“In what way?”

“You’d been through a lot. Losing your dad.”

“True, but—”

“A difficult delivery.”

“Most deliveries at the bottom of wells are.”

“Losing your stepmother.”

“Now you’re just reaching.”

“Having to give up your own child.”

I stared at him a long moment. “That one killed. I’ll be honest. But I wasn’t the only one who had to give up a child that day. And it wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was. Partly.”

“No, Reyes, it wasn’t. And that can’t be what I felt on the plane. What else? What made you distance yourself from me?”

“Fuck, Dutch. I don’t know,” he said, growing frustrated. “We’d been through so much, I wanted to give you some time to think about everything.”

“Like what?”

“Us,” he said point-blank. “I wanted you to be able to reevaluate us without having me crowd you. Suffocate you.”

What the hell was he even talking about? Was this one of those “it’s not you, it’s me” lines? “And by reevaluate, you mean our relationship?”

His jaw flexed, but he said nothing.

“First, why would I want to? And second, even if you were suffocating me, you know I’m into erotic asphyxiation.”

He was over me at once. Like a predator. Like a powerful cat preparing to devour its dinner. His heat soaked into every molecule in my body. Fueling it. Nurturing it. He wrapped an arm around me and lowered me to the ground. I looked over at Cookie. Or where Cookie should have been.

“She left.”

“Oh.”

He braced himself on an elbow, keeping one hand on my hip, as we sank to the floor. I collapsed underneath him. Reveled in his gaze. Basked in his presence, because it was quite a sight.

“So, back to this,” I said, dragging myself out of my musings. “Why would I want to reevaluate our marriage?”

He dropped his gaze to my stomach. He’d lifted the hem of my sweater and splayed his fingers across my abdomen. His touch sent tiny quakes of pleasure shooting through me.

“Because you saw me.”

“Come again?”

He curled his fingers, digging the tips softly into my flesh, causing another quake of pleasure deep in my gut. “You saw the real me, and I realized how I must look to you.”

His full mouth, the exotic angles of his face, a curl resting along a cheek. These were the things artists craved to paint.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice thick. “I see you every day.”

“No.” He ran his fingers up my shirt and under my bra, brushing the tips over a nipple.

A sting of arousal spiked inside me.

“In New York,” he continued. “When you first saw me after you lost your memory.” He lowered his hand, brushing it back over my abdomen. Pulling away again. “You were horrified.”

Lifting my own hand, I ran my fingertips over his sensuous mouth. “If that’s what you believe, then you don’t truly understand the word horrified. I could never be horrified by you.”

He graced me with a sad smile. “And yet you were.”

I rose up onto my elbows. “Reyes, I woke up with no memory of who I was or what I could do. The first departed I saw almost caused me to seize. I was terrified.”

He winced but recovered quickly. “I can imagine.”

“But that first time you walked in, Reyes Farrow…” I lay down again, draped an arm over my forehead, and thought back. “My god. You honestly have no idea how magnificent you are, do you?”

He scoffed and lay on his arm beside me, but kept his hand on my abdomen, lowering it ever so slowly, leaving heat trails across my skin. “Your expression would’ve suggested otherwise.”

“You’re right.” I turned over to face him and laid my head on my arm, too, the plastic crinkling beneath us. “And you’re wrong.”

“I’m talented that way,” he said, sliding his knuckles over my belly button.

“You walked in, and because I couldn’t quite control the shift from this plane to the next, I was straddling both at that time. All I see is this darkly fierce, insanely powerful being that is not entirely human, but not entirely otherworldly, either. He’s like a panther and an otherworldly assassin all rolled into one. He oozes power and stealth and grace and”—I lowered my gaze—“and sex, so much so that I’m afraid of what I will do around him. Around you.” I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth. “My attraction to you was so instant and so visceral, like I had a rope inside me, and it had been anchored to you the whole time. And the minute I saw you, something tugged it. Pulled it tight. The world spun around me, and I was so afraid I would melt into a puddle.” I let my gaze wander back to his. “Reyes, I was awestruck.”