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My partner didn't waste any time finishing the job. He gave each dead bastard a powder shower and made sure they were "dead-dead" as he liked to call it.
Sometimes Aidan talked like a seven-year-old boy. Not that it bothered me. Actually, it made me giggle a few times when it came out of nowhere, especially in a very serious situation. It was one of the things I liked about Aidan. He never let it get to him, this life of dark deeds and crushed skulls. He carried the burden with a smile and shoulder shrug.
My friend always said it was his curse to bear, and he refused to burden another with it if given the choice. The dude was too nice for his own good. The polar opposite of me. But maybe that was why the two of us worked so well together. We balanced each other out. Well, that was what Aidan liked to say. I wasn't convinced it was in any way accurate, but I did believe it when he said it. Aidan could be very persuasive. It was his superpower.
Scanning the floor and then everything around us to make sure we didn't have witnesses—we hadn’t—Aidan stepped over the bodies and took my hand. "We can't stay here," he mused.
I threw my head back petulantly, sighing. "I told you a vacation away was a bad idea."
Aidan's mischievous smile cut off my complaint. "I never said our vacation was over. I've got an idea." I eyed the imp of a man before glancing the direction we were headed.
"I said no," I clipped.
Aidan laughed happily. "If they follow us there, we'll be better protected from outside witnesses than anywhere else."
"I refuse. I'll burn—and not in a good way."
"There's a good way to burn? News to me." Chuckling, Aidan continued the direction he was going, dragging the unwilling me along with him. "Live a little, Lady. Isn't that what we're here to do?"
"I'd rather wait out here for whatever assholes they send and just be done with it."
Aidan laughed heartily, eyes crinkled in delight, and I couldn't help but smile as well. "You would have the most fun that way, but whoever sent them is likely powerful and waiting until you're worn down before attacking. It'd be you walking right into their trap."
"You just want to have your perfect vacation," I whined, staring straight ahead at the misery awaiting me.
Aidan squeezed my hand, beside himself with amusement. "You're not wrong."
"I rarely am."
5
Lady’s Choice
I LOOKED OUT AT THE open water, stuck in a small space where the queasiness in my stomach wouldn’t let up.
For a powerful half demon, it was laughable my tummy got all willy-nilly out at sea. But Aidan wasn’t wrong; no one would see us out here if the welcome wagon crew of idiots were tempted to follow us. Or rather, follow our little luxury yacht Aidan demanded we get. At least it wasn’t some piece of shit boat I’d have to battle just as much as the demons playing pirate to get to me.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
Glaring, I offered the much-too-happy South African an over the shoulder look. “I hate you.”
“I don’t get what your issue is with water,” he started conversationally, prodding at old wounds.
Even Aidan didn’t know everything about me.
I’d chosen never to tell him why my distaste for water lived vividly in my memories. Or about how my foster father, one drunken night, nearly drowned me in a pool because I refused to let him touch me.
It wasn’t the first time he’d tried, but it was the first time he punished me to the point where I genuinely thought I’d die from saying no. That gross mouth-breather was a culmination of every asshole who’d ever entered my life, and what he did still plagued me to this very day.
Disgusting bastard.
The feeling of suffocation wasn’t one I wanted to relive. And when I was out and about, at the mercy of an open body of water, all I could remember was the unbelievable sensation of my lungs trying and failing to take in air. What happened to me was what ultimately drove me to punish evil men, but it was also my curse to bear.
I rubbed a hand over my mouth. “You’re so damn annoying,” I complained, ready to move on from the topic. “It’s just not my thing.”
It was a bit ironic that every vision I had with the dream demon was soaked in rain. An omen, perhaps. The fucker was bad news, and water was evidence enough of that.
Aidan gently guided the steering wheel to the right, nodding at a bar nearby. “Why don’t you take your mind off it a little and make us a drink.”
