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“What are you looking at?” Darien’s deep, husky voice raked up her spine.

She lifted her eyes to his face to see him watching her with affection. “Your scar,” she said, the words cracking from early-morning fatigue.

“Which one?”

She reached across the mat and traced her fingernail along the puckered line. And then she flattened two fingertips against it, feeling the ridges.

“Mmm. I thought you were looking at something else.” He gave her an impish smile, and her eyes skirted down…down—to what he thought she had been looking at. If he hadn’t been sprawled on his stomach, she would’ve noticed that a lot sooner. Especially considering he’d slept with his pants undone. “Apparently,” Darien began, “someone sensed that the love of my life is finally sleeping beside me again and is ready to go.” When he dipped his hand under his body to adjust it, she gulped—loudly. Darien gave a dark laugh. “You’re probably sore.”

“A little,” she admitted. A lot, was more like it. Darien Cassel was insatiable when it came to sex—to her. She wished she didn’t feel so achey, because she wanted him again right now—

To her horror, her stomach growled. Wrong kind of hunger, she told it.

Darien was instantly reaching for her, pushing up her sleeve and dragging his thumb across the tattoo on her forearm. The medical symbol was pulsing with red light that reflected in his rings and watch. “You need to eat.” Before she could object, he got up and did up his pants. And before she had a chance to stand, he was stooping and picking her up.

She wound an arm around his neck. “You like carrying me around, don’t you?” She used the other to rake her fingers through his silken hair—just the way he liked.

“I love anything as long as it involves you.” He picked up the rest of their clothes on the way out. Loren helped him carry some of them, overly aware as he started heading upstairs that the shirt she wore—Darien’s shirt—barely covered her ass in this position.

And she heard voices floating down from the higher floors.

Her face turned red and warm. “They’re going to know what we were doing!” she hissed, her arm tightening around his neck, the other fisting the clothes she carried.

“They already know, sweetheart. We disappeared downstairs last night and never showed our faces again—I’m sure they made assumptions quickly.” He gave her a wink.

“Maybe they think we fought to the death,” she teased.

He frowned, boots pounding as he ascended the steps.

His attention shifted to the black dog standing at the top of the stairs, whose red eyes narrowed into accusatory slits.

Finally! Bandit fumed, black nose twitching. We have been waiting hours for you! There has been an emergency.

Darien’s arms tensed around Loren. “What kind of emergency?”

The female demon-monkey has stolen Cluckles!

Darien rolled his eyes. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

Loren sat down at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal as Darien worked on convincing Itzel to surrender Cluckles.

Itzel was on top of the fridge—a hiding place that seemed to be the norm for House Hobs. She had taken the rubber chicken hostage, the chewed-up toy nearly as big as her. From the sound of Darien’s murmuring, he was trying to figure out why she had taken it—while also trying to keep Bandit, who stood beside him, from losing his cool and destroying the fridge, which the sassy dog had already threatened to do. More than once.

Everyone was scattered throughout the kitchen and living room, but mostly the living room. Roman and Shay weren’t here, and neither were Paxton and Eugene, who were likely in school. But aside from them, everyone else was present. The big coffee table and the carpet it sat upon were cluttered with weapons, tools, and laboratory glassware. Loren was surprised Arthur was comfortable setting up the glassware around someone like Jack, who crouched nearby, looking all too interested in the glowing liquid bubbling through the coiled tubes.

As Loren dug into her cereal, observing the many faces crowded around Arthur at the coffee table, she put two and two together.

“You’re making swords?” She took another spoonful, far hungrier than she’d realized. She had her night with Darien to thank for that.

She glanced at the slayer in time to see his steel eyes flicker to her, as if sensing where her thoughts had strayed. But then she realized…

Her talisman—she wasn’t wearing it. He’d taken it off sometime last night, because he liked to feel her in every way possible—body and aura—when they were being intimate together. His mouth twitched with a smile that told her he was reading her again now.

“Right you are, Loren,” Arthur said. He was giving instructions to Tanner, Kylar, and Malakai, the Darkslayers holding swords of black adamant across their laps, all three of the slayers shirtless. “I’m teaching them how to reinforce our little miracle weapons.” The only blades that could cut through the monsters of Spirit Terra with ease.

“He made us new bodysuits too,” Dallas said from where she sat by the windows, an arm draped across Max’s knee. She held up an onyx ring. “We’ve all got one now.” In her other hand, she held up another—a pearly white one. “Yours is white.” With a flick of her wrist, she threw it. It soared over Loren’s head, too quickly for her to put down her spoon and catch it.

Loren got to her feet as the ring clattered into the foyer. “Dallas,” she huffed. She knew better than to throw things at her; she had terrible hand-eye coordination.