Jessa’s head started to whirl from watching all the rapid changes. “Using your ability doesn’t make you tired?”

“Just the opposite. I always feel terrific afterward. Hungry sometimes.” She nodded toward her husband. “Orangesicle Eyes here, on the other hand, can give himself a three-day migraine when he overdoes it.”

“My retinas sometimes take in more information than my brain can handle,” Paul explained. “That’s what triggers the headaches. Fortunately I’ve learned how to control the dilation of my pupils. I look with my ability only when I really need to see.”

“Can you see through things? Is that how you could tell no one was on the road this morning?” Jessa asked.

“No, my vision functions on line of sight, just like everyone else’s.” He pointed up. “But I can detect thermal disruption in the air from engine exhaust, body temperature, or any heat-producing source up to fifty miles away.”

“You both seem so normal,” Jessa said before she thought. “What I mean is, you seem to have accepted this so well.”

“I had some problems when I was younger,” Sarah said, her smile fading a little. “Every girl wants to be prettier, and God knows I’m not a beauty. I used an illusion to get the cutest guy on campus. I almost married him, until I decided a week before the wedding to have him meet the real Sarah to see if he really loved me or the illusion. He freaked out and accused me of giving him drugs. Then he spit in my face and left me.” She met Jessa’s gaze. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, in case you’re worried about bumping into me.”

“It was the best, too.” Paul reached over and took her hand in his. “You could have kept up the illusion for the rest of your lives. He would have never known.”

“Everything happens for a reason.” She smiled at her husband. “You’d think a guy with eagle eyes would take one look at me and run the other way, but this one didn’t.”

“I saw what was really beautiful.” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “First time you smiled at me, baby.”

Matthias rejoined them. When Jessa asked after Rowan, he said he had been unable to reach her, but left a message on her voice mail telling her about their new location.

“We’re not expecting anyone to come in for a week,” Sarah told Matthias as the men cleared the table. “Paul and I are going to make a run to town for supplies and maybe see a movie, so you’ll have the place to yourselves most of the day.”

“We’re going to see a movie?” Jessa heard Paul murmur to his wife as she joined him at the sink.

“Of course we are. That double feature sounds good.” She nudged him with her elbow, and in a lower, scolding tone added, “Some people need some alone time.”

Paul smiled at her. “Will you make out with me in the back row?”

“Keep it up, smart guy, and I’ll go as your grandmother,” Sarah warned.

The couple showed them to two adjoining rooms, and after setting out fresh linens and clean clothes, and telling them what they could find in the kitchen for lunch and dinner, the Clarks left for town in their old pickup.

Jessa retreated to the bathroom, where she showered and tried not to imagine Matthias doing the same in his. She should have been ready to drop, but now that they were alone she felt as if she’d arrived at some new and slightly terrifying place. The feeling didn’t go away when she wrapped herself in a big towel, came out into her bedroom, and looked at the adjoining door to his. It was locked on her side, so the choice was hers.

Just as he’d told her it would be.

He’d saved her life twice now. He’d protected her, first from GenHance and then from the monster that Bradford Lawson had become. He had brought her here, and wherever they were going next, she knew she’d be safe with him.

Gratitude didn’t make her release the dead bolt.

She’d loved Tag. He’d made everything fun, even the first time they’d made love, when he’d joked about letting her kick him in the groin afterward to make things even. A few years after losing him, she’d tried with other men, the ones she could bear to touch. She’d even considered taking Caleb as a lover until she’d discovered his guilty crush on Angela. Jessa knew what it was to wish, and to want, and to have, but she’d never known it with the intensity that Matthias brought out in her.

It wasn’t lust or loneliness that made her open the door. He’d come to her in her dreams, where she had fallen in love with him, and now she was awake, and she wanted him.

Jessa wasn’t surprised to see him standing just on the other side, wearing a towel around his hips.

“You should sleep.” His eyes never left her face.

He hadn’t dried off but dripped with water, as if he’d felt her there and walked out of the shower to meet her.

“I’m not tired.”

He didn’t move. “You have not truly looked inside me. There is more to me than what you have seen.”

“I know who you are.” She stepped over the threshold. “You’re a stranger, and a friend, and a protector. You’ve come to me in the night, in my dreams. Matthias, you’re the man I’m going to love for the rest of my life.”

