Chapter 3
Talon woke up to find his arm on fire.
Hissing, he jerked his hand away from the sunlight that was streaming in through the window, across an extremely pink bed. He pushed himself back against the white wicker headboard to avoid any more of his body from coming into contact with the deadly rays.
He blew cool air across his hand, but still it burned and ached.
Where the hell was he?
For the first time in centuries, he felt a wave of uncertainty run through him.
Talon was never out of his element. Never out of control. His entire life was one of extreme balance and moderation.
Never in his Dark-Hunter existence had he found himself unsure or confounded.
But right now, he had no idea where he was, the time of day, or who the women were he heard on the other side of the pink drapes.
Squinting against the bright sunlight that painfully pierced his eyes, he looked around the odd room and realized he was trapped between two open windows. His heart hammered. There was no safe way off the bed. The only direction he could go was to his left and into the corner that was occupied by a frothy pink nightstand.
Damn.
Through the pounding pain in his head, the night before came flooding back to him with stunning clarity. The attack.
The woman...
The great big whatever slamming into him.
Though his body ached and was sore, his Dark-Hunter powers had allowed him to heal while he slept. In a few hours, even the soreness would be gone.
Until then, he needed out of this death trap of sunlight. Closing his eyes, Talon willed a dark cloud to cover the sun so that the bright daylight would no longer play havoc with his eyesight.
If he wanted to, he could summon enough clouds to turn the day sky as dark as night. But it wouldn't do him any good.
Daylight was still daylight.
His unique Dark-Hunter powers gave him a great deal of control over the elements, weather and healing, but not control over Apollo's domain. Light or dark, the daytime still belonged to Apollo, and even though Apollo was technically retired, the Greek god would never tolerate a Dark-Hunter walking about on his shift.
If Apollo caught sight of him outside or near a window during the light of day, Talon would be nothing more than a strip of fried bacon on the sidewalk.
Extra-crispy Celt didn't appeal to him in the least.
His eyes no longer burning, Talon started to leave the bed, then paused. There was nothing between him and the patchouli- and turpentine-scented sheets.
What's happened to my clothes? He was quite sure he hadn't undressed himself last night.
Had they... ?
He frowned as he searched his memory. No, it wasn't possible. If he'd been awake enough to have sex with her, he would have been awake enough to leave this place long before sunup.
"Where is it?"
He looked up at hearing the unfamiliar voice on the other side of the pink tie-dyed fabric, which was hung to form a wall around the bed.
Two seconds later, the fabric slid open to reveal an attractive woman who appeared to be in her late thirties. Her long black hair was pulled into a thick braid and she wore a long flowing black skirt and tunic.
She looked remarkably similar to the woman he'd met last night. And at first glance, she would be easy to mistake for her younger counterpart.
"Hey, Sunshine, your friend's awake. What's his name?"
"I don't know, Starla. I didn't ask."
Oh, but this is getting stranger and stranger.
Unperturbed by his presence, the woman walked into the room to the side of the bed where the nightstand stood. "You look like a Steve," she said as she bent down, lifted up the pink scarves, and started digging through a stack of magazines that was hidden beneath it. "Are you hungry, Steve?"
Before he could answer, she raised her voice. "It's not here."
"It's under the old copies of Art Papers."
"It's not here."
Sunshine entered the room. Walking with the grace of a fairy princess, she wore a long-sleeved purple dress so bright, he had to squint from the hue. As she crossed in front of the window, he realized the material was rather sheer, gifting him with a pleasant view of her lush, ample curves and the fact that she wore nothing beneath that dress.
Nothing except her tanned skin.
His throat went dry.
She was wiping paint from her hands with a towel as she moved to the nightstand without even glancing his way.
"It's right here," she said, pulling out a magazine and handing it to the older woman.
Finally, Sunshine looked to the bed and met his gaze. "Are you hungry?"
"Where are my clothes?"
She cast a sheepish look at Starla. "Did you ask his name?"
"It's Steve."
"It's not Steve."
Sunshine paid him no attention as she turned Starla to face him. Both women stared at him lying there on the bed as if he were some inanimate curiosity.
Talon moved the pink sheet up higher over his waist. Then, suddenly self-conscious, he moved his bare leg under the cover as well, and bent his knee so that the center part of his body wasn't quite so obvious underneath the thin cotton.
Still the two women stared at him.
"You see what I was telling you?" Sunshine asked. "Does he not have the most incredible aura you've ever seen?"
"He's definitely an old soul. With Druid blood. I'm sure of it."
"You think?" Sunshine asked.
"Oh, yeah. We need to talk him into letting us do a past-life regression and see what we come up with."
Okay, they were both nuts.
"Women," he said sharply. "I need my clothes, and I need them now."
"See," Sunshine said. "See the way his aura changes. It's absolutely living."
"You know, I've never seen that before. It's really different." Then Starla drifted out of the room as she flipped through the magazine.
Sunshine was still wiping paint off her hands. "Hungry?"
How did she do that? How could she shift from one topic to the other and then back again?
"No," he said, trying to keep her on the main point. "I want my clothes."
She actually cringed. "What happened to the tags in your pants?"
Talon frowned at the odd question. He was keeping a rein on his irritation and temper, but something about being around this woman made it difficult. "I beg your pardon?"
"Well, you know they were covered in blood..."
A bad feeling settled into his stomach. "And?"
"I was going to clean them, and-"
"Oh shit, you washed them?"
"It wasn't the washing that damaged them so much as the drying."
"You dried my leather pants?"
"Well, I didn't know they were leather," she said softly. "They felt really soft and strange so I thought they were pleather or something. I wash my pleather dress all the time without it disintegrating and shrinking like your pants did."
Talon rubbed his forehead with his hand. This was so not good. How on earth could he get out of her apartment in the middle of the day with no clothes on?
"You know," she continued, "you really shouldn't cut the tags out of your clothes."