Better? he asked.

She nodded.

Tell me about it, he said. The nightmare. Maybe if you talk about what happened, it will make it go away.

She sighed. The nightmare doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality. I’m in the same warehouse where the shooting occurred, but in the dream, I’m lost and the gunman is chasing me, and that didn’t happen. I never make it out, and he always catches me. I see the barrel of his gun—that did happen—and he shoots me, and I fall. I always fall.

As he listened, he ran his fingers through her hair. The rhythmic caress soothed her like nothing else ever had. Her muscles went pliable and boneless. You called out a name, he said. I couldn’t make it out.

It took her a moment to think back, then she remembered.

Rodrigo, she replied. He’s a good friend on the police force. He and I are the only ones who survived. There were five of us—me and a team of four officers. We were going to take out a magic user who’d suffered some kind of psychotic break. We underestimated him. We thought he was relatively harmless. Everyone we talked to who knew him said so. We didn’t know he’d been stockpiling guns and ammunition.

Nikolas said quietly, Oh no.

We were talking him down—or so we thought—and then we went in to take him into custody, but he’d been playing with us and only pretending to go along with it. I was part of the team in case he decided to get slaphappy with magic spells, but instead, he opened fire on us the moment we stepped inside and came into range. He knew how to shoot. We were wearing bulletproof vests, and he still killed three of us with headshots. He’d been preparing.

Nikolas ran his hand along her torso, touching the scar high on her shoulder, and the other one in her abdomen. He caught you along the edges of your vest.

She nodded. Rodrigo took him out. He did CPR on me until the ambulances arrived. He saved my life.

As she told the last of her tale, he pressed his lips to her forehead and didn’t move again for several moments. He murmured, After what you’ve gone through, you still fling yourself at danger.

No, she said tiredly. I fling myself at situations that may or may not be dangerous. I help a dog at the side of the road. I give a bunch of homeless guys a roof over their heads.

He brought fingers to her lips, stroking them lightly. You run into a pub to save a screaming woman. You run straight toward thirty attacking Hounds.

It’s just a thing, she whispered. It’s no big deal. It’s who I am. You ran into the pub too.

I ran into the pub because you were there, he said.

She refused to let that divert her. She told him, You would have done the same thing if I hadn’t been. When those two Hounds were attacking Cael, you ran toward them, not away. It’s the same thing, Nik. We’re more alike than not, at least about that.

He rolled her onto her back, came on top of her, and put his elbows on either side of her shoulders, the fingers of his hands laced together at the top of her head. She felt enclosed, surrounded. Instead of feeling trapped, it felt comforting and good. The rightness of it hurt more than almost anything else she had ever experienced.

“I’ve lost so many people,” he breathed against her lips. “So many people, my Sophie. I think of their names and their faces until sometimes I think I’ve become nothing more than a remembrance hall that bears witness to each of their stories and how they ended. That part of me is threadbare and worn to the bone, and until you showed up, I thought I didn’t have it in me to care about anyone else again. But now I do, and yes, I’m struggling, because I don’t think I could take losing you too.”

Before, in the courtyard, pain had driven her side of the conversation, but now as she listened to him, compassion moved her to stroke his back. She murmured, “I thought we were taking a time-out.”

“I lied,” Nikolas said, and he kissed her.

She lost herself in the sensation of his mouth moving on hers, the weight of his body, the warmth radiating off his skin. Desire hit her low and hard. Her body felt empty and aching, and as she bent her knee, sliding her foot along his leg, his cock stiffened into a hard, thick length that pressed against her hip.

I’m going to walk away from you after this, she whispered in his head as she slipped her hand around his erection and squeezed him. Hissing against her mouth, he thrust his hips forward, sliding his cock against her palm. This is the last time, Nik. I swear it.

We’ll walk away from each other, he promised. He slanted his mouth over hers, kissing her with such wild heat, a moan trembled on her lips. He swallowed it down, thrusting deep with his tongue while he ran his fingertips along the edge of her panties. The light touch left a trail of fiery sensation in its wake. As soon as I get you out of my system, I’m gone.

The bastard was telling the truth. Furiously she bit his lip, and a gasp shuddered through him. So he was going to leave as soon as he got her out of his system. Fine. Two could play at that game.

At least now she knew what this was, she thought. It was (tremendous, mind-blowing, screaming, utterly fantastic, wildly pleasurable, heartbreaking) sex.

She would cut him off before he did it to her. This was the very last time, so she grew determined to make the most of it. Pushing against his shoulder, she urged him to lie on his back, and he complied, pushing back the covers as he stretched out on the bed.

Rising on one elbow, she did what she had wanted to do ever since the first time they had been together. She ran her lips down his body, learning by feel each muscle and hollow, the whorl of hair around his flat, male nipples, the vein that ran down his bicep. She ran the tip of her tongue around the curve of his belly button while he tensed his long, flat stomach with a hiss.