He followed her after a time, found her stripped down to her undershirt and denim. Her muddy clothes were in a heap on the carpet and she’d lit a small fire in the smoky grate.

Jack held out a mouse-nibbled pink towel. “Peace offering?”

Pete sighed and then snatched it from him, using it on her face and hair. “Only because I’m like a drowned rat.”

“No,” Jack said, using his own manky towel to dry his hair. “You’re never that, luv.”

“Jack,” Pete sighed. “Do me a favor and don’t try and make this better by coming on to me. It’s just horrid and confusing at this point.”

He turned his back so Pete wouldn’t see him looking gut-punched, because what sort of a hard and wicked mage would he be if he got sour over a girl shooting him down?

“My apologies,” Jack said. “In a platonic and boring fashion, is it all right if I share your fire until me clothes dry out? I have a feeling if I fall asleep damp I’ll wake up with some horrid Victorian disease.”

“That’s fine,” Pete said. Her posture unwound when she realized he wasn’t going to push her.

How he wanted to push her. He wanted to touch cool milky skin with his fingers, feel hot breath on his neck, crush her with the desperate pressure he felt whenever she came within a meter of him.

Jack stripped off his shirt, the sodden thing landing with Pete’s clothes, and unlaced his boots, setting them on the hob. His tattoos licked up the firelight, and he was surprised when Pete sat next to him on the edge of the bed, blocking the dancing shadows.

“I trusted you, you know,” she said. “When we met again. I trusted you even though it nearly killed me.”

Jack lifted his shoulder. “Trust isn’t a commodity that has any value in this life, Pete.”

“But it does between us,” she said. “And the fact that you won’t trust me speaks buckets.”

He stayed silent. There was nothing to be said, and Jack valued silence, always had. When one grew up with screaming, crying, and soft whimpering day and night, silence was worth more than gold. And when there was nothing to be said that didn’t bring fury on your head, you shut the fuck up and you took your lumps.

“And the real pisser of it is that I like you,” Pete said. “If this were some bloke at work, or a regular, normal, dull-as-dishwater boyfriend, I wouldn’t care. I’d move on. But you, Jack. You had to make me take the plunge into this life with you, and now you won’t trust me and that’s just bloody shit of you, isn’t it?”

“Can’t,” Jack corrected her, voice barely more than a cigarette rasp. “Not won’t. Can’t trust you.”

Pete’s lip curled. “Well, Jack Winter, tell me: what can you do?”

Jack felt the weight of the secret, in his gut like a stone. He felt the demon’s secret as mercury on his tongue, cold and slippery and begging to be spilled.

Instead, he grabbed Pete by the nape of her neck and pressed their lips together.

She let out a small sound, her cheek going flush and warm against his as their bodies met, and her hands searched up his bare chest for his shoulders, finger pads digging in and holding fast.

As he slid his tongue between her lips, and they parted warm and willing for his advance, Jack thought to himself that he should stop. If he had any kind of decency left, he’d stop. He’d remove himself from temptation then and there, and never see Petunia Caldecott again.

But Jack knew the story of him and temptation, knew it by rote. The bright, hot, shining things always tempted him. And sooner or later, Jack always gave in.

Pete climbed into his lap, slim strong thighs pressing against his legs, breaking the kiss long enough to tangle her hand in his hair, dig the other into the flesh of his back, press her tits against his chest and her core against the swell of his cock, which grew harder, nearly painful, at even the hint of her touch.

Jack wasn’t naive enough to think he held any control over himself any longer. He put his lips against Pete’s neck, the deep-down reptile memory expecting the taste of sweat and sex and woad from his vision.

She tasted cool instead, a few raindrop still clinging to her skin, her pulse fluttering under his mouth as he frantically drank down as much of her as he could. It was his last chance, his only chance, and Jack breathed her in instead of air as his hands searched out the hem of her shirt and tugged.

Abruptly, Pete pulled back, away from him, and Jack came back to himself with a vertiginous jolt. He was too warm, the air was too cold, and his hard-on scraped painfully against his jeans.

Of course she’d stop him. This was Pete he was with, not some coke-addled Bastards groupie or blissed-out junkie girl fucking him for a bed in a squat.

Pete put her finger under his chin, drew his gaze up. Every touch sent waves of the Black echoing through him, their magics twining even now, as Jack struggled to keep himself from simply grabbing her and doing what every fiber in his body demanded.

“Jack, what are we doing?” she whispered. Her voice was rough and her breaths were heavy, in time with Jack’s own throbbing heart. Pete was spinning out as badly as he was, and for some reason the knowledge filled Jack with a giddy joy. He might as well have chased a handful of downers with a shot of espresso.

“I don’t know anymore,” he whispered back, pressing his forehead against hers, their lips close enough to share any secret.

Except one.

Pete swallowed hard, the enticing alabaster length of her throat flexing. “Fuck it,” she said roughly. “I don’t care.”

Jack stroked down her neck, over her clavicle, feeling the rise and fall of bone and skin beneath his fingers. His sight made everything silver tinged as the power gathered around him and made him fly, made him float, the only high he’d felt that was better than the needle could ever be.

Still, the small bit of him that whispered when he couldn’t sleep, when he saw things a man tried to bury with fags and booze and easy companionship, made him speak. “I do. I don’t want to be your mistake, Pete.”

“Too late for that,” she murmured. “I told you you’re in my blood, Jack.” She shut her eyes, and Jack saw silvery tears shimmer at the corners. “You’re in my blood like poison.”

Jack took her face in his hands, stroked the tears away with his thumbs. “Petunia, no. Don’t cry, luv.”

Pete opened her eyes, and her hands crawled around his neck, her body insistent against the bulge in his trousers, hip bone on hip bone. “You’re in my blood like poison,” she repeated, her voice scraped. “And I’d die because of you.”

Jack saw it in her eyes, that reckless feral desperation he recognized. He’d seen it on his own face, in cracked bathroom mirrors and shards of glass for cutting lines, too many times.

He grabbed Pete by her hair, pulled her mouth down to his, answered that he felt the same as she.

Pete moaned, and Jack slid his other hand down to her arse, lifting them both from the bed, swaying with her added weight and going down hard on his knees on the threadbare Persian carpet in front of the fire.

He let go of Pete, barely gave her time to catch her breath before he pushed her to the floor, nudging her knees open with his own, capturing the sweet expanse of skin just above her collarbone in his mouth.

“Jack,” Pete whimpered. “Jack, I need . . .”

“I know,” he said into her skin. “Me, too.” He moved, though he could have stayed in the spot forever, and fumbled with her undershirt, trapped as it was against the floor. Pete’s hands found his belt buckle, tugged it loose with far more skill. The pyramid studs made a dull thunk as they hit the floor and Jack muttered, “Fuck it.” He grabbed the neckline of Pete’s top and yanked. The lacy fabric gave way and Jack tossed it aside, pausing to appreciate the sight of Pete’s small but impressive tits encased only in a black lace bra. The blush of her nipples was visible in the fire-light, and Jack grinned.