He dropped his gaze, looking down at his hands. Outwardly, his hands were still the same as they had been all his life, except without the twists of age that had curled them over the past decade. Long, strong fingers, firm knuckles, a slight dusting of golden hair on the backs. It was only underneath that there was something different, as if his own skin had become a disguise concealing the stone lion hiding inside him.
He was startled when Max's hand closed over his, squeezing gently. He looked up and met her sympathetic eyes.
"I'd do anything for my family too," she told him quietly. "Come on, let's get some rest." She brushed her thumb across the backs of his knuckles and then laid his hand down.
Gio rose from the chair. He frowned as Max, without bothering to undress, rolled up in a blanket on one of the beds. "Do you want me to—stay?"
Max yawned. "Someone's got to be with Javic. I don't entirely trust him."
"I know, I meant—"
"I know what you meant." She reached out a hand to clasp his again, lacing their fingers together briefly. "Maybe later. Right now I just want to sleep."
"You're a very desirable woman, Max," he told her, brushing away some of the hair from her forehead. Bending over, he kissed her gently and chastely beside her mouth, a brush of lips against the heat of her cheek. Then he straightened up quickly. If he didn't get out of her room soon, he was never going to be able to make himself leave.
"You're a very desirable man," she murmured. "I wish ..."
But then she shook her head and didn't finish.
"Good night, Max."
Max flicked a sleepy but amused glance at the sunlight shafting around the blinds. "Good night. Or day. Wake me up when you get up."
Gio nodded and let himself out of the room. After the dimness and relative cool in Max's room, light and heat hit him like a hammer blow. He wistfully looked back at the door to her room, then let himself into the room he was sharing with Javic. The magician was still deeply asleep.
"You are not the roommate I want," he told Javic's sleeping form.
Javic didn't even twitch.
But as he lay down on the other bed, stretching out fully clothed on top of the covers, Gio thought back to his conversation with Max.
I do know,she had said when they talked about mates.
She did know ... what? That she didn't have a mate? Or that she did?
MAX
Max was awakenedby a resounding thud on the other side of the motel's thin wall.
She sat up instantly, blearily reaching for a weapon before she even had time to remember where she had left one. Her brain caught up with her reflexes, and she held her breath and listened.
She seemed to recall having heard voices in her half-awake state, maybe someone crying out, but now there were no more sounds from next door, making her wonder if she had dreamed it. Late afternoon sunshine was streaming through the thin blinds, and she had the dazed, dry-mouthed feeling that comes from sleeping during the day.
She experienced a brief moment of a different sort of dislocation, when she felt as if Gio must be in the room, even to the point of looking over at the other bed to see if he was there. But no, she remembered him leaving, and the soft brush of his lips against her cheek.
You idiot,she thought, and she wasn't sure if she was scolding herself, or if her jaguar was scolding her.You really should have asked him to stay.
Still listening for any signs of trouble next door, she slipped silently out of her bed. A peek into the motel's parking lot showed nothing amiss. Their car was still the only one there.
Max stamped her feet into her boots, picked up a large hunting knife from among her supplies, and let herself carefully out of the room.
The afternoon heat felt like an oven. Yesterday they had been higher up in the hills; today they were down in the valley, where even spring couldn't temper summer's fires for long. Absolutely nothing was moving, not even animals. Max looked around anyway, then moved swiftly and silently to Gio's room. After listening at the door, she gave it a series of cautious taps and then stepped to one side.
She heard footsteps approach and pause. There was a silence in which no one spoke, although Max had the sense of someone right on the other side of the door.
Then Max felt a strange tingling sensation that lifted her hair off her neck, like static electricity, and there was the sound of a soft sigh and the door being unlocked from inside. It cracked open and she glimpsed a tousled, sleepy, and disgruntled-looking Javic in the crack, his blond hair rucked up on one side and his face pillow-printed. "You could have said something," he said. "How long were you going to stand out there?"
"I thought something was wrong. Did you just do magic on me?"
