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She was sobbing.

He could feel her vaginal muscles starting to contract around his swollen penis.

She was on the brink of orgasm and he was there with her, but he didn’t want to drop over it, not yet, not yet, not yet.

He grunted. Gritted his teeth. Rocked into her once. Twice. Three times…

She cried out, her muscles convulsed around him, and he threw back his head, gasped out her name, and lost himself on an endless wave of pleasure.

She fell forward and he fell with her.

It took a long time until he could think again. Until the world stopped spinning. When finally it did, he gathered her in his arms, collapsed against the pillows and held her tight in the curve of his body.

“Okay?” he whispered.

She gave a little laugh. The sound went straight through him.

“Yes,” she said, and she snuggled into him, her head on his hard shoulder, her arm over his chest.

He turned his face to hers and kissed her.

They had to get up.

He knew that.

But first he needed this. Bianca, in his arms. The feel of her not just against him, but inside him.

Inside his heart.

He was in a place he had never been before, a place he had not believed existed.

And of everything he’d ever faced, it was the most frightening.

• • •

“What do you mean, we’re going to Santa Barbara?”

Chay looked at Bianca’s reflection next to his in the bathroom mirror. He had showered again, with her, and they’d had another fruitless discussion about the ethics of sharing information about her patients with him.

“It’s against the moral code of my profession,” she’d said.

And he’d said that a patient trying to scare the shit out of his shrink was against the moral code of anybody’s profession, and she’d said she understood what he was saying, but that it was against—

“—the moral code of your profession,” he’d growled, and she’d put her hand on his arm, turned her face up to his and looked so unhappy that he’d sighed, kissed her, and told her he’d work something out.

The something was Sanchez, but why tell her that?

She was having enough difficulty dealing with what he’d just said—that they had some errands to run and then they were flying to Santa Barbara.

“Chayton? Why would I go to California?”

He considered telling her she’d go so she could be with him, but he knew she was too smart for that. So he wiped off the last bit of shaving cream from his face, dumped the towel, and swung around.

“Because it’s where I can keep you safe.”

Her eyes searched his. “I don’t understand.”

“Somebody’s after you. Somebody who means to harm you.”