Into the Wild Dark

CHAPTER 26 - SUNNY

I placed my overnight bag on a dusky mauve armchair, taking out my ledger to update my monthly report. My hand grazed the Angelguard rulebook and the thin tome of bylaws. I didn't need them to tell me I was in too deep anymore. It was plain. I put the books on top of an upright piano by the door.

I cared about Jack and Mal, and I wondered how much that was impacting my belief we could win. Conversely, I wondered if we had a choice. Whether fated to win or lose, we had been drafted for the task, which convinced me there wasn't a chance on earth that I'd get out of it. I half-expected my scheduled meeting with Wallace to end in him telling me that Headquarters couldn't reassign me.

With hooded eyes, heavy with tiredness, I peered across the room at Mal. She was peeling out of her black linen daydress. She emerged in a gauzy slip. Her golden skin looked a paler shade of tawny under the Thomas Edison bulbs of the light fixtures. Smooth and unblemished, she was a picture of perfection. High-heels toppled at her dainty feet as her voluminous hair spilled over her shoulder while she unfastened them from her ankles. I noticed Jack watching her, too.

"I'm gonna try to give Kato a call before we get too wrapped up in each other tonight," he said with a grin. I smirked at his innuendo but glanced at my cellphone at the reminder a world existed outside of the three of us. Frowning, I noticed a text from Wallace. He had moved our appointment up. He wanted to meet with me tonight. I reluctantly sent him a message letting him know where to find me. He never replied back.

I mosied to the bedroom where the chabby chic motif combined with an avant garde palette to create something that looked like a child had colored an illustration of an old-fashioned farmhouse. Humans were quirky. I chuckled as I tested the mattress.

"Trying to figure out how much noise the three of us will make tonight?" Mal teased from behind me.

I pivoted with a sheepish laugh. "If only," I admitted.

"Don't worry. I picked a location where the neighbors can't hear us, and if they do, hell, they might even cheer us on. But here's what I want to know: Have you thought about what we'll do after we succeed?"

I mulled it over. Barring abject failure, Jack would remain under my protection for the remainder of his life, which due to his lycanthropy could be a considerable amount of time. As a djinn, Mal would also live much longer than most. However, I would become a higher-rank being upon promotion to Guardian, nearly immortal. The sobering prospect of losing them someday made me swallow thickly and study the floor.

"Why bother with tomorrow?" I asked. When I looked up, she was inches away. Still in her underslip, her lithe body looked silky and inviting like the bed. My mouth went dry at the fantasies that sprang to mind.

Mal gingerly framed my face with her hands. Her gaze followed mine trying to skate away. She waited for eye contact, and she licked her lips and asked what I wanted to avoid. "How can we be in love with each other like this?" Her voice came out timid.

"I don't know." I kissed her, wanting to blunt her uncertainty.

"Eventually he's going to find out," she whispered.

"And when he does, it won't matter anymore because we won't be the same people we were. Mal, this might've begun as a competition, but it ceased being that a long time ago. I don't want to best you. I want to protect you. Why do you think I wracked my brain until I figured out a solution that would free both you and Jack?"

I sat on the bed and tucked her into my lap, ignoring the frisson of desire that flared at the brevity of the space separating skin from skin. Her sheer slip and my twill slacks were the only things keeping us apart.