Nate stared at the blank TV screen, trying not to shift in the chair as Jessie’s lips feathered hotly against his neck, her deeply distracting curves causing a nuclear reaction in his groin. He should really turn on the damn TV. Or get their meal out of the oven. Or return to the nightclub to review the grand opening preparations for the hundredth time since Archangel Michael seemed to imply the Earth-Hell Seam was going to crack at TERRA.

Anything other than think about what had happened when he’d had sex with Jessica. Because something did. Something singular, but he knew not what. It made him feel downright…

Gobsmacked.

He gritted his teeth when Jessie paused her descent, her plush lips millimeters from his nipple. “Hey, you okay?”

He managed to nod. He inhaled slowly and touched the hot pink strands in her hair that he bloody loved. “The pink suits you.”

“Well, I like your kitchen, your cooking, and…other things.” Her eyes crinkled in a way that made him unaccountably happy, yet wonder if he wasn’t gonna be screwed when the dust settled on all this.

He slumped back into the chair, pulled her higher into his lap, and hugged her tighter. Christ, he needed to relax. For whatever reason, this woman churned him up. But then, that probably wasn’t so uncommon when a Guardian experienced amplio for the first time, eh?

He exhaled deeply, his gut unraveling a little until her fingernails raked over the ridges of his abs. She shifted south once more, her breasts now heavy on his thighs as she eased to her knees between his legs. His erection pulsed, aching more so when the blanket around her shoulders slipped unheeded to the floor. His breath caught as she leaned forward.

She stared at his lower pelvis, her brow furrowed, fingers running across his scar. “Huh, I must have been more tipsy than I thought a bit ago. I could’ve sworn you had a scar right here—a fierce one. Didn’t we talk about that?”

His heart kicked his ribcage. He leaned forward to look down.

His breath arrested. What the bleeding hell?

His hands smoothed across the site of his gutting. The scar—a reminder of his sacrifice—had been there since he’d awoken as a post-human Guardian.

Yet now It. Was. Completely…

Gone.

Bollocks! He eased away from Jessie and stood from the chair as slowly as his racing pulse would allow. The skin on his lower belly shone as smooth as the rest of his chest and abs. Like the scar had never been. How? There had to be an explanation besides the obvious.

Soul mate.

No! She was human. Humans and Guardians didn’t bond. They just didn’t. He didn’t even want that. Why would he want that? He was selfish and manipulative and good at his job. He didn’t need anyone to complete his mission of redemption.

He hadn’t considered having a serious relationship.

Not ever.

“What’s going on, Nate?”

He swung toward the chair where he’d held her close moments ago. Jessie sat on the floor, wrapped in the blanket once more, glowing and tousled and utterly ethereal. Her outrageous allure suddenly made sense.

He wished now that he hadn’t mocked other Guardians when they’d talked about their compars. Wished he’d listened to how that touchy business was handled. Michael had to be behind this. Angelic justice or a test or something whacked like that.

What do I do with her?

He looked at his smooth belly again. Then yanked on the hair above his ears and groaned.

“Nate? You’re freaking me out.”

That makes two of us. “Uh, I…I need to go. To a meeting.” He inhaled roughly, dropping his hands to his sides. He needed to calm this shit down. But…

He was arse over elbow mental right now.

There was no way—no way—a human was a soul mate.

He’d never heard of anything so epically preposterous. What was the point? She’d die in a handful of decades while he’d live ages without her.

It had been a very long time since he’d felt the urge to flee. Need air. He took slow, deep breaths as he walked back to where she stood by the chair, her guarded expression making him feel like a barmy bastard. “I’ll return as soon as I am able. You have my word.”

The twinkle in her eyes had vanished. “What’s wrong?”

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled the moment before the house security system tripped, the relentless screech of the alarm piercing his eardrums. How had he not perceived anything wrong? Damned distracting emotions. His fingers dug into the blanket around Jessie’s arms as he layered compulsion in his voice to make her obey. “Audi me. Stay put. I mean it, Jessie.”

She sank down into the chair with a bemused look. Satisfied she’d remain out of harm’s way, he raced upstairs, closed the door to the lower level, and chanted a protection ward over it. Approaching the front door, Jessie’s amplio enabled him to smell who was outside. Two of them.

They were human, though. Not demons.

He relaxed and slowed his steps. When he opened the door, the cool fall air hit his bare chest. A tiny woman with a blonde, pixie haircut knelt amid the detritus of what looked like a volcanic purse eruption all over his portico.

Where was her companion? “Can I help y—elch!”

Black dots swam in his vision in a sudden blast of pain. Dislocated jaw. He sank to his knees, reaching out blindly to grasp the solid form that had ambushed him. Together he and his attacker went down hard on the flagstone. A loud clatter shattered the night. He shook his head and saw…

A tire iron?

