“No,” I moaned, but it was only so he could send his lips over me, biting gently at my neck, leaving little spots of sensation at my breast, and dropping lower, making me gasp as he found my middle. My fingers could almost reach him, and with a desperate sigh, I found him, bringing him tense as he rose again to my breast, nibbling, pulling, tugging, driving me crazy until I moved my hips suggestively against him, luring him into finding a common motion.

He shuddered as my hands left him, but his lips gave way to the hint of teeth. My grip on his shoulders spasmed, and he bore down harder. Delirious with passion, I moaned, and he came within an inch of too much.

Legs wrapped around him, I reached to find him, guiding him to me, head thrown back when he slipped inside me once more, an instant of coolness dissolving into heat.

“Oh God, yes,” I moaned, my hands making a soft pop as they hit his back. He found my mouth, and I almost died as we kissed, his hands massaging my breast and our rhythm becoming demanding. I could not . . . think . . . and with a groan, I felt the first hints of my passion climaxing. “Trent,” I gasped, trying to let him know. It was too soon. I wanted this to last, but I couldn’t help it. He was . . . he was . . . “Oh God, Trent!”

My eyes opened, lips parted as I felt him climax. “No,” he groaned, clearly wanting us to share this, but it tipped me over the edge, and I cried out, clutching him to me as wave after wave crashed through us both.

With a guttural groan, Trent pushed deeper as ecstasy swept through us both, ebbing and flowing like the tides of ever-after until it was spent, leaving nothing but a contented shush of emotion.

Breath harsh, I realized it was over. I could hardly move. I didn’t want to. He was warm on me, and it was the most content I’d been in a long, long time. I cracked open an eyelid to find my hair in my face. Trent was propped up over me, a masculine shadow through my curls.

I opened the other eye. Now I could see him, the sweat a sheen on his muscles, the lines of him all the way down to where we were still joined.

Oh. My. God. What had we done?

Trent grunted, jerking as I tensed under him. “Ow. Rachel?” he said, his calm voice flowing through me. “You can panic in a minute, but please don’t move just yet.” He winced. “Please?” I exhaled, embarrassment a brief flash.

I could still taste him on my lips. My heart thudded in my chest. I had just had sex with Trent. Really good sex. I sent my eyes over him, beginning to relax as I looked at the lines of his muscles. Well, of course it had been good sex. We’d both been thinking about it for almost two years. Arm lethargic, I raised it to touch his skin. His expression shifted, and he lost his pinched expression.

“That’s better,” he said, smiling as he leaned down to give me a tender kiss.

Not caring what happened next, I tilted my head up to return it. I was exhausted, but my mind was whirling. I didn’t know what to think. The mystics were somnolent, quiet at last.

“Stop thinking,” Trent demanded, his lips lightly touching me with his words. “Can this couch hold two?”

“Um . . .” He began to move, and I reached up to grab him, holding us together as he eased down to lie beside me. Slowly he lost his wince. I still hadn’t let go yet.

“Yes, it can,” he said in relief, finding a comfortable position to wait it out. He was smiling at me, inches away, and I suddenly felt shy. “Hi,” he said, tucking a strand of hair back.

“Sorry about that,” I said, eyes on the red mark I’d put in his shoulder. “It’s been a while. Um, the better it is, the longer it might take.” But he knew that. I was babbling.

“There’s a compliment in there, I think.” He was arranging my hair, delighting in it. “I see what you’re thinking, and nothing is going to change unless you want it to.”

But I was looking at his eyes, and I could tell that he wanted things to change. A quick stab of panic knifed through me, and I sat up, pinned between the couch and him.

“Ow!” Trent exclaimed as he pulled from me. “Rachel, we need to work on this timing thing.”

Pressing back into the cushions, I dragged the afghan to cover myself. There was a horse looking in the window at us. “How can you say that?” I prompted, scooting an inch farther away from him, but seeing as he was between me and the floor, it didn’t make much difference. “Nothing is going to change. You know that’s wishful thinking. We just had sex, and I’m not going to say it was a mistake and pretend it didn’t happen!”

