sifted through the photos of the demon from a few nights ago. His hair hung over his brow, the sable strands gleaming like black silk. Her fingers curled on the keyboard.
Hunt lifted his head. “We need more intel on Sabine. The fact that she swapped the footage of the Horn’s theft from the temple is suspicious, and what she said in the observation room that night is pretty suspicious, too, but they don’t necessarily mean she’s a murderer. I can’t approach Micah without concrete proof.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Ruhn hasn’t gotten any leads on finding the Horn, either, so that we can lure the kristallos.”
Silence fell. Hunt crossed an ankle over a knee, then stretched out a hand to where she’d discarded Danika’s jacket on the chair beside him, too lazy to bother hanging it. “I saw Danika wearing this in the photo in your guest room. Why’d you keep it?”
Bryce let out a long breath, thankful for his shift in subject. “Danika used to store her stuff in the supply closet here, rather than bothering to go back to the apartment or over to the Den. She’d stashed the jacket here the day …” She blew out a breath and glanced toward the bathroom in the back of the space, where Danika had changed only hours before her death. “I didn’t want Sabine to have it. She would have read the back of it and thrown it in the trash.”
Hunt picked up the jacket and read, “Through love, all is possible.”
Bryce nodded. “The tattoo on my back says the same thing. Well, in some fancy alphabet that she dug up online, but … Danika had a thing about that phrase. It was all the Oracle told her, apparently. Which makes no sense, because Danika was one of the least lovey-dovey people I’ve ever met, but …” Bryce toyed with the amulet around her neck, zipping it along the chain. “Something about it resonated with her. So after she died, I kept the jacket. And started wearing it.”
Hunt carefully set the jacket back on the chair. “I get it—about the personal effects.” He seemed like he wasn’t going to say more, but then he continued, “That sunball hat you made fun of?”
“I didn’t make fun of it. You just don’t seem like the kind of male who wears such a thing.”
He chuckled again—in that same way that slid over her skin. “That hat was the first thing I bought when I came here. With the first paycheck I ever received from Micah.” The corner of his mouth turned upward. “I saw it in an athletic shop, and it just seemed so ordinary. You have no idea how different Lunathion is from the Eternal City. From anything in Pangera. And that hat just …”
“Represented that?”
“Yeah. It seemed like a new beginning. A step toward a more normal existence. Well, as normal an existence as someone like me can have.”
She made an effort not to look at his wrist. “So you have your hat—and I have Jelly Jubilee.”
His smile lit up the dimness of the gallery. “I’m surprised you don’t have a tattoo of Jelly Jubilee somewhere.” His eyes skimmed over her, lingering on the short, tight green dress.
Her toes curled. “Who says I don’t have a tattoo of her somewhere you can’t see, Athalar?”
She watched him sort through everything he had already seen. Since he’d moved in, she’d stopped parading about the apartment in her underwear while getting dressed, but she knew he’d spotted her through the window in the days before. Knew he realized there was a limited, very intimate, number of places where another tattoo might be hidden.
She could have sworn his voice dropped an octave or two as he asked, “Do you?”
With any other male, she would have said, Why don’t you come find out?
With any other male, she would have already been on the other side of the desk. Crawling into his lap. Unbuckling his belt. And then sinking down onto his cock, riding him until they were both moaning and breathless and—
She made herself go back to her paperwork. “There are a few males who can answer that question, if you’re so curious.” How her voice was so steady, she had no idea.
Hunt’s silence was palpable. She didn’t dare look over her computer screen.
But his eyes remained focused on her, burning her like a brand.
Her heart thundered throughout her body. Dangerous, stupid, reckless—
Hunt let out a long, tight breath. The chair he sat