Demon Bound

didn’t care for my opinion about one, then why get pissy over the other?”
    “I believe anyone would find it offensive to be told that their value as a woman—as a person—resides in how attractive someone finds them. And I can’t imagine that you cared for my opinion of you , but tell me: Did my response about learning to be a real man sting?”
    He grimaced. “Point taken.”
    She was not done. “And I also find it offensive that I have only become a real woman to you because you now find me sexually appealing.”
    “Hey, just flippin’ hold on a minute.” He stopped walking, a frown darkening his face. “You’re all backwards there. I started thinking about banging you after I noticed you weren’t just a creepy, mechanical, spider-loving freak—Ah, fuck.”
    “I see.” She concealed her smile as she passed him and collected the five dollars he held out. After several minutes, during which his psychic scent ran from the heat of self-directed fury to the bitterness of remorse, she said, “They are like blackberries.”
    She heard the breath he sucked in, the hitch in his stride. “Jesus. You’re not just creepy. You’re evil, too.”
    Her sound of agreement was met with a deep chuckle, and he caught up to her, resumed his backward-walking vigil.
    She glanced at him sidelong. “Perhaps we ought to return to our safe zones. What manner of temple was I sketching?” At his puzzled expression, she added, “When you ravished me.”
    He groaned and linked his hands behind his neck, his elbows angled up toward the sky. She took a moment to blatantly admire the way his shirt stretched over his chest, how the raised hem revealed the tanned skin above his waistband, and the line of short dark hair that trailed down from his navel.
    And she reveled in how the simple touch of her gaze stirred him to obvious arousal—and that he didn’t attempt to hide it.
    “You’re killing me, Alice.”
    She cackled, and he burst into laughter.
    Finally, he shook his head, gave her a narrowed look. “Okay, the temple. Jesus. In ’74 or ’75, I found a journal in the library. It had notes and sketches by one of the archaeologists at el-Amarna in the 1880s. I kept it for about a year, reading through it. So I based it on those.”
    “So that was where it had gone. I could strangle you,” Alice said. “I had heart palpitations when it went missing from the Archives.”
    Jake made binoculars of his hands and peered at her through them. “Observe the Black Widow in her natural habitat—fierce, territorial.”
    The amusement in her psychic scent undercut her withering stare. “It was my father’s,” she told him. “Hugh found it and brought it to Caelum.”
    “No shit? Huh. And the sketches—were they yours?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hot damn.” He grinned as if she’d announced some significant accomplishment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but being a girl—being a girl back then—how’d you manage that?”
    “I had more freedoms than most of the girls I knew.” When she’d been with the British and American families, her Egyptian side had been blamed for her unconventional and graceless behavior. Egyptians had attributed it to her American upbringing. And her parents had simply spoiled her. “My mother was my father’s second wife. Not at the same time,” she hastened to clarify. “He was a widower before they married, and I was born late—my early years were spent on different sites. When I was thirteen, I convinced him that I had better eyes and a steadier hand than he did, and that I’d be invaluable as his assistant. Granted, he and my mother tried to prevent me at first, but . . . Well, it may come as a surprise to you, but I was rather obstinate when I was young. Quite insufferable, actually, until they allowed me to help.”
    “Nope,” Jake said. “I’m not surprised at all.”
    She resisted the urge to poke her tongue out at him.
    “What about your husband? Did you meet him in Egypt?”
    Her gaze left his to skim the horizon. What should she say now? Should she admit that she’d seen Henry and had immediately loved him? That she’d dressed in sweet English gowns and curled her hair? That Henry never saw her dusty and perspiring, because he was like a golden prince from one of Scheherazade’s tales, and she could never let him see her be anything less than well behaved and smiling?
    Oh, how she’d wanted to be that for him. Wanted to be the ideal wife, and his intellectual