Trent sat up, elbows on his knees as he collected himself. “That’s not what I meant. And I’d hate to think you thought it was a mistake.” He wedged his shoes off, then his pants. Leaning across the space between us, he put a hand on my neck, drawing me in to give me a reassuring kiss. “Everything will be fine.”

I began to realize that Trent was sort of an all-or-nothing kind of man, and I apparently had slipped into the all category. I think he had touched me more—loosened up on his iron-clad calm distance—in the last five minutes than he had the entire last year. My slight headache began to dissipate. This . . . might work out. I needed to be touched, and he needed to touch someone.

“Sure,” I said, more glum than angry. “Easy for you to say. You’ve got a big fence around your house. I’ve got news crews two streets off.”

His hand trailing from me raised goose bumps. “And pixies pulling their transmission plugs,” he said, head tilted to me. “God, you’re beautiful. How could I have been so stupid? Thank you for waiting for me to smarten up.”

I hesitated, my hand atop his as he touched my cheek. I thought about camp. Perhaps the seeds of understanding had been planted there.

He leaned into me, our heads touching. “You weren’t the only one who was scared,” he said, his lips inches from mine. “I don’t like easy, but this might be the toughest sell I’m ever going to have to make.” He pulled back, the determination I remembered slipping back behind his eyes. “Because I’m never going to let you go, Rachel. I don’t care how much you push me away because you’re scared. I’ll just hold you until you get over it.”

I put my arms around him and breathed him in. It was what I wanted. But he was right: we were going to have to fight for it. “What are we going to do?”

He sighed, the sound of relief in him a clear indication that he had heard the depth of my commitment. We were going to do this. It was going to happen. The only question was how much collateral damage we were going to leave behind. “Take it one day at a time,” he said, making it sound easy.

We parted, the first hints of unease shifting about me as reality pushed out the glow he’d filled me with. I’d just lost a steady paycheck, because I couldn’t work for him anymore. Damn it, I was going to be doing his security for free. “And today?” I asked, fiddling with the tassels on the afghan.

He turned, looking as collected and together as if he were in a three-piece suit. Jeez, how did he do that? “Today, I am stuck in the Hollows without my cell phone. Fortunately Jenks has a box of clothes.”

I nodded. “In my closet. Top shelf. Help yourself.” But he knew that already. He stood, and I looked up at him, trying to be polite but not doing very well. He was a beautiful, beautiful man. A smile crossed my face at the memory of what his skin felt like. It was all I could do not to touch him right now—now that I could.

Trent scooped up his pants and turned. Smiling, he extended a hand to help me up. I sort of fell into him, and tingles sparkled where we touched as he kissed me lightly, rekindling my passion, promising that it wasn’t a onetime affair. “We will find a way to fix this without the demons,” he said, and my current trouble came crashing back. “We just have to break it down to its smallest component and work from there. You want the shower first?”

My hold on his fingers tightened and I pulled him to the hall. “It’s not as big as yours, but it can still hold two.” I couldn’t bear the thought of not being with him right now. I was afraid if we parted, even for a moment, that I’d wake up to find it was a dream.

He followed behind me, scooping up his shoes as he went and tossing them to the door. “That’s good to know.”

And then our talk turned to what we had in the fridge as I soaped his back and he lathered my hair, delighting in its length when it was wet and how the water turned it to a darker shade. This was either the smartest thing I’d ever done, or the dumbest. Trouble was, I wouldn’t know until it all fell apart or we made it stick.

Please, God. I’d do just about anything to not be alone ever again, I prayed, and the mystics hummed, their thoughts unclear and walled off from me.

One thing I knew was one hundred percent sure was that he was right. Nothing had to change unless we both wanted it to. My toothbrush was staying right where it was, but as I looked at him and the way the water sheeted off the smooth lines of his muscles and the memory of his passion arced through me, I thought I might buy an extra one.

Just in case.

