I can’t possibly wear lime green and shrimp orange in public.”
“Laundry charm?” I asked them.
“Laundry charm,” the guys agreed.
I called dibs on the shower, grabbed my remaining change of underwear from my backpack, and pulled Cooper into the bathroom with me. He completely undressed while I stripped most of the way down. I didn’t really want the Warlock handling my dirty underwear on general principle and certainly not after the day I’d had. It wouldn’t take a genius to look at the state of my panties and know what had been going on in my head the past few hours. Besides, it would be easy enough to hand-wash those on my own, even if I couldn’t find anything better than the tacky white institutional soap Charlie had given us with the towels.
Cooper passed our clothes out to the Warlock to charm-clean while I folded my unmentionables, set them aside under the sink, and readied the shower. It had one of those annoying, clunky single-knob controls set in the tile wall, and it provided seemingly a single-millimeter zone between freezing cold and scalding hot.
After a couple of tries, I got the water tolerably warm. “Hey, honey, come on in.”
Cooper got into the shower stall with me and stood under the spray, head bowed and eyes closed, the water running down through his dark curly hair in rivulets over his delicious smooth back and chest. I had the sudden fantasy of Cooper holding me against the damp wall, my legs wrapped around his waist, his hands all over me.
I took the soap out of the tile-bolted dish and lathered it up, rubbing suds into his shoulders. His muscles were knotted with tension, and I could feel a vibration in his body that wasn’t just regular stress. Miko’s fury still had him deep in his guts.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Fine.” The word was a clipped grunt.
I lathered my hands again and ran them in gentle circles over his back, down his sides to his groin.
His spine stiffened and he pushed my hands away from his genitals. “Sorry. Too much on my mind right now. Maybe later.”
Not looking at me, he took a quick rinse and stepped out of the shower, leaving me frustrated and horny. And also feeling too contaminated and rejected to do anything to relieve my own tensions. Yep, if this kept up I was going to be looking for a rope and a ceiling beam that could take my weight.
The rational part of me realized there was no point in making a big deal about it. If Cooper didn’t feel like fooling around, he didn’t feel like fooling around. It wasn’t necessarily because he was repulsed by my infection—his coldness was probably just the result of Miko’s tampering.
And once we took care of her and got the heck out of this godforsaken town, our relationship would go back to normal, wouldn’t it? And if not … well, surely we could find a healer to cure me, at least.
But before we could go after Miko, there was a small, dark matter we had to take care of first.
chapter
nineteen
Exorcism
“So, yeah,” I said, stepping out of the bathroom, dressed in charm-clean clothes, toweling off my hair. “About me being possessed by a baby Goad …”
Cooper chewed on his mustache, still not meeting my gaze. He’d put his pants back on, but hadn’t put on his tux jacket. “Well, devils don’t much like being exorcised, so the first order of business is to find some way of keeping you strapped down so you don’t hurt us or yourself. Would you rather be lying down or sitting up?”
At least he was speaking to me in full sentences.
“Um.” I tried to imagine what the devil might try to do to my body if it was intent on hurting me out of spite. “I guess sitting up might keep it from wrenching my spine around quite as much? And it would leave you guys more room in here. But what about my flame hand?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the Warlock replied. “I’m pretty sure I can build enchanted fire shielding out of this trash can over here. And I can make a good strong bondage chair pretty quick using the furniture we have in here—I’ve made lots of ’em for play parties and such. Just have to find some material for straps and spend a little extra time reinforcing it with some steel.”
The Warlock and Cooper brainstormed a list of items to look for, mainly steel folding