“True, but work with me here.” I got excited. This could be just the ticket. “I could tell you I have a secret that I couldn’t tell you, but then you’d know I had a secret so it would all be out in the open and no one would feel guilty or left out of the loop, et cetera, et cetera.”

“You don’t think that would defeat the purpose of revealing a secret?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

He cleared his throat, and I had a sneaking suspicion he was trying not to laugh. His hand, the one he’d slipped under my sweater again, slid up my spine, his splayed fingers scorching my skin, infusing it with warmth. “Okay, let’s give it a shot.”

I wiggled closer in excitement. I thought about the things I’d been keeping close to my heart. The first secret, the super-big biggie, the monstrosity of all monstrosities, was of course his godly status. I was keeping it because, well, he was created using the energy of an evil god, so I wasn’t sure what would happen when I told him. And the second was the god glass. Similar reasons. Different outcome. Besides, the god glass was the heart of my backup plan.

Now that I knew what he was, I understood so much. I could feel his power. It pulsated out of him in waves. It was raw and turbulent and dynamic. He was so much more than just supernatural, and now that I knew, it made sense.

He was a force. A maelstrom. A nuclear reactor. And such power was often wild. Unpredictable and uncontrollable. I simply needed to know more. Unfortunately, there was only one entity I could think of who grew up in the same neighborhood, who knew more about Reyes than anyone else on this plane: Osh’ekiel.

I would tell Reyes eventually, but I needed to do a little digging first.

“All right,” I said, swallowing hard, “I have two secrets I can’t tell you.” I fell back and spread my arms, one landing on his face. Quite on purpose. “Whew. Boy, do I feel better getting that off my chest. Oh, wait.” I thought a moment. Technically the fact that I hadn’t told him that Satan had somehow trapped him when he was in evil-god mode could count as a third secret. “Cancel that. I have three. Sorry.”

He bit the arm that was still lying across his face softly, making me giggle like a schoolgirl. I rolled closer.

After I nestled beside him again, he said, “Three, huh? That’s a lot of secrets.”

“True, but at least now you know I have them and that I’ll tell you when I can. The minute I can. No, the microsecond I can. So, what about you?”

“Hmmm,” he said, thinking aloud. “I guess I just have one. No.” He thought again, drawing it out until I was on the verge of chewing my nails off. “Two. Yeah, technically I have two.”

I stared, crestfallen. “You’re keeping two secrets from me?”

He laughed out loud. “You’re keeping three from me.”

“But—” I rose onto my palms. “But what are they? Why are you keeping them from me?”

For the barest hint of a moment, sadness flashed across his face. It was mostly in the eyes. The tiniest slip. The barest hint. But he recovered instantly and grinned again. “I knew this wouldn’t work.”

Dread spread through me. Reyes didn’t get sad. Reyes got mad. He became stone. He plotted and planned and worked until no matter what the problem was, he knew how to solve it. But sadness? Was it something he couldn’t control? Something he could do nothing about? Inevitable?

But the whole reason for this was to form a stronger bond. To trust one another even when we couldn’t tell the other, for whatever reason, what that secret may be.

“No, you’re right. It’ll work. Thank you for telling me.” I lay back down and focused on the hand at my back. At least he was touching me. “I was worried,” I said, reveling in the feel of him.

“About what?”

“The fact that you haven’t touched me in over a week.”

“I explained that.”

“I know, but—”

“Dutch, you deserve so much better than me.”

Glaring up as hard as I could, I said, “You either have an inflated opinion of me or a distorted opinion of yourself. I think it’s both. I think the only way we are going to settle this once and for all is”—I shifted onto him, raised his shirt, and dipped my hands down his pants—“to work it out until we are too exhausted to argue.”

I slid my hand down his rock-hard abdomen and wrapped my fingers around his erection. Every muscle in his body turned to marble. He clenched the hand at my back into a fist as I pushed all the way down to the base of his cock. I massaged and kneaded until I felt the familiar rush of blood beneath my fingers.