uptight, morality officer over there committed a B&E to pet a goddamn tiger?”
“That’s exactly what we did,” I reply, pushing my shirt over my shoulders. “So, are we going to swim or what?” I stand up and push my skirt down my hips, turning and walking backward toward the water. Raz shoves up to his feet with a grin, raising his brows in surprise as I chuck my bra and step out of my panties.
“Oh, come on,” Luke groans. “Nobody wants to see that.”
“Speak for yourself,” Raz growls, and I turn with a shriek when he comes for me, leaping into the water before he can catch up. I’ve just barely broken the surface to grab a gulp of air when a splash sounds next to me, my body bobbing with the waves as I look around for Raz. When he doesn’t come up right away, panic overtakes me, and I start searching for him, certain that the universe is going to pull one over on me yet again.
Hands grab me and I let out a shriek as Raz yanks me under the water and presses a kiss to my lips before letting me go. When we both come up, he’s laughing, the sound echoing around the ancient statues and their moss-covered grins. Raz swims over to a small island and uses the cracked cement wing of a demon to pull himself out of the water.
“Who do you think put all these statues here?” I ask, swimming over next to him and folding my arms on the mossy concrete edge of the little island.
“Who the fuck knows or cares?” Raz asks, not giving two shits that his dick is on full display for everyone else to see. My eyes catch on it, and I have a really hard time pretending that I’ve never seen it before. “See something you like, Karma Sartain?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him, raising my eyebrows and then pausing to glance over my shoulder as Luke turns up the stereo loud enough that we can hear the music from all the way over here.
“No? My dick seems to have some idea.” Raz reaches down and gives his junk a squeeze. Pretty sure I can hear Sonja gagging from all the way over here, too. He leans down to look at me, red eyes bright in the sunshine. “You want to find a private spot to, you know, talk? And then fuck. Preferably, we’d actually fuck first, talk, then fuck again.”
“You’re the worst,” I groan, pulling off my sopping wet mask and leaving it on the island. I’m the only one wearing it, perhaps more attached to the idea of Devils’ Day than I pretend to be. Maybe I’ve always put too much stock in that party? Last year, I swore I wasn’t going to go, even after I’d put all that work into my dress. Calix showed up at my house when I was home alone, and he convinced me to go. Then, later, he found me at the spring and urged me to come with him to the treehouse.
And it was exactly what I’d wanted to happen, even if I refused—still refuse—to admit it to myself.
“Or maybe I am? I think I care too much what people think,” I murmur, not expecting Raz to really respond to that. He’s shown a lot more depth of character today than I expected, but I’m not going to crack him wide and find out all of his secrets on day one. Luke is right. We need more than one day.
We need that.
I want to develop a real relationship, not just start a new one every fucking day.
But, like everything else on this journey, Raz manages to surprise me.
“Not you,” he says, shaking his head and then slicking wet hair back from his face. Droplets of water bead on his lower lip and slither down the hard surface of his chest. It seems impossible to look away, like I’m the studying the face of some young Adonis, only … one that’s been carved of shadows and stuck here in this field of forgotten statuary. Beautiful, yes, but a demon, surely. “You don’t care what people think. You dye your hair weird colors and paint faerie murals on your house.” He looks askance at me, and I remember him confiding how much he wanted to dye his own hair. “Nobody in your family seems to care. Trust me, I’d know if you did. Mine does.