Oh, fuck. “No, I'm fine.”
He rolled his eyes. “It's the mission, isn't it? Maybe we should have taken you with us.”
I blinked. “You'd do that?”
“Well, you'd have to stay in the truck, but at least then you could see what we do here.”
“She is not coming with us on a mission,” Gage said as he came into the room with a platter of nachos.
Gideon came in behind him with a six-pack of hard cider. He handed me a bottle before he took one for himself and set the rest on the coffee table. Gage set the nachos down and glared at Garret.
“She'd be perfectly safe,” Garret said.
“What if a soul jumped into her while we were busy chasing it—too far away for her to be under our protection?”
“Then we'd extricate it,” Gideon said. “But souls don't get away from us.”
“Only Michael,” Garret murmured.
“It would really help if I could see you retrieve a soul,” I said.
Gage stared at me, then he sighed. “Fine. The next run.”
“Thank you,” I said, a tremendous relief surging through me. The mere fact that they were going to take me with them made me believe them. It's not as if they could fake taking a soul to the Underworld. “Uh, I'd like to see your hound forms too.”
“We don't need to leave the house for that,” Garret said, then shoved a nacho into his mouth.
I looked from him to the other two.
“Not now,” Gage said. “I'm wiped out.”
“He did the retrieval tonight,” Gideon said. “Garret and I just herded.”
“Ah.”
“But I could shift,” Garret offered. “You only need to see one of us. We look similar.”
“Okay,” I whispered. My hands started to tremble, so I put the bottle of cider down.
“You don't have to be scared,” Garret said as he got up. “I'm still me in hound form. I won't attack you or anything like that.”
Gage took his place on the couch with a smirk at Garret.
“I'm not,” I said. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I've got to get naked.”
“Oh. Uh.” I cleared my throat and looked away.
Garret laughed. “I'm not shy. But if you prefer it, I can change in the other room.”
“No, it's fine. Go ahead.”
God help me, but I stared back at Garret in a sort of challenging way. He accepted that challenge. And he took his time. First, he kicked off his boots. Next, he yanked his T-shirt over his head. Then his hands went to his jeans.
“Oh, for fuck's sake, are you a stripper now?” Gage drawled. “Just get to it.”
“Don't ruin this for me,” Garret said. “It's the first time I'm going to be naked in front of her.”
