Page 51 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Joe chuckled in his warm way as he linked his fingers with Percy’s. Percy, of course, yanked his free, dramatically, but Joe only captured his hand again and touched it to his smiling lips.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FISH HEADS, FISH HEADS…

The pub was lit and warm and full of noise when they returned. The door was flung open, “Percy!” called Maisie, a brain-cleaving scream broke from the skull, and every lightbulb in the place smashed.

Only this time, the screaming didn’t stop.

Great, sorrowful, heartrending screams that didn’t relent until Molly was stuck back in the fridge.

“Thank god for that,” muttered Joe.

“Sorry?” Percy’s sharp eyes shot across to the placid face. “You’ve changed your tune.”

“And she’s changed hers too,” he threw back. To the searching visage, he added, “It’s been a long day.”

“Too long,” Percy agreed with that curl of his lip he rarely used on Joe. He made his way across to the bar and made an apology for being unable to stay for a drink. He cited Joe’s falling into the lake as the reason, being a perfectly believable lie, what with the both of them still wet and unkempt and covered in mud. Maisie was all warmth and compassionate understanding, and she readily took their orders for dinner. Which, for Joe, was meat. And more meat. And any meat, apparently, because he ordered the steak ‘rare and bloody as it comes’, the mutton pie,which made Percy wince, and to top it off, krappin an’ stap. Fish heads.

Maisie’s eyes lit, and she decided then and there that Joe was a keeper. Percy, meanwhile, waited and smiled, and wondered who or what exactly was standing next to him.

He led the way calmly up the stairs, held the door to the room open, and shrugged his coat over his shoulders as Joe did the same. Joe slid his boots off, just as Percy did, then Percy gripped Joe’s trusty bottle of holy water and dumped the entire thing over his head in one enormous splash.

Joe slid a hand down his face and flicked the cold water to the floor. “I’m not possessed.”

“Bullshit,” Percy growled. “Joe wouldn’t eat fish heads.”

“Percy, we’re in Twatt.” Joe wrapped his hand around Percy’s little finger, just as he had so often done before. “It’s a thing people eat. And I’m starving.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Percy, wandering across the room to take a seat on the bed. He slid the top drawer of the bedside table open, saying casually, “It’s always good to try new things, and we did— Catch!” He hurled Gideon’s Bible straight at Joe’s chest.

With his usual fast reflexes, Joe caught the huge book in his powerful hand and held it high for Percy to see. “I swear to God—I swear on my soul—I am not possessed. I’m just hungry. Please stop throwing things at me.”

Percy kept his gaze on the fingers wrapped around the holy book and waited. And Joe held it just as long as he needed to, still dripping with holy water, to prove it wouldn’t burn or maim him in any way to do so. Eventually, his shiver from the cold snapped Percy back to his senses. “Sorry. You have the first shower.”

Joe gave a weary smile and a nod, and made his way to the ensuite. There, in the doorway, he turned back. “Do you want to come?”

He was so beautiful. So beautiful, and his smile was so sweet, and his tone hotly provocative… But Percy… didn’t want to… And he didn’t know why. So all he said was, “I should let Maisie in when she comes up.”

“I guess.” Joe laughed with that nice blush of his. “It might be a little awkward.”

Percy laughed too, in a shallow way, and Joe disappeared into the bathroom, the pipes of the heated water soon screeching almost as loudly as the skull had.

Percy busied himself laying out fresh clothes, tending the fire Maisie had set, lighting a candle, picking a bottle of wine from the carton he’d brought. All the while, the same sparring thoughts shuffled back and forth.

Joe was fine. Nothing like when he was briefly possessed in the house. He was Joe now, in every word and mannerism. Percy could see it.

But the fish heads. And his comment about the skull. Not Joe. Not Joe, who wanted to pay five thousand pounds for Molly the night before. Who planned to steal her because he felt so sorry for her. Not Joe, who turned a sickly green when Percy told him about the cooking process of krappin.

But he was fine. Beautiful and funny and sexy and very much Joe.

But also not quite Joe.

“Your turn?” Joe in the doorway. Joe in a towel. Joe in a towel with his rippling abs and the steam rising off of him.

And Percy side-stepping him with a light peck on his cheek, and shutting himself behind a locked door for reasons he couldn’t explain.

Tired.

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