Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(73)

It took me a moment to remember.

I held up a finger. “Bran thinks that we, that you, need to kill Fiona at first opportunity.”

“Fiona?” he said blankly, as if he’d forgotten who she was.

“Fiona,” I said. “Apparently she went rogue a while ago. Started selling her skills to whoever paid her. Bran thought that she died in a deal gone bad while she was working with some witches. You should maybe call Bran and talk to him about her.” He wasn’t taking my calls. “Bran has decided what we need to do with our invading wolves. Harolford is on the kill list, but less urgently so. Kent Schwabe is a question mark, but he’d like us to save Chen and the Palsics.”

“I’ll talk to him,” he told me.

He was still naked. It was distracting me—though I didn’t think he knew that yet.

I held up a second finger. “He told me that we should talk to Underhill about the smoke weaver.”

Adam’s eyebrow raised. “And that is a revelation how?”

“He told me to ask her about the bargain Underhill has with him or that she had with him. He told me to bribe her with something sweet that I’ve cooked myself. And he told me to approach her like we have a common problem and not like she released someone who killed innocents and now holds two people I care about in his thrall.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s useful.”

I held up a third finger. “And he told me that if you kept shutting me out, I should blow up our mating bond.”

“Excuse me?”

“He hung up and won’t answer my calls,” I said. “I have no idea what he meant. Just what he said.”

“You did something to our bond, though,” he said slowly, and I felt a faint pull on the bond, a softening that, after a moment, stiffened back to where it had been.

“I didn’t blow it up,” I told him.

I decided not to tell him exactly what I had done.

I’d been influenced by the pack bonds and hadn’t enjoyed the experience. Let him think that it was just me yelling at him that had made him put down the gun.

He didn’t need to know that I’d sent those words through our mating bond in a pearl before I’d given them out loud. Maybe yelling alone would have worked. It would have if he’d been in a normal headspace—but if he’d been in a normal headspace, he wouldn’t have been trying to kill himself. I was hoping that the words I’d given him would linger. That they would keep him from doing anything rash until we had a chance to talk to someone.

He’d been under the influence of Elizaveta’s spell. I was pretty sure that it had been my pearl that let me break through the effect of her curse—my hopeful pearl against her words.

“Why couldn’t you have told me this at home?” he asked. “Our bedroom is private enough.”

I gave him a wry smile. “Because I thought you were looking really tired and our house was full of people. I also wanted to see if I could get you to tell me what was wrong.”

He grinned at me abruptly and said, “Well, you got that part done in true Mercy fashion.”

“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,” I intoned solemnly. I took in a deep breath and sighed loudly. “I suppose that I should quit enjoying the view and go get you some clothes from the SUV.”

I rose up on my toes and kissed him. “Don’t you give up on us, my love.”

“Okay,” he said. He kissed me back. “Nudge?”

Yes. Oh yes. There was so much emotion that my insides felt scoured with the tides. Sex . . . making love wouldn’t fix any of it. Wouldn’t break what Elizaveta had done to my husband. Wouldn’t change the reality that Adam hated himself so much that he thought he deserved to die. I did not lie to myself. I had spoken to his wolf. Elizaveta’s words would not have taken fruit if Adam hadn’t had the garden plowed and fertilized for it.

Sex wouldn’t fix that. But . . . sharing is a very powerful thing. And making love with Adam was generous and warm—powerful magic of its own kind. And ten minutes of not thinking sounded like heaven just now and I was pretty sure Adam felt the same way. It was not passion he was seeking with his “nudge”—it was surcease.

But . . . no way in hell was I going to let him see me naked while Elizaveta’s magic was still working on him. I knew my mate. Guilt—the failure of living up to his own expectations—was driving that curse. Adam had an overabundant sense of responsibility. My poor face had been the tipping point today, I was pretty sure. I wasn’t going to let him see that my entire right side was black where it hadn’t been scraped raw.

“Not tonight,” I told him. “We have wolves to kill and Underhill to talk to. Busy, busy.” And after misquoting The Princess Bride, I admitted the truth—a little of the truth. “As much as I’d like some nudging of my own, I think I need to give my body a break for a day or so.” I paused, and since it was true and I deserved a chance to whine a little, I said, “And my nose is throbbing.”

He hugged me gently and I didn’t so much as stiffen at the pain in my ribs—which I hadn’t actually noticed until I saw them in the mirror. I’d been too focused on a lot of things more painful than bruised ribs. Once all the drama had subsided, my body was more sore than it had felt before the whole Adam’s-got-a-gun scene had played out.