site for immortals?” Baden shuddered. “No.”
“But—”
“You want revenge against me, don’t you? That’s what this dating-site nonsense is about. I let myself be killed all those centuries ago, and now you want me to