“God, this place is a minefield,” Cooper muttered to his shoes. “I feel like I’m going to step wrong and blow something up.”
Keith snorted. “Don’t worry. You’re an outsider. They expect you to be a barbarian.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Simon said.
15
The first thing Irisdid when she got home was take a shower. She hadn’t even spent a full minute inside the Council reception chamber, so there was no way the stink of death and blood had really permeated her hair and clothes ... but she stillfeltlike that. She wanted to drown that feeling in hot water and scrub it away with lavender-scented soap.
When she got out, she found Keith pacing up and down the length of the living room. She could practically see the tension radiating off his body.
It was her fault that he was on the outside of the case looking in. No one would ever worry about his motivations for clearing her if they weren’t mates.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Keith jerked out of his reverie. “For what? Also, hi. You look delicious in a towel.”
She was already flushed and warm from the shower, but his words—and slow smile as he looked her up and down—sent a new wave of heat moving over her. She was half-tempted to drop the towel and start something that would distract them both.
But what she needed to say had to be said.
“If I had a tamer past, no one would think twice about you being involved in the investigation. They wouldn’t worry that you’d have to be impartial enough to arrest me. If I were Seraphina—”
He took a few steps closer to her and silenced her with a kiss. She was delighted to find that he must have helped himself to some of the leftover strawberries while she’d been in the shower, because his mouth tasted lush and sweet.
Keith pulled back just enough to say against Iris’s lips:
“I’m glad you’re not Seraphina. I don’t want you to be anybody but you. And I’m glad you got to spend all those yearsbeingyou, even if it pissed people off.”
She leaned forward, resting her head against his collarbone.
“But you want to be on the case.”
“I want to not be surrounded by people who think that going through a drive-thru and ordering an ice cream cone makes you a potential murderer. They’re the reason I’m not on the case, not you. I just don’t want people to think about you like that.”
There was real frustration in his voice, and it was oddly endearing. He couldn’t change how the people here saw her, and he couldn’t go around threatening to duel everyone who had a low opinion of her. But it was sweet that he wanted to, and she told him so.
