5

The perfect superhero…attracted to things you fear…it needs to be personal…

Tonya Dane’s final prediction, always his first waking thought, jolted JJ awake again.

He cursed as he rubbed a hand over his moist face, down his neck, and over his bare chest. That prediction, along with his mind’s betraying dreams—the touch of Sola’s flesh on his, the taste of her tongue in his mouth, the scent of her lingering on his skin, the sound of her soft moans in his ears—was why he’d become an insomniac in the past three months. And he supposed that was why he’d accidentally dozed off here, in the lush comfort of the Valhalla Hotel’s Turkish-style hammam. It was a warm and misty wet sauna with walls and floors of swirling mosaic tiles in relaxing blues, and the perfect place for JJ to study the city’s partiers…though that was hard to do, he thought wryly, if his eyes were shut.

Pushing himself to an upright position, he took a long drag from the ice water at his side, and looked around. The hammam boasted a heated gold slab in the great room’s center, occupied on this day by three blonds in minute bikinis—including one woman who looked marginally familiar. From his corner, which was both bench and booth, JJ watched as a cluster of suitors, eager to impress, flexed and bulged around them. Determining that none of the mortals were either risky or at risk, he breathed in the scents of eucalyptus and soft mint, and squinted up at the recessed lighting. It was so obscured in the wet haze that it almost resembled the night sky.

The blonds soon left, resulting in the exodus of most of the room’s occupants, but not before the middle girl, the one who looked familiar, shot him a smile sweeter than he’d expect attached to that body. He realized belatedly that it was the socialite he’d seen burning up the airwaves months ago. He recalled hearing she’d been keeping a low profile since, but imagined that could be true only if she refrained from stepping outside altogether. When the hammam doors swung shut behind her, the swirling wet haze closed ranks.

JJ shut his eyes.

“If you think this is relaxing, you should try the thermal detox.”

He’d imagined her voice so many times—screaming, begging, pleading for mercy—that for a moment it felt like a daydream sparked by the misty environs. But when he opened his eyes she was there, reclined sideways on the smooth, thick center slab, steam-slick from head to thigh, white bikini glaring against her tanned, smooth curves. Her dark hair swung down to reveal her slim shoulders. Only her eyes were indistinguishable, dark in their sockets, like they were missing altogether.

“It would be so much easier on me,” he said, before he knew it, “if you’d give me something to beat against.” He was a warrior and needed a fight. All this passive aggression was somehow exhausting.

“I know,” she whispered, letting her hand trail down her thigh.

“Are you going to ambush me again?”

“Rather hard when I don’t know where you’ll be,” she said, voice wry. “You’ve done a good job of covering your tracks, Jay. I’ve been waiting at this spa for weeks.”

Because he’d changed up every habit he had. He’d stopped drinking, moved house, and even sold his Mustang. Took a fiscal beating on it because of the dents in the hood, too. “You must be getting wrinkly.”

One corner of her mouth twitched. “It’s the hot new place in Vegas. I knew you’d have to come here eventually.”

So as to protect mortals from each other, and themselves. Keep the balance so all had a fair choice between virtue and vice.

Scent out the Shadow to exact his revenge.

But he hadn’t done such a good job of that, had he? He must have some sort of sensory blind spot where she was concerned, just like the emotional one that had allowed her to aim a tomahawk at his skull, while he never saw it coming. And now that she was in front of him, all he was doing was staring.

“You tried to kill me. After we made love, too. After we said whatever we learned while together was off-limits.”

“I was merely following the constellations.” She shrugged. “Orion.”

“And, let me guess, you hit the dark matter?”

She shook her head. “The apex. I was on a downswing.”

This time he didn’t think her explanation cute. He stood, crossing the room in full strides to loom over her. “So your decision to take my life was random?”

“Life is random, JJ!” Solange was suddenly on her feet, too, standing in the middle of the slab like a pissed-off sacrifice. “The stars and skies are the only things that make sense, don’t you see? They’re impermeable. They’re forever. The light gets all the attention, but the dark matter is the glue of our Universe.”

“Would you quit with all the ‘dark matter’ shit? They’re just words someone used to describe something unknown. That’s all. Fuck.”

Her eyes followed the way he rubbed his hands over his head, and he stopped. She huffed. “People like to label things they don’t understand.”

“Like Light and Shadow?”

“Like love.”

His turn to huff. “You’re going to talk to me of love?”

She lifted her chin. “Don’t look so outraged. You enjoyed our time together. Remember, I’ve seen the way you look at me when you’re buried deep. You like it.”

“I don’t like you.”

“But you love me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“And there’s your ‘tell.’ You’re actually quite incapable of a lie, JJ.”

“Moral pinnings aren’t weaknesses.”

“Sure they are. They make you predictable.”

He thought about that, took a step forward. “You love me, too.”

Her turn to fall silent now, but she didn’t move back.

“It means you can change…if you choose to.” And the thought fueled the first flush of excitement he’d felt in months. How sick was that?

“No,” she ultimately whispered. Her dark eyes were buried into his as she looked up. “I no more want to be you than you want to be me. You forgot that, even though I warned you.”

“So what now? You’re warning me again?”

Solange wrapped her arms around his neck. JJ let her.

Why the hell did he let her?

“What do you want?” he finally said, voice muffled against her neck.

“I already told you that.”

He thought back, brows furrowing, then shook his head. There was too much emotion marring his thoughts when it came to her. Like static over a phone line, it kept the real message from getting through.

“The first night,” she prompted. “In the desert storm. On the hood of your car.”

He’d asked her what she wanted then. Relevance. “I can’t give that to you.”

Her fingers trailed along his back, blindly found his tattoo. “Do you know the meaning of the word quintessence?”

“It means typical.”

She pulled back, offended. He pulled her tight again, and held her there. For a moment it felt like she’d struggle, but then she relaxed, her hipbones playing just beneath his. And then she pulled him down so they were seated across from each other, legs intertwined on the warmed marble. “It means pure. A highly concentrated and most perfect embodiment of a substance. You know what the basic elements are, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Air, fire, earth, and water.” As an Aries, JJ was a fire sign. Solange was Pisces, a water sign. Maybe that was their problem.

And she’s a Shadow agent.

“So think about it. Quint-essence. The fifth essence, or element. The Pythagoreans called it ether. They claimed it flew upward at creation to comprise the stars.”

JJ furrowed his brows. Another piece in the puzzle that was her obsession with the constellations…but it still made no sense to him.

She smiled softly. “You, JJ, are the perfect embodiment of Light. I smelled it all those years ago, a mixture both warm and sweet.”

Oh, now he saw. “And you are quintessential Shadow, right? Never swayed, unchanging?”