Fury surged through him. He grappled with the tall, heavily tattooed man who obviously knew a thing or two about street fighting. When Nate sensed an opening, his fist connected solidly with the man’s nose, shredding the hoop from his nostril. The man yelled, but continued to scrap. If Nate hadn’t been a Guardian, he seriously wondered if he’d be able to take the guy.

He rolled on top of the man, bearing down with his forearm on the guy’s windpipe. “You’ve cocked up with the wrong chap, blighter.”

The man managed to spit in Nate’s face at the same moment pixie girl kicked Nate in the jaw where he’d been nailed with the tire iron. Nate’s head snapped back, but he managed to maintain pressure on the pinned, but still-swinging scoundrel. The scrapper was almost as savage as some of the nasty-assed Rephaim he’d tangled with a few weeks ago.

Pixie girl grabbed Nate’s hair and yanked. “Where do you have Jessie, you creeper!”

What? This was about—

“No! Get off him, Nate, you’re killing him!”

Jessie?

She was running out the front door toward him, her blanket flapping open and her fanny—

Mine.

He was suddenly weightless. Then—

Hot waves of nausea spiked through his gut as he was thrown to his back, his head cracking against the decorative boulder next to the driveway. Over the ringing in his ears he heard Jessie scream as the tattooed freak fell on him with more crushing blows.

“Dante, stop! Stop it!”

Nate used the man’s momentary distraction to spring to his feet and bull charge the nutter back against the portico pillar. He reached out with his Earth element to awaken the shrubbery next to them. Scalawag was gonna find out how sharp those rose thorns were if he didn’t calm his shit down in three, two—

Jessie put one hand on Nate, one on his tattooed adversary, and…

Her blanket dropped.

“Jessica, for fuck’s sake!” Nate reached down to swipe the blanket because like hell he’d let this thug see his woman in all her naked glor—

The man’s knee crunched into Nate’s nose and blood rained down onto the flagstone in dark pools.

“Dante, enough! Cheese and rice, stop this right now, both of you, stupid shits!” Jessie turned on pixie girl who was laying the blanket across Jessie’s shoulders. “Emily, what’s going on?”

Nate straightened, breathing through the pain that seemed to pulse over every inch of his skin. He grabbed Jessie’s hand and yanked her toward him. She went willingly into the crook of his shoulder. It soothed his rage, and seemed to make both of the strangers physically back down.

That confused Nate. He looked from Dante to Jessie. He had to know. “Are you lovers?”

Tattoo man barked a laugh, then wheezed and spit blood.

“Dante?” Jessie sputtered. “Are you kidding me? No! We’ve been friends since grade school.”

Nate felt like beating his chest. He smirked at tattoo man. Dante gave him a double bird.

“God save me from testosterone! Stop this ridiculous posturing!” Jessie turned to the little hooligan with the shortest, blondest hair Nate had ever seen on a woman. “Em, what are you guys doing here? Seriously. What the hell?”

Pixie girl’s icy glare would freeze the bark off a lesser man. Nate winked at her, then fought a grimace as his cheek and eye muscles burned. Pixie girl made a rude sound at him and looked at Jessie. “What the hell right back’atcha, Jess! You promised you’d text every sixty minutes!”

Jessie’s mad vanished instantly. “Oh, crap.”

“Really, Blaze? That’s all you got for us after this bowsie banjaxed my windpipe and ripped my bill? Fuck this. I’m out of here.” Tattoo guy’s voice resonated with a faint Irish lilt.

Now that Nate wasn’t locked in mortal combat with him, he noted the man’s ear gauges, goatee, and wild dark hair that was short on the sides, and long and ratted up top.

“Dante, wait.” Jessie lunged for the man, but Nate didn’t release her hand. She jerked around, her mouth opening with a likely threat, but he beat her to it.

“You’re welcome to talk to them. But I swear, Jessie, if that blanket drops in front of Dante one more time, I’m going savage on his ass.”

“They’re my friends. Do you even know what those are?”

He absorbed her glower like fuel for his fire. Hell’s bells, she made him crackers. He released her hand, though he almost chewed through his cheek in the lead-up to it.

As she ran down the driveway, that goddamned blanket exposed her rear bits with every bare footfall. His inner man-beast rose up with a vengeance.

“You would do well to remember the terms of our contract, Jessica.” His voice rang out in the night like a baby’s wail in a holy chapel at midnight mass. Jessie’s friends looked at him like he’d lost his bloomin’ mind. Jessie’s pursed lips and glaring eyes said she’d chop him into tiny pieces if she had access to a sharp implement.

Well, that was fine with him. Murderous intent he could handle.

It was these blasted murky feelings that made him green about the gills. The sooner he got this vanishing scar mystery solved, the sooner he could enjoy his week with Jessie, and then move on to the next decadent adventure life offered.