Terrelle managed to catch the bus just as it was about to pull away from the curb. She plopped down in the seat next to Gabriel, breathing heavily. Her hair was mussed, her shirt with several interesting stains on it, and her right eyebrow singed.

“Do I want to know?” Nyalla asked the demon.

“No. No, you do not. Let’s just say that professional kitchen equipment has changed significantly since I was last in the employees-only area of a restaurant.”

Nyalla nodded. “Was it worth it?”

The demon grinned. “Ask me how to make a flambé. Go ahead, ask.”

“I’d rather you demonstrate once we’re back home.” Nyalla smiled. “I love flambé.”

Terrelle leaned back in her seat and patted Gabriel on the arm. “Flambé for everyone, even you, sexy, G-man. That’s assuming you’re coming back with us. Are you and Nyalla an item? I saw you rush to her defense back there, so I suppose you’re going to be banging her tonight.”

Gabriel looked appalled. “I’m not banging anyone, whatever that means. And I won’t be coming back with you. I’ve got pressing matters to attend to.”

But the demon’s words made Nyalla wonder once more what to do with Gabe if his angel-ness hadn’t returned by the time they were to leave Aruba. She couldn’t leave him here with no ID and no money, trapped on the island. She’d need to get him a plane ticket. And to do that, she’d need to contact her brother, Wyatt, to provide a passport to get the angel back into the States. As an angel, Gabe was incredibly powerful, but he had no idea how to negotiate life in the human world. And Nyalla could sympathize. When she’d first been brought here after eighteen years as a slave in Hel, she’d been terrified. She couldn’t speak any languages beyond Elven and a bit of Demon. She didn’t know how to drive a car, use computers or phones, operate the toaster. All the food tasted strange. All the beverages, beyond water, juice, and wine, were unfamiliar. There were laws against public nudity that made absolutely no sense to her.

She didn’t want Gabe to have to go through that. Yes, he knew the language and she’d been teaching him how to be a human just as quickly as she could, but she was still willing to bet he’d have no clue how to operate a toaster. Food was a new experience for him.

The bus pulled up outside the hotel and the four of them climbed down the stairs, Snip nearly falling on his face at the curb. Nyalla paused inside the open-air lobby, admiring the soft lighting along the garden path that led to the beach and the sound of the waterfall fountain just out of sight. The evening felt anticlimactic. She’d not gotten the artifact. The Gormand had stolen half of her tuna steak. She was wide awake and not sure what to do with the rest of her evening. Head to the pool-side bar? Read a book up on her room balcony?

“Welp, I’m headed to bed.” Snip announced. “Gonna end the day on a good note and not risk getting rejected at the casino. Bed. There I can choke my chicken and think about that sexy waitress.”

“That waitress was ninety if she was a day,” Terrelle said. “I don’t think even other ninety-year-olds would call her sexy.”

“You’re just jealous because you haven’t gotten laid yet.”

“I could if I shelled out a fifty, so don’t act all smug. You probably had to pay that waitress, and she wasn’t close to being as sexy as Marco.” Terrelle’s expression turned thoughtful. “Nyalla. Loan me a fifty, would you?”

Nyalla sighed and reached into her purse only to see Gabe looking at her in horror. “What? She wants sex. Marco evidently needs money. What’s the problem?”

“I think she should wait until a prospective partner comes along who doesn’t want to be paid for services rendered. Isn’t sex supposed to be about intimacy, about establishing a bond, no matter how fleeting, between two people.”

“I’m trying to establish a bond,” Terrelle retorted. “The bond of his cock and my vajayjay. Unless you’re offering, G-man, this is the best deal I’ve had since my plane landed on the island.”

“Here.” Nyalla thrust the fifty at the demon. “G-man is most definitely not offering. Go have fun with Marco.”

The information demon snatched the money, skipping down the pathway as Snip, Gabe, and Nyalla headed toward the elevators.

“Have you ever paid for sex?” Gabe scowled down at her.

“No, but I’m not going to fault Terrelle for doing so.”

“Nyalla doesn’t need to pay for sex, because she’s a smoking-hot babe,” Snip chimed in. “She has them lined up, begging for it. Then she bangs them and tells them to hit the road. And they cry and mope and have to sleep in the stable, or they call her so much that she needs to change her phone number. Nil–”

“Stop. Snip, just…go to your room and dream of your waitress or something.” This was so embarrassing. Gabe must think her a loose woman with no morals whatsoever.

