They stood one to the other in the cool night, and they were warm, very warm.

He shifted his lips to her ear and breathed, “I want to be in you.”

“Yes…” she replied, drawing out the word.

They would not be alone inside, but they were alone here in the quiet, dark lee of the house. Moving her backward, even deeper into the shadows, he slipped his palms under the lip of his sweater and onto the skin of his shellan. Smooth, warm, vital, she arched under his touch.

“I’ll let you keep your top on,” he said. “But those tights are going down.”

Hooking his thumbs into the waistband, he took them to her ankles and slipped them off her feet.

“You’re not cold, are you?” he asked, even though he could feel and catch the scent of the answer.

“Not at all.”

The side of the house was stone, but he knew that heavy Irish knit would mattress her shoulders. “Lean back for me.”

As she did, he put his arm around her waist to give her more cushioning, and found her breast with his free hand. He kissed her deep and long and slow, and her mouth moved under his in ways that were both familiar and mysterious-but, then, that was making love with her, wasn’t it. By now, he was well acquainted with her from the inside out-there was nothing of his that hadn’t been inside her in one form or another. And yet being with her was as wondrous as the first time.

She was the same, yet she was always new.

And she was aware what this was about. She knew he needed to be in control of them right now, knew he needed to be the driver. At this moment, he wanted to do something that was right and beautiful and do it well, because after that meeting all he could think about was how much ugliness he’d done to himself and to others, and, nearly, to her.

He took his time, with his tongue dipping in and out of her mouth and his hand caressing her breast, and the investments had a dividend that left his erection nearly punching the way out of his pants: Cormia melted in his hold, getting fluid and hot.

His hand drifted downward. “I think I should make sure you’re not catching a draft.”

“Please… do,” she groaned, her head falling to the side.

He wasn’t sure whether she exposed her throat on purpose, but his fangs didn’t care. They instantly readied for penetration, dropping down from his upper jaw, sharp and hungry.

His hand went between her thighs, and the welling heat he found buckled his knees. He’d meant to keep going slowly, but there would be no more of that.

“Oh, Cormia,” he moaned, slipping both his hands around the contours of her hips and picking her up. His body split her thighs wide open. “Undo my pants… Let me out…”

As his bonding scent roared, she released his arousal and linked them up in a glide that was at once effortless and full of power.

Her head fell back as he held her up and worked her body on and off of his. He took her vein as well in a feat of coordination that was easy as pie.

Just as his fangs breached the sweet skin of her neck, her arms tightened on his shoulders, her fists balling up his shirt.

“I love you…”

For a split second, Phury froze.

The moment was so clear to him, everything from the feel of her weight in his palms and her core around his sex and her throat at his mouth to the scent of them coming together and the smell of the forest and the crystal-clear air. He knew the balance between his whole leg and his prosthesis and exactly how his shirt pinched under his arms from her gripping the thing. He knew the pumping of her chest against his own, the beat of both her blood and his, the gathering of erotic tension.

Mostly, though, he knew the cradle of their love for each other.

He couldn’t remember anything being this vivid, this real.

This was the gift of recovery, he thought. The ability to be here in this moment with the female he loved and be fully aware, fully awake, fully present. Undiluted.

He thought of Jonathon and the meeting and what the guy had said: I want to be where I am tonight more than I want the high.

Yes. Damn it… yes.

Phury started moving again, taking and giving by turns.

Breathless and straining, he lived as they came together… lived vividly.

Chapter Fifty-five

Xhex left the club at four twelve a.m. The cleaning staff were doing their suck, buff, and shine thing, and would be responsible for shutting the doors, and she had the alarms ready for automatic activation at eight o’clock. The cash registers were empty, and Rehvenge’s of fice was not just locked but impenetrable.

Her Ducati was waiting for her in the private garage slip where the Bentley was parked when Rehv didn’t need his wheels. She rolled the black bike out, mounted it as the door trundled shut, and started the bitch with a kick.

She never wore a helmet.

She always wore her leather chaps and her biker jacket.

The motorcycle roared between her legs, and she took the long way home, weaving in and out of downtown’s maze of one-ways, then opening the Ducati up on the Northway. She was going well over a hundred when she blew past a cop car parked under the pines in the median.

She never put her lights on.

Which explained why, assuming she’d tripped the guy’s radar and he wasn’t asleep behind his badge, he didn’t come after her. Hard to chase what you couldn’t see.

She had two places in Caldwell to lay her head: a basement apartment downtown for when she found herself needing privacy stat, and a secluded two-bedroom cabin on the Hudson River.

The dirt road to her waterfront property was nothing but a footpath, thanks to her having let the underbrush grow in over the past thirty years. On the far side of the tangle, the 1920s-era fishing cabin sat on a seven-acre lot, the house built solidly but without grace. The garage was detached and over to the right, and that had been a major value-add when she’d looked at the property. She was the kind of female who liked to keep a lot of firepower around, and storing the ammo outside of the house reduced the likelihood of her getting blown up in her sleep.

The bike went into the garage. She went into the house.

Walking into the kitchen, she loved the way the place smelled: old pine boards from the ceiling and walls and floors, and sweet cedar from the closets that had been built for hunting gear.

She didn’t have a security system. Didn’t believe in them.

She had herself. And that had always been enough.

After a cup of instant coffee, she went into her bedroom and stripped out of her leathers. In her black sports bra and panties, she lay down on the bare floor and braced herself.

Tough as she was, she always needed a moment.

When she was ready, she reached down to her thighs, to the barbed metal bands she had clamped into her skin and muscles. The locks on the cilices released with a pop, and she groaned as blood rushed to the wounds. With her vision flickering, she curled onto her side, breathing through her mouth.

This was the only way she could control her symphath side. Pain was her self-medication.

As her skin went slick with her blood, and her body’s nervous system recalibrated, a tingling went through her. She thought of it as her reward for being strong, for keeping it together. Sure it was chemical, nothing except garden-variety endorphins racing around in her veins, but there was magic to the spacey, racy, ringing sensation.

It was times like this when she was tempted to buy herself some furniture for this place, but the impulse was easy to resist. The wooden floor was easier to clean up.

Her breath was easing and her heart was slowing and her brain was starting to turn over again when something popped into her head that reversed the trend toward stabilization.