Twenty-Three

Trent? Never mind. I found one,” I said, breezing into the kitchen with a legal pad I’d found stuffed in the back of my closet. Ivy had them, sure, but I was tired of looking like a pantser all the time. I could plan stuff, too.

Trent spun from the cooling rack, looking guilty as he rubbed crumbs from his fingers. “You’re a three-cookie man, huh?” I said as I found a black marker, and he grinned sheepishly.

“Five, actually. Chocolate chip are my weakness.” The cookie broke, and he lurched to catch it, looking totally accessible in the colorful silk shirt he’d borrowed from Jenks. The cuffs of his jeans were rolled up and he was barefoot, which all but pegged my meter. He looked different, but his mannerisms were as collected as always. In the background, the dryer was a contented hum. I didn’t even care since it had his socks in it.

Smiling, I got a plate. We’d been sketching out our plans in the back living room since there was less chance of being spotted by a roving news crew, and I could use a couple of cookies myself. “Where do you put it?” I asked as I intentionally bumped into him.

“High metabolism.” Ears turning red, he stacked cookies on the plate. “Mmmm, these are good. No wonder Al likes them.”

“They’re worth their weight in spells in the ever-after.” Content, I added to the pile. The world was imploding outside the stone walls of my church, and I didn’t care. “Too bad they don’t last more than an hour. Did you know that the demon who owns the coffeehouse connected to your dad’s vault drew up a contract for a supply of reality-made coffee?”

“Really?”

I nodded, remembering having shoved it into my pocket before going to talk to Newt. Al had looked at it later, tossing it into his fire after pronouncing it grossly one-sided. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up.

Sure enough, Trent was thinking as he leaned against the counter beside my dissolution vat of salt water. His ankles crossed, and I almost forgot how to breathe. Damn, he looked good. “The cookies get eaten that fast?”

“They pick up burnt amber that fast,” I said, taking up the plate and snagging the legal pad on my way to the back living room. Trent followed, either me or the cookies. I didn’t care which. He was here and it felt right—even if several mystics had just brought me an image of my human neighbor boarding up her basement windows.

It was the sight of our papers, notes, and scribbled plans wadded up and thrown into the black fireplace that brought reality crashing back. Between David’s street force and Ivy’s contacts, Edden had found Landon and Ayer holed up in a pre-Turn mortuary just inside the Hollows. They were twenty minutes, and a whole lot of planning, away. Edden and the out-of-state I.S. troops who’d been sent to enforce our quarantine were going to subdue Landon and Ayer shortly after midnight, but getting the mystics from there to the Goddess was up to me.

Or us, rather, I thought, feeling like I was a part of something important as I pushed aside the map of Cincinnati to make room for the cookies. I dropped the legal pad, accidentally blowing Jenks from my last scratchings. Grimacing, the pixy dropped down to stand on the paper and tap his sword tip against it in thought. After an afternoon of popcorn, cold cuts, and Trent’s tart lemonade, we had a workable plan on how to get the mystic splinter from the mortuary to the Loveland ley line, but it relied heavily on Edden’s ability to clear the roads. Trent’s copter was out as everything had been grounded, and much to Trent’s hidden dismay, his money wasn’t buying what it used to.

“I don’t know, Rache,” Jenks said, tapping the paper, and I took a cookie before pushing the plate to Trent when he sat down across from me on Ivy’s couch. “There’s a lot of ifs there. I mean, first, you’re relying on the I.S. and FIB to get us in.”

“Assumption number one,” I said, snapping a cookie between my teeth.

“We let the mystics out,” Jenks said as he rose up a bare inch and hovered backward to tap the second line.

“Assuming they’re there and we can do it,” Trent said, pulling the legal pad closer.

“The FIB clears the streets and you run to the Loveland ley line trailing mystics.” Scowling, Jenks tapped the number three. “And the Goddess takes them.” Sword tip pressed, he tore a line under the last item on the list. “This is the best plan we got, but it still sucks.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” I said, not liking that Felix okayed the outside I.S. agency to come in and help. I understood not wanting the mess in Cincinnati to spill over into the rest of the state, much less the country, but we had this.