Sure enough, the angel was staring at her, his expression horrified. “How many men and women have you had sex with? Were they all these ‘bang-and-leave’ types of encounters?”

Nyalla felt her face heat up. “I don’t count them on a score card. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“There was the cop, that guy you met at the beach.” Snip ticked off on his fingers. “The dude from the band, that werewolf in Candy’s pack–”

“Snip! Go away.” Nyalla pointed down the hallway. “Now. Go.”

The Low grumbled, but did as she said.

“Four? Four?” Gabriel glared at her.

She squirmed, willing the elevator to hurry up. “Eight. It’s really not that many. And ‘bang and leave’ is a gross exaggeration. I dated every one of those guys, calling it quits after a few months when it was clear that things weren’t going to work out long-term.”

They got into the elevator, Gabriel punching the number three with such violence that Nyalla feared the button might break. “Eight. You’ve had sex with eight people.”

He made it sound as if she were a tramp. “Yes. And since we’re sharing here, how many sexual encounters have you had?”

“None.” His voice was smug. “There are very good reasons we’re forbidden from having physical relations with humans, and I’ve never stooped to manifesting physical form and having sexual intercourse with another angel.”

“I don’t mean that, I mean angel-sex. That joining thing you do. Sam told me about it, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the same thing as we humans do. How many angels have you joined with?”

Gabe punched the three twice more, glaring at the button. “That’s not something I’m going to share with you.”

“Oh really? I open up to you about my experience as a slave, I tell you how many people I’ve had sex with, but when it’s me asking the questions, it’s none of my business. That’s not a friendship, Gabe. That’s one-sided phoo-hockey. I’m not friends with people who do that.”

Something that looked an awful lot like fear skittered across his face. “That’s not fair, Nyalla. The sex humans have isn’t the same as our joining. Ours is a holy union. There’s something deep that happens when we join. It transcends the flesh, involving only the purity of our spirit-beings.”

“Phoo-hockey. Don’t give me this ‘purity of the spirit’ nonsense, Gabe, because I’m not having it. Just because you’re a being of spirit and I’m a being of flesh doesn’t mean your ways of establishing and affirming an emotional connection are superior to ours in any way.”

The doors of the elevator opened and Nyalla stomped out, Gabe keeping pace beside her. “And you’re going to tell me you had a deep, abiding, emotional connection with every one of those eight men? Every one?”

“No. Maybe at first.” She dug into her bag, trying to find the room key. “I’m seeking a permanent, deep abiding emotional connection. I just haven’t found it yet. Those relationships… I’d hoped they’d be something, but they weren’t. That’s how it is with humans. It sometimes takes a while to find the right person. It sometimes takes a lifetime.”

“So you plan on having sex with every guy you meet until you happen to come across the right one? Why don’t you decide if they’re the right one before having sex?”

Nyalla winced at his sharp tone. “Maybe not for everyone, but for me, sex is part of finding out if they’re the right one. And I’m done talking about this.” She yanked the key card from her purse, swiping it and storming into the room, not caring if he followed her or not. “Go to bed. I’m going to sit out on the porch and read.”

“Maybe I’ll read, too–”

“No,” she snapped. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want you in the same room as me right now. Go to bed and leave me alone.”

Nyalla threw her bag across the room and onto the couch, then went through the books on the table, trying to find one with more violence and less romance — hopefully one where the heroine stabbed the hero a few times. The whole time she was painfully conscious of Gabe hovering near, not going into the bedroom as she’d demanded, but obviously not daring to touch her or even straighten up the mess of books she was tossing to the side.

Finally, she just grabbed one, realizing too late that it was the emotionally damaged hockey player/plucky reporter romance that Gabe had been reading earlier today. It would have to do.

“Go to bed,” she stated once more. Then she spun around and went onto the balcony, closing the door with a click behind her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gabe standing right where she’d left him. He stood there until she had sat and opened her book, then slowly he turned around and walked into the bedroom.

The pages blurred before her, but Nyalla blinked them back and bit her lip to steady it. She was angry and sad all at the same time, her chest hurting in a way that it never had before. Even if she ended up not reading one word on one page, they both needed this space between them before they said things they regret.

It still didn’t keep her from wanting to go back inside, storm into the bedroom and kiss some sense into that stubborn angel.