“I didn’t smell them.”

“Then how did you know?”

He glanced at her. “One of those boys just got his number called.”

It took a heartbeat’s length of time before she understood. “You?”

“Yeah. Me.” He urged her to the register. “Our stay in Upland just got a lot more complicated.”

Reed’s fingers were sliding between Sara’s thighs when he felt the first wave of Eve’s terror. Like ripples on water, the distance between them made the feeling faint, but it was unmistakable nevertheless.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he rested his forehead against the window where he’d pinned Sara. There were other sensations to process beyond Eve and the woman in his arms—there were the other twenty Marks under his watch, orders from the seraphim, and the occasional check-in from Raguel’s switchboard.

“Tease,” Sara whispered, her lips to his ear.

Distracted, he moved by instinct, parting her and stroking through her slickness. She moaned. He knew just how to touch her, how to pleasure her, how to give her exactly what she wanted.

Her teeth nipped his ear and he reacted accordingly. The hand he had pressed against the window for leverage moved to her throat. Reed fought the urge to hurry the business along. He had to keep her busy long enough to make their agreement worth Sara’s while. Otherwise, she could withdraw her Marks from his command before they had a chance to be put into play.

Sara’s manicured fingertips dug into his waist and her lungs labored, pushing against his chest in an elevated rhythm. Sex was one of the few times when a celestially enhanced body responded without restraint. Orgasm-induced endorphins were the drug of choice for many, including Reed.

As Eve’s distress peaked, goose bumps swept across Reed’s skin. Sweat dotted his upper lip and pooled in the small of his back. The urge to go to her was so strong he quivered with it. He told himself it was because she was untrained and therefore dangerously vulnerable. It was an occupational reaction, nothing more.

“I love it when you shake for me,” Sara purred, her nails raking the length of his back.

Reed kept his eyes closed, imagining that the silky tissues that clutched at his thrusting fingers belonged to another woman.

I-I don’t normally . . . do things like . . . this.

Eve’s trembling voice whispered through his mind. She didn’t know it—and he wasn’t certain he would ever tell her—but their coupling in the stairwell had been raw in more than just the fierceness of the sex. He had compelled her away from the crowd, but once they were alone he’d done nothing to keep her there. He hadn’t been able to, because he was too focused on her—the smell of her, the feel of her, the depth of her hunger. It had been as intimate an encounter as he’d ever experienced.

Sara liked rough sex, period. The person administering the roughness was moot. It was the thrill and the acts that she relished, not her partner. Eve, on the other hand, had been completely taken aback by her enjoyment of his handling. It had been him she responded to. No other man could have reached her the same way.

“Hurry,” Sara hissed, her sex sucking voraciously at his pumping fingers. She released his waist and pushed impatiently at her wide-legged slacks. They fell to the floor in an expensive pool around her Manolos.

He stepped back long enough to shed his own pants. He briefly noted her black garter belt and silk stockings, then he gave a hard tug to her thong and dropped the ruined undergarment to the floor. She couldn’t shrug out of her jacket fast enough. Before she could loosen her tie, he’d shoved her back into the window, pinning her to the cool glass.

Her smile lit up the room.

There was a brief moment when Reed thought about bending her over the desk and fucking her from behind. But this way had memories he was relying on to perform over the next several hours.

With his hands behind her thighs, he lifted her. Then he paused, his gaze locked with hers. “You know what to do.”

Sara reached between them and positioned him at her entrance. He stepped forward and dropped her simultaneously, impaling her in one hard thrust. Her cry pierced the air and charged his nerve endings. With his erection clasped in slick, liquid heat, his body took over from his brain. Finally.

Using his arms and thighs, Reed moved her up and down over him, stroking deep and fast. The erotic slapping of their bodies filled the room and spurred his lust. He focused on the feel of her clenching and releasing around his aching cock, the sensation hardening him further, making him throb with the sudden rush of blood to the swollen head of his dick.

She moaned as he filled her, stretched her, the grip of her body becoming fistlike in its intensity. Physically, it was damn good. He worked her up and down his cock with greater fervency, charging forward in his drive to culmination. His balls drew up, his spine tightened, his lungs heaved with his exertions. Sara’s orgasm rippled along his length, bathing him in the creamy, fiery wash of release. Her moans only added to his pleasure. For all her angelic beauty, Sara sounded like a porn star during sex. It roused the animal in him, turning him on to a near fevered pitch.

