Free Skin Dive by Ava Gray Page B

for him? He had nobody in whom he could confide. Well, except me. And I’m not exactly the most reliable person in the world.
    “So you want me to plug our leak. Am I permitted to use force?”
    “As a last resort, if you can’t stop it any other way.”
    “Cool,” she said, sliding off the deck chair. “I was about ready for some action anyway.”

CHAPTER 5

PRESENT DAY DETROIT
    Shapes loomed up from the darkness. Fearlessly, Gillie stepped forward. The metal door slammed behind her as she stepped fully through the employee’s entrance, trash in hand.
    In the distant, half-light thrown by the streetlamp, the Dumpster became a young dragon crouched against the crumbling brick façade of the bar where she worked. She could almost discern the scales in the flecks of rust where the paint had peeled away. She approached the dragon armed with nothing but a thin black plastic sack full of rubbish. With a fierce scowl, she wound up and slung the mess down the beast’s gullet and pacified it for another day.
    “You’re welcome,” she said to the dark and oblivious city.
    That imagination had seen her through unbelievable horror. Sometimes she still found it hard to sleep at night. Hard to believe she was finally safe, or at least, more so than she had been. For someone like her, safety came in degrees ranging from out of harm’s way for the moment to about to die. And sometimes her mind played tricks on her, making her think something terrible was about to happen, because it always, always did.
    But she wasn’t imagining the light crunch of footsteps over broken glass.
    “You shouldn’t have to do this.” The quiet voice didn’t surprise her.
    When Gillie turned, she found Taye propped up against the opposite wall, a steakhouse that had long since gone out of business. Now it had grates across the windows and people still managed to break the glass. God knew, the bar was headed that way, but over these months, Mick had been good to her. Weird as it might seem, she didn’t mind her job.
    “You’re wrong,” she said. “This is what real people do.”
    She wasn’t interested in replaying the conversation wherein he offered to get her enough money to set her up for life, though his ability hurt him and it meant the difference between freedom and capture. It was possible he was just working too hard, but Taye looked more haggard all the time, as though the electricity had sapped the life right out of him. In recent months, his outlook had darkened, too, so bleak and grim that most days, it was a fucking miracle if she could make him smile. She’d taken to memorizing dirty jokes that she overheard in the kitchen in the hope she could take him by surprise and banish the sorrow for a little while.
    Plus, she wasn’t interested in letting him steal for her. She wanted to work; Taye didn’t understand that. He thought she should be ready for a life of leisure after her long incarceration, ready to bask in the sun and sip margaritas. Unfortunately, the easy road wasn’t the best way, and deep down, he knew that. He just hated seeing her with her hands raw from scrubbing, and the guilt of feeling like he should do better for her made him surly.
    Frost lay lightly on the ground, adding a crystalline layer to the grit-covered pavement. Snow touched his hair and melted immediately, as if he generated heat in each unruly strand. It was too long in front, and it hung in his eyes, lending him a roguish air. But that buccaneer swagger was deceptive; he wasn’t playful. Like the electricity he commanded, he could turn deadly in a flicker.
    By now, she should have gotten over the lightning that careened in her veins just from looking at him. He wasn’t shiny and new anymore. They’d had months to get used to one another, and more than once, she’d flung a dish and screamed at him. More than once, he’d slammed out of the apartment as if he couldn’t stand her proximity for another minute.
    But he always came back, and