So for now, I savor what I have. I relish the intimacy.

When I’m not scouring through the backstreets of every city in the state, I keep an eye on the girl. My girl. She’s working a case with Angel, a departed kid she picked up off the streets, and Cookie, her receptionist and best friend. It’s dangerous. Three lawyers are dead already, so I stay close for a few days.

She’s also working a case on the side. Mine. She’s beginning to put two and two together. To suspect that the man she pulls into her dreams every night and the cloaked figure who’s followed her since the day she was born are one and the same. But that still won’t lead her to me.

I head back to the long-term care facility the state has moved me to. Something is wrong. When I get there, the doctors are speaking with the warden. Neil Gossett is there as well. He’s upset. Wants to give it more time.

Basically, since I have no next of kin and no one to protest, to petition the courts to keep me on the machine, the state is going to take me off life support in a few days. The doctors say there is no hope of recovery. My brain is dead.

They got that right. I may have faked my condition a little too well. I have three days before they pull the plug. Three days to figure out how I’m going to fake my own death without actually being buried alive. Or cremated.

Maybe I could have Amador steal my body. How hard could that be? But Amador doesn’t know the truth. I didn’t have time to get him word. It’s not like I could go to him and explain the situation incorporeally. Well, I could, but since he can’t see into the supernatural realm, it would do me little good. And when he came to the facility to see me, the nurse never left his side. I couldn’t just magically wake up. Not yet. I had places to be and people to see.

I am about to check out another lead when I’m pulled back to Dutch. This time she’s not asleep. She’s in the shower and I’m standing behind her, naked as the day I was born. Steam rises around her and I step to her. Mold myself against her backside. Slide my hands up her thighs and rest them on her hips.

She lets a soft sigh slip through her lips, and blood rushes to my cock. I pull her closer as she reaches around and runs her fingertips over my ass. Dutch is slick and hot and I want to melt inside her. I’m not above begging, but we seem to be on the same page when she forces a hand between us, slides it down my abdomen, and wraps her fingers around my rock-hard erection. I suck in a sharp breath and almost come.

Too soon. Much too soon.

I lock my arms around her, hold her tight against me to keep her from moving. To keep her from creating friction. Once I have control over my body’s response again, I lean close and brush my mouth over her ear. Then I whisper her name.

She goes still a microsecond before her lids fly open and she whirls around to face me. But I am gone. Like a douche, I’ve broken the spell.

I jump back into her bathroom to make sure she’s okay. Shaken, she opens her shower curtain and wraps a towel around that delicious body. I’ve learned over the years to hide my form. Only a handful of people can see me when I’m incorporeal, but now I can hide even from them. Even from Dutch when I have to, though she seems to be able to feel when I’m near.

I don’t want to upset her, so I leave her a message on her mirror. In the steam, I write the letters DUTCH. Then I leave. I watch over her. I don’t spy. I don’t invade her space unless she summons me. But I stay close by.

The lead ends up just like all the others. Taking me on a wild goose chase. I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong.

I hear boots echoing around me. Around my corporeal body. I jump back to the long-term care facility and hear her talking to O’Connell, the guard set to watch me. She’s here. In the flesh. How the fuck did she find me? How did she figure out who I am?

I’m stunned as I settle back inside my own skin. It’s a tight fit. I’m not sure they’re feeding me well. I sense it the moment her gaze lands on me, and it feels like a jury is out for deliberation, deciding my fate with a few, precarious votes.

Does she recognize me? Does she like what she sees?

She steps closer and her warmth is intoxicating. The attraction even more so. I feel the pull of her interest. The rush of her desire. Her hip brushes my arm. Then her fingertips brush over my shoulder.

“Reyes Farrow,” she says, her voice cracking with emotion. “Please wake up. They are going to turn this machine off if you don’t. Do you understand? Can you hear me? We have three days.”

She leans closer and I can smell the coconut shampoo she uses. The exotic perfume she dusts lightly on her skin. The underlying scent of her feminine being. I fight the pressure building under the sheets with a mental curse. I can’t even smell her without getting hard, for fuck’s sake.

Then she makes it even harder. Not my cock, but my ability to order him down. She lowers her head and puts her mouth on mine. Her lips are sweet and warm, but the electricity that passes between us is like lightning.

Images rush at me and I can’t tell if they’re in my head or hers. I replay the last month. The nights we had together. The unimaginable pleasure. The sense of surrealism.

Then I remember that night so long ago when Earl was beating the shit out of me. When I lost consciousness for a split second. When I swam back to the surface and spotted her. Glared. Furious that anyone would see the truth. Livid that it was displayed so openly and under such garish lights.

But then I see her up close. Her gold eyes. Her soft mouth. And I am stunned that she is real.

She begins to faint beside me. I can’t help her without giving up the ruse. I feel her limbs go slack and her mind open. Her light swallows me. Soaks inside. Illuminates every dark corner of my psyche. And I remember everything. In one great wave of enlightenment, I remember it all.

I begin with the first time I see her. A shimmering light in the vast blackness of the universe. How many centuries ago was that? How long have I been waiting for her? She turns and smiles at me and I am lost.

I abandon my mission. The one where I’m supposed to be there when the light is born a human on earth. The one where I’m supposed to kill her, the vessel, and capture her soul. The light. The portal to heaven. The preeminent power that is inherent in her kind.

I’m supposed to wrap her soul up with a bow and lay it at my father’s feet. Not the retched human who pretended to be my father, but my real one. The one who sent me to strangle the vessel and capture the light for his own machinations.

Instead, I wait. I plan. I find a family and give up my memory, my identity, to be born on earth as a human as well. To be raised near her. To meet her on common ground.

We should have gone to school together. We should have been high school sweethearts. We should have lived happily ever after.

Apparently, my father didn’t appreciate my changing his plan, so he threw a killer wrench into mine by means of Earl Walker. That’s what happens when your dad is public enemy number one. It certainly explains a lot. But I am not my father’s son. I am nothing like him. I am not evil.

If my father wants a war, if Satan wants a war, he’ll have one. He never should have created me. He never should have stoked the fires of hell and forged such a ghastly thing. Such a despicable beast.

Dutch collapses and O’Connell helps her to a chair. She didn’t see those last images. She doesn’t know what I am, and I have no intention of letting her find out.