I bolted upright. “What? How could you possibly know when I lost my virginity?”

When I pinched him, he laughed soflty and pretended to be in pain. We both knew better.

“I felt it,” he said at last. “I felt something wrong, so I went to you. I’d only just realized you were real. And I thought you were in trouble.”

“Trouble?” I asked, thinking back. Freddie hadn’t forced himself on me in the least. If it was anyone’s idea, it’d been mine. But still, truth be told … “Yeah, I think Freddie had a lot more fun that night than I did.”

He snorted. “I can guarantee you he did.”

“I can’t believe—you’re a Peeping Tom.”

“Hey,” he said, sliding out of the melancholy, “you practically summoned me to your side. I was there in an observatory capacity only. You know, should you have needed me. Or wanted a threesome.”

I lay beside him. “I didn’t know you and the Big Bad were one and the same back then. I fell in love with you that night. The first night I saw you.”

“So did I,” he said, his face so impossibly handsome, his tone so impossibly sincere.

“I mean it, Reyes. I did.”

“As did I.”

I scoffed softly. “You didn’t seem very in love.” It had been such a horrible night when I threw a brick through Earl Walker’s kitchen window to stop him from beating Reyes. A beautiful teenaged boy with shimmering brown eyes and thick, dark hair. It still broke my heart to think about it.

Reyes stiffened. “You’re not feeling sorry for me, are you?”

“I’m sorry for what you went through.”

“Water under the bridge.”

“Reyes,” I said, raising a hand to his cheek, “no matter what happens, I love you.”

His brows knitted for just a moment before he answered. “I love you more.”

“Nope. Wanna wrestle for it?”

“For?”

“The championship. Who loves who more?”

He glanced up as though in thought, then whispered so quietly I barely heard him, “You are so going down.”

And before I knew it, I was pinned to the bed. For about the tenth time that evening.

“You cheated,” I accused as he held me down.

“Son of Satan,” he said by way of explanation.

He had a point.

* * *

Reyes and I were still talking and laughing the next morning when we heard Cookie rush into the apartment. Fortunately, I’d already made coffee, so she stopped for a cup while I hurried to the bathroom for my robe.

“I’m going to hit the shower,” Reyes said as I walked out. He stepped in front of me, his sleek body shimmering in the low morning light. “Hopefully, your aunt will visit. Surely one Davidson is as good as the other.”

I gasped and wrapped my hands around his hips. Caressed his ass. Marveled that it was mine.

“Does it bother you that I’m still going by Davidson? I mean, after we got married, there was just no time before we had to rush to the convent, to holy ground. And then we were stuck there for eight months, and I never worried about it. Then with Beep and the amnesia.”

“You’ve been a little busy,” he said, a playful grin tilting the corners of his mouth. “But, no, it’s doesn’t bother me. I think it’s for the best for now.”

“Why?”

“If we keep everything in your name, it’ll be easier should anything happen to me.”

I stepped back. “Reyes, you keep saying that. What the hell? Is there something I need to know?”

“No.” He reached out, grabbed the lapel of my robe, and pulled me closer. “It’s just, you’re a god, Dutch. You will outlive me. My physical body, anyway.”

Having just gotten an answer I’d been hoping for, I stood rather dumbfounded. He truly did not know he was a god.

What would it do to him, to learn he was created from one of the gods of Uzan? How would he feel knowing he, essentially, had caused the death and destruction of millions of beings on hundreds of worlds? My chest tightened around my heart with the mere thought, and I wondered for the thousandth time if it would change him. If he would revert back to his old ways like an addict who falls off the wagon.

And then something else hit me. “What did you say?”

“You’ll outlive me.”

“No. About everything being—”

“—in your name. Yes. Didn’t I mention that?”

“Are you talking about your money?”