Free Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) by Killian McRae Page A

— and the last few nights of restless sleep — had left him sore, but now, at this moment in the tub, he couldn’t recall feeling this at ease, this relaxed, this… at peace, for months.
    But as he stretched out his legs and felt his toes make contact with another’s, his sense of nirvana popped like a helium balloon on a florescent lamp.
    “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
    Two grey eyes barely above the fluctuating water line, burned — the ocular cocktail a mixture of rage, embarrassment, and intrigue from across the way. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
    “Me?” Marc belted back, half-rising out of the water before he recalled that he was, in fact, au naturel. Keeping his lower half beneath the churning jets instead, he pointed accusingly at the witch. “What the hell are you doing here? T he club hasn’t opened yet!”
    “Dee let me in, before you decided to go the full Monty!” Riona shrieked, hitting the surface of the water like a toddler having a tantrum. “Oh, God, can you just … leave already?”
    “I’d love to, but I’m just a wee bit nude at the moment.”
    Her eyes sharpened as the smallest fraction of her shoulders broke the surface. “Me, too.”
    Each waited out the other like some old western high noon showdown. Finally, after several brooding moments, Riona rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, cupping her breasts in an unsuccessful attempt to remain discreet. Marc’s masculine hard wiring kicked in and drew his eyes right down to hands he noticed were way too small for their appointed task.
    “Look, Marc, this is silly. We’re both adults, right? Let’s just… one of us close our eyes while the other gets out and leaves.”
    Sounded like a good enough idea. He gave a curt nod, sat back, closed his eyes, and waited.
    “Well?”
    One eye cracked open. Riona squinted so hard, he thought she might be trying to force her eyeballs out the back of her head. “Well what?”
    “Well… go already. I’ll keep my eyes shut.”
    The flare of indignation rekindled as both their eyes flew open.
    “I’m a priest, Keystone. I can’t just go about traipsing naked in front of the laity.”
    Riona clicked her tongue. “One: never call me the lay-anything again, and two: um, no. You may be a priest, but you’re still a guy, and — unless you’re about to tell me you’re gay — I don’t trust that whole, ‘the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not sneak a peek’ thing.”
    Marc scoffed. “As if. How about this? Let’s just both get out at the same time and run as fast as possible towards the locker rooms. If we’re looking straight ahead, we can’t be looking at each other. Not… that I would ever look.”
    Riona’s eyes surveyed the room, measuring the direction and the distance.
    “I won’t… look either.” Was there a hint of doubt in her voice too? “Yeah, okay, sounds good. On the count of three, then?”
    “Count of three, yeah. Okay. One… Two… Three!”
    A localized tsunami washed over the floor as both leapt from the tub and booked it like felons. Marc was first to reach his target, but invoked a holy hell for the ages as he found the door jammed. He guessed Riona was having the same problem, based on the frantic jingling of the metal handle on her side of the room, punctuated by under-her-breath cussing.
    He heard Riona’s fist make contact with the hard laminate of the door. “What the devil?”
    “Isn’t it obvious? It’s locked.”
    “But who would have locked the door? Dee?”
    “Dee wouldn’t do that. Maybe it was you. Maybe a panic thing you did when you found out I was in the room?”
    “Reactionary magic? Like, something I wasn’t even conscious of?”
    “You walked through the wall of the meat locker without knowing you could do it,” Marc countered over his shoulder, his peripheral vision catching the vague outline of her very precise frame.
    “That was a case of life and death. The magic followed the motivation; I can’t