She glared. “I’m going to leave, and hope that you aren’t up to anything nefarious in my absence, SJ.”

She went to push past me, but I blocked her exit, looming over her. That thrumming, zinging feeling was back in my stomach at the sound of my name on her lips. I needed to remind us both what this was all about.

“Today might not have been my doing, but I will come to you again very soon … and when I do, it will be to call in your next repayment.”

Her eyes glinted behind her glasses, and she lifted up onto her tiptoes until her mouth was very close to mine. I held my breath.

“I can’t wait,” she purred, and fast as a flash, planted a tiny, chaste peck on my mouth, then slipped under my arm and ducked from the bathroom.

I touched the spot where her lips had been. She’d kissed me far more passionately at the hospital yesterday. But this one hadn’t felt like an act.

I waited until I was sure she would have slipped out of the place, and with a renewed spring in my step, I set out to manage her brother, discover what my Hell Hounds had overheard … and most importantly, plot the reaping of the soul of one Chad Ratty-Man … the old-fashioned way.

But firstly … I needed to organise a delivery …

16. An Outright Lie

Chapter 16

An Outright Lie

Jemma

I spent the entire drive home with my lips tingling. I couldn’t stop touching them, trying to recall the feel of his skin against them.

Why had I kissed him?

Scratch that. I knew why I’d kissed him. And it was the worst possible reason. It was so humiliating and so stupid that I practically cringed every time I thought about it.

I’d been happy to see him. And I was … damn it, I was grateful to him!

It was as simple as that. The sheer relief I’d felt when he’d appeared behind me and saved me from the torture of sitting at that table with my brother and Ratty-Man.

“You stupid woman!” I lectured myself as I pulled into a park outside my apartment block. “What he can do to you—what he will do to you—is far, far worse than anything that sad little Ratty-Man has ever done.”

But SJ had defended me to my brother. He had insulted my ex—more than once. Had gotten all ragey when I’d told him what Chad had done to me.