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“I don’t know about the balance, but you can have me without the orgasm.”

He groaned. “Right ye are. I survived thirty-three years without one. One buck with ye and I’m banjaxed beyond all help.”

“Voodoo vagina.”

He burst out laughing. I could get high off that sound. “Lay this out for me. Tell me how you see us going forward.”

“I see ye leaving me with me head hanging like Beelzebub’s ball sac.”

I gasped. “Never that.”

Our lips collided in more laughter.

“This.” He held my face between his hands. “This is how I see us, Evie.”

My smile filled my face and tingled through my body. “Okay.”

“Hold that thought.” He rolled off me and jogged to the bathroom. The water turned on, turned off. Then he returned with a scrap of paper and a pen in hand. “We’re going to define our physical relationship. Our limits in regard to me relationship with God and your…other relationships.”

My brow wrinkled. “My other relationships? Michio?”

“And the Lakota.”

“Oh. We’re not like that.”

A laugh cascaded from his perfect lips. “Your arse and parsley. I spent a rake of time with that mentaller. He’s lost the rag over ye.”

Another Jesse puzzle to sort out. I wanted him with a heart already divided between two others. It felt wrong to love three men. But it felt more wrong not too. “Let’s focus on us. You want to negotiate our relationship?”

“Our physical relationship.” He joined me on the bed, facing me. “I wen’ hurt ye again. I can make this work if we’re on the same page.” He nodded to the paper.

The desperation in his eyes and the plea in his expression would make me do just about anything. “Why are we writing this down? Just tell me what you want.”

“So one answer wen’ sway the other.”

We sat cross-legged, knees to knees, heads down. I scrawled my only requirement and passed it to him, face down.

When he finished writing his on the other side, he pulled me into his lap and leaned against the headboard. The paper quivered in his hand.

I kissed his bottom lip. “You’re nervous?”

He kissed me back. “Bloody terrified.”

“We don’t have to do this.”

The paper floated to my lap. “Read them aloud.”

I flipped to his elegant penmanship. “You want to maintain your relationship with God by refraining from intercourse.” I looked up. “I already know this. This is what you were fretting over?”

A swallow bobbed his throat. “It’s what’s not on there. I want everything else, love. The holding, the touching, the kissing—”

“The ejaculating in your boxers.”

A quirk touched his lips.

“I’m pretty sure just thinking about any of those things breaks your vow.”

His thumb meandered over my knee. “I’m redefining me relationship with God. By refraining from the temptation of intercourse, by touching your fit body everyday knowing I’ll never fully have ye, I’m still holding back a part of me self for Him. He understands me need to be physically comforted by ye amidst this devastating world. And He understands I’m still making a huge sacrifice. You’re me biggest temptation, Evie. I promise, this will be a continual test of me faith.”

“Fair enough.”

“And your limit?”

I turned the paper over and held it up. “Accept my sexual relationship with Michio. My open affection with him. I won’t be sneaking off to make out in dark corners.”

His thumb jerked on my leg. “Nor will I. And all you’re other relationships?”

“I told you—”

“You’re the only woman in the world, love. There will be others.” His arms went around me and he pressed a kiss into my hair. “We have our terms.”

“That’s it? After your possessive display yesterday?”

He pulled me closer. “I thought your relationship with Michio meant the end of ours. It scared me.”

“He hasn’t barged in yet. Admit you misjudged him and behaved like a belligerent child.”

“Right.” His smile was back. Maybe it would stay put. But as he rolled me over and buried his face in my neck, I wondered if Michio would sympathize with Roark’s new definition of celibacy.

That night, a hum tingled low in my belly. I opened my eyes. Michio’s steady breath brushed the top of my head. Roark’s chest rose and fell against my back.

The buzz increased, spiraled up my spine. I raised my head and rubbed my eyes. A black figure blotted out the middle of the room. The shape expanded, stretched sideways.

My heart thundered in my ears. I blinked, adjusted my eyes to the dark. My throat closed up.

Transparent wings spread from wall to wall. Onyx eyes drank in the shadows. Lips curled back, and fangs extended. “Now we finish where we left off, Eveline.”

I am not afraid… I was born to do this.

Joan of Arc

All at once, I was alone in the bed. The clash of steel on wood rang out. Shadows writhed in the doorway and moved out of the room.

I jolted up and barreled into the cabinet that housed the carbine.