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We collapse together, me on top, knowing I have to move, but hating it.

“Reggie? Wanna know a fantasy?”

“Men with gray skin and bald heads?” I laugh, easing out, careful to keep my weight off of her.

“Shower sex. Without worrying about his hair.”

“What?” I touch my scalp. “I don’t have any hair. I can’t grow it, either.”

“No, no. Not your hair. Matteo was more vain about his hair than I was about mine. Just... I know you just had a shower, but I’m a mess, so I was going to take one. W-want to come with me?”

I lean on my elbow and look down on her. “I believe I tried to explain that very thing to you earlier.”

Therese smiles and bites her lip like a nervous little girl. It’s killing me not to point out how contradictory it is to want to share these intimate things with me—and then have us part ways. My gut burns, and it has nothing to do with after-dinner reflux.

“I want to do everything with you for as long as you want me to.” I kiss her forehead and rise, heading to the bathroom. She follows me, but she doesn’t tell me that’s what she wants, too.

Don’t rush her.

But I want to rush. I’ve been waiting for almost a hundred years to have these feelings—and she is the one giving them to me. She’s mine. My soul’s creator, my soul’s mate. How can I let her go?

Therese is fixing my heart and breaking it at the same time.

Chapter Thirteen

It’s dark, warm, and not the erotic explosion I thought it would be. It’s better.

The warm water drips down my spine and shoulders as Reggie lifts me in his arms, keeping my back off the chilly wall. Holding me up like I’m feather light.

My lips fuse to his as I sink down and find him hard again. “Already?”

“I never have to go soft. I do, but it’s easy enough to just rearrange mass to be exactly what pleases you.”

“I want this to be natural. To please us both,” I whisper.

“Oh, believe me. It is. There’s nothing that pleases me more than being with you. My heart. My soul,” he breathes out against my wet skin.

Matteo used to call memi amore.Mi vida. Love. Life.

“Heart and soul” hits different. Our love was a lie. Matteo’s life was a charade.

Reggie’s supposed to be a being of myth, but he’s the truest, realest person I’ve ever known—and I’m in love with that.

I sheath him inside of me, feeling his bare skin against mine.

Love is slow, steamy, and silent, with long, desperate kisses. When he erupts, it’s on a down thrust, and his cum goes down the drain, not inside of me. I should be relieved, but I’m oddly disappointed.

“You need to sleep,” Reggie whispers as he carries me through the final aftershocks of my orgasm, my body rubbery and splayed across his as he holds me up.

“You come with me?” I clutch him, a little child afraid of going into the dark, scary world alone.

It occurs to me that he’s been that rock for so many children, so many escaping refugees who wouldn’t be here if not for him.

How could I have lost my heart to expensive drinks and suits when I could lose my heart to a real hero instead?

“Of course I will. I’ll be right by your side.”

THERESE’S LIVING LIKEshe might die soon—whether it’s a slow death entombed in some hidden building in D.C. or a drive-by on her way to the courthouse, she’s acting like she’s got nothing left to lose—physically.