Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series by Holley Trent Page A

about feeling boneless. Weightless, even. Light as a feather as if all the worries and stress she’d been carrying around for the past two months had popped like one of those soap bubbles.
    There was a gentle rap on the door, and she opened her eyes. “Yes?”
    “Are you decent?” John asked through the closed partition.
    She glanced down and found everything of consequence suitably covered in foam. Not that it mattered. He’d already seen it. “Yes.”
    The door swung in and John, holding a ceramic coffee cup in each hand, walked in slowly. “I know it’ll be a while before you can get breakfast, but I figured you could do with some coffee. I hope it’s okay. I just followed the instructions on the packet.”
    She pushed herself upright and wrapped one arm across her breasts, accepting the cup he offered with her other hand. “Thanks. What’s in it?”
    “Three sugars and two creams.”
    She grinned in spite of her earlier annoyance. “Hey, you learn fast.”
    “I’m just observant. Have a good memory.”
    Indeed.
She took a tentative sip of the brew and found it perfectly satisfactory. It wasn’t gourmet, but she didn’t expect gourmet in a three-and-a-half star hotel. “Thank you. Hits the spot. What are you drinking?”
    “Well, it’s more milk than anything else, but — ”
    “John! You’re drinking coffee voluntarily?”
    His grin was shy and his shoulders bobbed up into a shrug. “Just a little. I figured it’d be a long day and the air conditioner in the car … ” He let his voice trail off then clamped his lips. It was obvious then he was just as uncertain about what the day would bring as she was.
    “Yeah, it makes me sleepy, too.” She watched him take a sip and he didn’t even grimace. “Hey, you want to sit down? Talk to me while my toes shrivel up like prunes?”
    “Okay.” He lifted the toilet lid and perched on the seat. “You’ll probably run out of bubbles pretty soon.”
    “Good. That’ll keep me from stalling. I want to make good time today. If I can make it almost all the way through Tennessee, that’ll make tomorrow less miserable. By then, I’ll be so sick of driving on I-Forty, I’ll probably never go anywhere ever again.”
    “I don’t believe that. I think you have a bit of wanderlust, Ariel.”
    “Not.” She giggled then took a long draught of coffee. She’d need to find some real coffee soon. Something dark and hopefully laced with rocket fuel. “I don’t even know why I ended up in California, other than for the job. Of all the places I could be, why there? All the way on the other side of the country. Seems almost like overkill.”
    “So, you regret it?”
    “Do I regret having the job and getting the experience? No.” And that was mostly true. She had learned a lot, especially about advertising agency politics. She’d learned a little bit about older men, too. “I just wish I had looked for that experience a little closer to home.”
    “Ah.”
    “So, there’s your warning. I’m not stopping anywhere unless I have to today. Plan not to pee until lunch.”
    The slight hint of tension he’d been holding in his jaws suddenly ebbed and his posture got a bit a straighter. “I’ll keep that in mind. No peeing.”
    “I’m still mad at you,” she said, and it was soft she wasn’t sure it’d even come out of her mouth.
    “You have a right to be. I wish you weren’t, though,” he said.
    Yes, she’d definitely said it out loud.
    “I don’t want to do anything to upset you. I just … ” He stared into his mug and his forehead furrowed as he thought. “I worry I can hurt you without even trying. So, earlier I was scared I’d gone too far.”
    She nearly dropped her mug in the suds. “That
you’d
gone too far? I thought you bolted the way you did because you realized what you were doing and that you’d just given your virginity up to some coffee-addled dork.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious?”
    She shrugged and sank lower