He couldn’t seem to speak. His chest expanded as he inhaled, held the breath, and slowly released it. Then he knelt on one knee before her, and pressed his face into her abdomen, and wrapped his arms around her legs. She looked down at the sunlight gilding the wet, gleaming strands of his hair and put her hand to the back of his head, stroking it as the wonder of the moment shimmered over her.

No shadowlight. Only sunlight. Only love.

When he rose he lifted her, shifting his arms so that he supported her shoulders, and held her as he crossed the room. Placing her gently on the edge of the bed, he knelt again, smoothing his hands down her arms before he tugged free the fold that held the big towel around her.

Jessa kept her hands at her sides and hoped he liked what he saw.

He unwrapped her like a gift, lifting her a little to pull the towel free before he dropped it to the floor. A big hand splayed over her spine, and as he came up he eased her back, bracing himself over her on his elbows.

Jessa reached between them to pull away the last thing keeping their skin apart, and brushed the shaft of his stiff, thick penis with her knuckles as she pushed the towel over his buttocks until it slipped away. Matthias’s tense body shook as he bent his head, tasting her mouth with his.

The kiss was slow and soft and made lights dance inside her head.

She felt his hand stroke down the side of her body before he caught the back of her thigh and brought it up to cradle his hip. She did the same with the other, and forgot to breathe as she felt him nestling against her, the hot, straining knob of his cock pressing into the wet silk of her folds. She could feel her labia flowering open to him, caressing and enveloping him, and in reflex she tightened, holding him there a moment longer so she could savor, so she could remember.

Jessa didn’t realize her eyes were closed until he kissed one lid and then the other. She looked up at him, saw herself in his eyes, and lifted her face so she could give him her mouth as he gathered her up with his arm. She opened for his tongue, soothing the hard thrust of it with sweet strokes of her own, and then he drove inside her, wide and hard, deep and unstoppable.

That first, astonishing stroke seemed endless; he kept pressing in, taking and filling until some primal sound rose from her throat and he touched the heart of her sex. Celibacy had kept her almost as narrow and tight as she had been the first time, and the tender, vulnerable flesh inside her body contracted around him, trying to accommodate the ruthless penetration as well as hold him in place. The stretching, burning sensations within brought on a rush of simple, feminine fear. Could he feel how tightly they fit? Would he know how easily he could hurt her?

“You are as tender as a maiden.” He rolled onto his side, bringing her over onto hers and relieving some of the internal pressure. “Put your hands on my shoulders.”

Jessa slid her hands up and looked down as he put his hands over her breasts. The dark gold of his skin against the whiteness of hers made her arch against his palms, but when he worked his fingers over her, rubbing and squeezing and fondling with the same strange technique he had used on her feet, something unraveled inside her.

“You have very fine breasts,” he told her. “It will give me pleasure to watch our son suckle them.”

Strangely that thought aroused her as much as his touch. “I’m not pregnant.”

His mouth curved. “I will fuck you and give you my seed until you are.”

That outrageous statement dumbfounded Jessa. It also filled her with wild delight.

He moved his thumbs against the tight beads of her nipples, abrading them lightly before he lowered his head and took the left peak into his mouth. He dampened it with his tongue before he sucked, tugging with a firm rhythm that made her forget about the slight discomfort between her thighs and the slight motion of his shaft inside her.

The movement of his cock into the ellipse of her sex made the sound of a gentle kiss, and then a passionate one.

He eased his mouth away and draped her thigh over his hip, holding it there as he braced her. His other hand he wedged between them, pressing the tip of his middle finger into the split at the top of her mound. He quickly found the small ridge of her hood and pressed again, this time to expose her clit.

“Oh, God.” She jerked as he massaged her there, and drove herself down on his penis, working it deeper into her drenched sex.

“Do you hurt anymore?” he asked her, his jaw set.

Trembling on the brink of an orgasm, she shook her head and clutched at him. “Gaven, please.”

He rolled her onto her back, rocked his hips to spread her thighs wider, and stroked in deep. This time her sex accepted every hard inch he gave her, and pulled at him, eager and needy. He kept his thrusts slow but deep, the bed shaking under them from the heavy, powerful pistoning of his body into hers. He reached between them again to finger her clit, and that shoved her over the edge.