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I t’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 me mi 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 LIKE she 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.

I can barely pry myself out of our bed to check the perimeter and the phones on Sunday afternoon. When I come back, she’s waiting for me, gloriously naked and on all fours, a big grin on her face. “Bring me that.” She crooks her finger at me, and my cock follows orders.

She wraps her mouth around me with a moan that makes my knees buckle, quickly getting me to full hardness before sliding her mouth down. I feel the narrowing of her warm suction turning into the tightness of her throat, and she’s taking all of me.

The voice in the back of my head, the one usually buried in grumpy silence, pops out long enough to shout “Make her your wife for real, fool!” and then disappears in a haze of enthusiastic slurping. I let Teri drive, just happy to be her passenger.

When she’s done wicked, wicked things to me and caused me to explode across her chin and her beautiful full breasts (with sweet peachy-pink nipples and soft globes that fall naturally to the sides), we shower again.

That just leads to more naughty things, with me bending her over in the shower and licking her from behind while she clutches onto the sides of the tub, three of my fingers sliding into her tunnel hard and fast as she babbles in bliss.

Yes. It’s a honeymoon. There are naps, sex, naps, and more sex.

It’s Sunday night before either of us realizes that Powell hasn’t called.

“WHAT IF HE’S DEAD?”

“I don’t think he’s dead. He probably just figures there’s no reason to call.” Reggie paces behind me as I make a loop around the outside of our safe house. Even though it’s hot and sticky tonight, I have to be outside—as long as my protector is by my side. I feel too cooped up in the house.

“Judges don’t work on the weekends, do they?”

“Some do. But I’m sure that has nothing to do with why he didn’t call. No news is good news. He probably just didn’t want to stave off questions.”

I hold his hand in one of mine and swat mosquitoes away with the other. “How did you know he was lying? You couldn’t see his face.”

Reggie's brow furrows as he ducks under a wall of honeysuckle behind the garage. “Pauses and intonation in his voice. Some of it was just logic. Some of it is instinct, being built as a divine protector, a supernatural defense. You’re not the first person I’ve helped.

You begin to sense when something is off.

” His voice is pressed right against my ear.

“What?” Panic hitches my breathing, and I dig my nails into the back of his hand. He’s my lifeline.

That’s scary.

It’s even scarier to think I’ll be cutting it off as soon as I get a phone call.

“Let’s go in the house.” He shepherds me in, a frown deepening the lines on his face.

“You’re freaking me out.”

“There’s no reason to freak out,” Reggie's voice is even as he locks the doors. “We’re here so you can carry on the charade of starting a new life and remain protected until you can testify or get placed in the WITSEC program. You have the right to refuse protection from them.”

I nod my head. “I know. Everything from the early days is a blur, but I remember feeling safer with Kim and her ‘contacts’ than with the different officials I met. There were so many different ones, I couldn’t keep them all straight. Why are you bringing it up?”

“Did you refuse protection from them at some earlier juncture, in favor of Kim ?”

As I retrieve a glass from the cabinet and fill it with ice water, I think.

At various points, I’m pretty sure people offered to post a female officer in my room or told me there would be officers checking in.

“I don’t remember outright refusing. I remember being relieved when I was finally given travel arrangements.

They told me I could leave Rome and fly to London, then leave London and go to New York, and finally, come h-here.

” I almost said home. That’s ridiculous.

I haven’t felt like I was home in over a year.

How can I feel at home in this place that has almost nothing in it of mine?

It has Reggie. He’s yours. You just have to let him know it. Not yours for the week. Yours for a lifetime of running and hiding away.

Hiding in plain sight? He’s used to that already.

“Someone put a tail on us. We know that. That means Delgado or someone higher up assigned them.”

“So? He had to at least suspect I was the informant.”

“They’ve stopped coming around because they saw you get married, just like you said you were.

That backed up your story—or because the protections around us are stronger than the dark forces they have access to.

Remember that good will always be stronger than evil, especially when there are enough good people standing together. ”

“Okay. Comforting.”

“Yes, on the supernatural front. But on the ‘mere human’ front, I’m afraid Delgado’s men will be back soon. After the motion for discovery passes, we’ll see them again.” Reggie grabs the last hard lemonade from the six-pack. “Split it? Or you can have the whole thing if you want.”

“You have it.” I melt. The little things he does...

“Therese, you told Powell you were having second thoughts.”

“Well, it’s a scary idea, going into hiding, bad guys chasing you, maybe hurting your family.” I rub my temples. My mother and my father. My siblings.

Reggie drinks the lemonade in two gulps, throat working. I watch the muscles twitch, leading down to a thin white shirt that makes my mouth water. The humidity makes it cling to him like wet paper. I now know that body intimately—and I want to know it much better.

“You don’t have a tail right now. Of course, the feds probably have local authorities and their own detail keeping an eye on this house on routine patrols. Powell will check in tomorrow, and people will be over for ‘dinner,’ to start the whole WITSEC procedures in earnest.”

“I know, I know. I’m trying not to think about it.” Now I’m thinking about it, and I want to vomit.

“If you want to get away and get out before anyone can trace you... I’ll help you run. And hide. Powell said they have evidence from your flash drive. They have your recorded statements. You can run. We can run. We can go, now, tonight. I’ll be your witness protection program, Teri.”

For a split-second, it’s tempting. Run off to a new life, one that sounds adventurous and teeming with passion?

Been there, done that.

And even though I like Reggie a lot—I skip over the jumbled, messy part of my brain that tried to substitute another L-word—I don’t know how we could survive on our own forever.

I know he’s a golem, and I know he’s got incredible powers, but his experience is in ferrying people to safety, helping them escape. The threats didn’t follow them.

“You’re wondering how I can be this cocky, huh? How I can think I’m enough to keep you safe?”

I know it’s a waste of time to lie to him. “It’s different than rescuing orphans and smuggling them out of Poland to New York, or out of London to the countryside, that’s all.”

“I say this as a loving and patriotic American—the bigger the government agency, the bigger the shitshow. But Therese and Reggie Gray—we could be in Anchorage by tomorrow. We could have new names if you want.”

“Alaska? No! I don’t want to live in Alaska.”

“That’s perfect. The Feds will ask you where you want to live—”

“I already told them, I gave them a list of ten places—”

“And those are the places you will never see.” Reggie slams the bottle down and crashes into the chair across from mine.

“They figure if you’ve told them you have a place in mind, a place you want, then you’ll have mentioned it to at least one other person.

They send you to places you have no desire to go to.

Alaska could be perfect. It’s harder to travel there, harder to survive there, and in some of the smaller suburbs, a stranger stands out.

When newcomers arrived, we’d know it. For that matter—we could stay here and tell them to bugger off.

We don’t need them. This place is safer than any other town in the country—most of the time. ”