Which was still nowhere near as hot as he’d been in the stairwell.

Emotionally, he and Sara were on different continents. Sara’s eyes were closed, her head thrown back, her thoughts her own. Reed’s mind was with Eve, his sexual energy focused on her, his soul directed toward soothing the fear he felt in her.

His rhythm faltered when he sensed her reaching back, a chaste touch, like a handhold in the darkness. Her spirit brushed across his as ephemerally as smoke, yet it rocked him to the core. With a roar, he climaxed. Sara shivered into another orgasm with a high-pitched squeal.

Eve brought him to his knees before the glass, with Sara scratching at his back and hours of servicing her left ahead of him. In the aftermath, he gasped for breath and longed for a shower. Left unguarded by the force of his release, he wasn’t prepared for the sudden piercing agony that broke his connection to Evangeline.

One of his Marks was dying.

Reed groaned in agony and pushed Sara away. His back arched, thrusting his chest forward and his arms out. Pain and sorrow radiated from him with white-hot heat. His skin glowed with the effort to contain the herald of his charge—an instinctive cry for help from Mark to handler that was occasionally so powerful it was sometimes sensed by mortals. A sixth sense, some called it. The feeling of something being “wrong” or “off,” but they didn’t know what.

“Takeo,” he gasped, calling out the name of his charge. Takeo had waited too long to call for help; Reed could feel the power of the mark draining from him. It was an aching feeling of loss that was amplified through Reed and sent outward to the firm. The death of a Mark was news that was carried through the soul and not through secular lines of communication. As the force of the herald left him, Reed collapsed forward, gulping in air.

“I have to go,” he panted.

“You cannot save your Mark.” Sara’s lovely face was flushed, her lips red and swollen even though he hadn’t kissed her. “And if you leave before we are done, you will not save her either.”

“Her?” Reed reached for his slacks.

“Evangeline.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You think a woman does not know when the man she is fucking is thinking about someone else?”

“Sara . . .” he warned, his fists clenching.

“It is too late to save Takeo and you know it. You just want to alleviate your guilt by consoling him in his final moments.” She stabbed a perfectly painted red nail into his pectoral. “I want you to live with that guilt. I want you to remember how you failed your Mark because you were whoring for your brother’s lover.”

He slapped her, open-handed across the face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She laughed and rubbed at the red mark left by his palm. Then she spread her legs, revealing the glistening pink folds of her sex. “Get to work, before I decide you are not worth the inconvenience you have caused me.”

“How did you get called?” Eve asked, as Alec led her quickly across the parking lot back to the motel.

“The mark tingles,” he said, “then burns. Toss me the car keys.”

She did as he asked. “Like when you lie?”

He shot her an arch glance. “I don’t lie.”

“I did. And the mark burned.”

Alec gave a wry laugh.

“It also burned when I entered Mrs. Basso’s condo,” she said. “It gave me the energy to break through the locks.”

The line of his mouth thinned. “I know. The burning of your mark is just like getting an FTA—a failure to appear notice for a bail bond skip.”

He unlocked her car door, then rounded the vehicle to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“You didn’t mention the door-breaking thing to Gadara,” Eve said, just realizing that omission.

She accepted the bag of merchandise he set in her lap, moving it to the floorboards between her feet. Straightening, Eve was arrested by a sudden rush of warmth moving through her chilled veins. The sensation felt almost as if a warm blanket had been tossed around her shoulders. A blanket that smelled distinctly like Reed.

“I wanted to see if Abel would say anything.” Alec turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the parking spot. “He’s the one who triggered your mark. That’s his job as your handler.”

Eve watched him maneuver into traffic, still processing the rapid disbursement of her fear. One moment she was scared out of her mind, the next she felt cocooned and protected.

As if he was guided by radar, Alec quickly found the two boys strolling down a side street and fell into a safe surveillance distance behind them.

“What does that mean?” she queried. “Did he know about Mrs. Basso?”

“Handlers aren’t necessarily aware of the particulars of the crime. They usually only know what class of demon the target is and which Mark in their stable is both local and qualified.”