“We had this conversation. You wouldn’t have carried it. You would have believed it was another of my infamous contracts. However, at some point I knew you would. I prepared for that eventuality.”

“I’m not an eventuality. Get off my neck if it won’t work.”

“I’m not touching you,” he said. “I touched the scar only briefly.”

Still, she felt the burn of his fingers against her skin, the faint electrical charge. She spun to face him. “Where, then?”

He arched a brow. “The second best location is at the base of your spine.”

“A tramp stamp?” she said incredulously.

“Its effectiveness increases bound to the base of the spine.”

“And I still don’t know what that effectiveness is. This could be just another one of your—”

“And that’s precisely why I never tried to get you to carry the phone,” he cut her off roughly. “For fuck’s sake, you vanished and I couldn’t find you. Do you really think I’m going to let that happen again? If you believe nothing else, concede it will work for that reason alone. I don’t lose things that are mine.”

She arched a brow and said coolly, “I’m not yours and never was.”

“Tramp stamp or get the fuck out,” he said coldly.

She stood motionless, realigning herself deep inside. This day was hands down the most brutal one she’d had since she returned. People had been clawing at her all day with their feelings and demands and expectations. She didn’t know how to live in this world anymore. Didn’t know how to pass through unscathed, unchanged. It was changing her. She could feel it.

“Fine,” she said flatly. Kicking a chair into place, she dropped into it with her back to him, legs splayed around it, stripped off her shirt and leaned forward, resting her arms on the back, stretching long and lean.

“We don’t have all night,” she said finally, breaking the long silence.

“Ah, fuck,” he said softly, and she knew he was looking at the scars.

23

“Pour some sugar on me…”

I go looking for Jo, and man, that’s one chick I just don’t get.

She told me this morning she “doesn’t wanna wanna fuck me.”

How can that shit even happen in the same sentence? One wanna negating the other wanna makes no fucking sense.

Some things are simple. Leave it to a woman to point a man down a straight path then twist it into a bloody maze before he even takes two steps.

You wanna fuck somebody.

There it is.

Nothing complicated about that at all.

And if you wanna fuck somebody, why would you waste any time thinking twice about it when you could be using that time to fuck them? Do women sit around all day dreaming up bipolar-crazy-ass conversations just to make us bugfuck crazy?

She says, all serious like, Lor, you’re a really sweet guy (who the bloody fuck is she talking about? I’m looking around the bed but it’s only me and her) but I don’t want to do this again (she announces, with her ass way up in the air, me driving into her dirty-dog-buried-to-the-hilt-and-she’s-howling style). It was wrong from the get-go (what was wrong was me doing a brunette with little tits but you don’t hear me complaining), and I don’t want to keep compounding the same mistake (I don’t point out that she seems to be enjoying the hell out of said mistake, if the sounds she’s making are anything to judge by, and before she started using her mouth to say such stupid shit it was her idea to use it sucking my dick, but that’s me, a paragon of restraint), so we need to stop this.

Then she drops the mother of all bombs on the parade of bombs she’s already dropped and it’s a wonder my dick doesn’t go limp from the shrapnel. Well, actually, that’s not a wonder.

Naked woman. Hard dick.

She says—and get this nut-job-crazy-bitch-ass-shit that came out of her mouth next, Lor, I might need you to help me. I might change my mind, and if I do, I need you to say no.

I stop what I’m doing, grab her by the hair, turn her head toward me and stare at her. “You’re saying if you come to me later today, saying ‘I want you to fuck me, Lor,’ I’m supposed to say no?” I’m having a hard time with the nuances of this.

She’s looking all hot and flushed and sweaty, with glazed eyes and kinda panting, and she nods and gasps, “Exactly.”

I shove her head back down and get back to business. Which, I might point out, she’s loving the hell out of.

Thinking the whole time, I don’t get brunettes. It’s why I avoid ’em. Never heard a blonde say such a fucked-up thing.

I’m supposed to help a woman that doesn’t wanna wanna fuck me but obviously does wanna fuck me and sucks dick with the tender aggression and dedicated zeal of a wet, velvet-lined vacuum be strong enough not to fuck me when I thoroughly enjoy fucking her?

Women.

Whose bright idea was it to make them?

No wonder we got booted from the goddamn Garden.

After a few days with Eve, Adam couldn’t think straight.

—

I find Jo in the corridor of the server’s quarters. Her eyes flare and she backs away when she sees me coming, thrusting her tray of dirty glasses out at me, like something so puny could keep me from getting what I want.

I don’t do the caveman routine. It doesn’t work with brunettes. It’s why I hate ’em. They take work.

“You said you got a problem with your memory,” I say.

She looks wary. “You mean my sidhe-seer gift?”

“Sure do, babe. You can’t organize it. Wading knee-deep in mental detritus.”

She gives me a look when I say “detritus” like all I could possibly know are four-letter words, and I think, Keep thinking that, babe. Lor’s just a dumb blond. I’m gonna blow her messy-ass mind and when I’m done maybe it’ll be clean enough in there she’ll be able to see when you wanna fuck you wanna fuck.

“Lessons start tonight. After your shift.”

“I’m not going to have sex—”

“Oh, yes you are. You’re gonna fuck me every time I give you a lesson. Ain’t no free lunches. And when I’m done you’re gonna be goddamn brilliant. And then, maybe, I’m not gonna want to fuck you anymore.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “How are you going to help me organize what’s in my head?”

“Loci. Latin for ‘places.’ Mnemonic device for managing memory. Simonides, Cicero, Quintilian all used it. I’m going to teach you to build a memory palace.”

“How come I’ve never heard of this before?” she says suspiciously.

“Probably can’t find it in your mess in there. The mess that thinks you don’t wanna fuck somebody you wanna fuck.”

“A nicer person would offer to teach me, not bully me into trading sexual favors.”

“Uh-huh. A nicer person would. And I’d hardly say it’s you trading me a favor. Seems damned mutually beneficial to me. You want what you want from me, you gotta give me what I want from you. And hopefully we’ll both get so sick of each other by the time it’s over, we’ll leave each other alone.”

She narrows her eyes and I can tell the idea appeals to her. Hell, it appeals to me. The sooner I get her out of my system the sooner my life gets simple again.

“How do you know anything about this kind of stuff?”

“Honey, when you’ve lived as long as I have, if you don’t have a filing system, you’re fucked. Besides,” I flash her a wolfish grin, “I needed a good way to track my chicks, skirts, and babes through the millennia. Every fuck. All in there. Every last detail.”

She gets a weird look, and I think, Aw, shit, Ryodan wasn’t as open with her as I thought he was, then it turns into a scoff and I breathe a little easier. “Millennia?” She laughs and says, “Yeah right.” She blushes. “I’m in your memory palace.”

And she’s the one I’d like most to take out with the trash at this point. “Every time you come. Smell. Taste. Sound. Deal or not?”

“I’ll try it once,” she says. “And if I think you have anything to teach me, we’ll continue.”