I let my energy wash over him. Let it explore the hills and valleys of his muscles as they contracted and released under my touch. I felt the smoothness of his skin, the hardness of the muscles underneath, the tautness of his abdomen. Lower and lower until I was rewarded with a telltale rush of blood.

He sucked in air through his teeth when I grazed his erection. The sense of accomplishment was heady, but I wanted more. I wanted inside him like he’d been inside me. I wanted to make him come from the inside out. I wanted to make him writhe in ecstasy. Beg for release. But he’d put up a guard. A mental block of some kind. Always wary of what I might see if he let me in.

That was hardly fair.

I sharpened my touch. Let my fingernails bite into his flesh. Coaxed and urged him to let me in. His arms were resting above his head, and he curled his hands into fists. Clenched his jaw.

“Dutch,” he said in warning.

I said nothing back. I wasn’t sure if I could. But I pushed again, opening his legs, and let my energy pulse over his body in electric waves. He threw back his head, pressing it into the pillow as his fingers became entangled in the sheets around him.

And he lowered his guard.

The moment he did, I entered him. Our energies collided in a rush of sensuous elation, the atoms pushing and pulling until the friction built to nuclear levels. He arched his back and fought me, each of us struggling to get the upper hand, to send the other over the edge first.

At the same time I was exploring him, he was exploring me. It took me a moment to realize part of what I was feeling was my own skin being caressed. My own fires being stoked. His energy brushed over me and around me and into me like liquid smoke, fusing with every particle in my body as he stirred the arousal crackling inside me. I felt his hunger, hot and urgent between my legs, raw and powerful. The air in my lungs thickened as a series of aching spasms grew stronger with each beat of my heart, siphoning me closer and closer until a white-hot orgasm burst inside me, crashing and tumbling and reeling.

I’d gotten lost in my own swelling desire, but it seemed my climax was all Reyes needed to release his own firestorm. His muscles tensed around me as I felt the sweet sting of his climax spill onto his stomach, the evidence warm on his abdomen.

I felt him claw at his sheets as the orgasm coursed through him, ebbing only for a microsecond until it spiked again in time with his racing pulse. After a few agonizing moments, it slowly ebbed, leaving only Reyes’s labored breathing in its wake. He’d had a death grip on his sheets. He disentangled his fingers and ran them over his face before covering it with one arm.

He spoke to me then, his deep voice husky, spent. “Come sleep with me.”

When I didn’t answer, again unsure if I even could, he rose to clean himself off. I could see him more clearly now, but my touch was still more sensitive in this state than my sight. Something I’d have to work on, would have to strengthen like a muscle.

I stayed with him until he crawled back into bed and dragged a sheet haphazardly over his bottom half. Then he pressed his hand against the wall, and his lids drifted shut almost immediately. Just before I left, he whispered it again. “Come sleep with me.”

But he was out. It was odd sensing everything about him and yet not actually seeing him with my eyes but only in my mind’s eye. I could suddenly understand why, when he was growing up, he never knew if I was real or not. He’d thought I was a dream. That was exactly how this felt. Dreamlike. Real and yet not real. Tangible and yet untouchable, as though he would slip through my fingers if I actually tried get hold of him. But I’d done just that. Touched him. Caressed him. Milked him until he came.

I fell asleep immersed in his essence, in his taste and texture and earthy scent. I also fell asleep with my hand against the wall, his heat warming my palm not six inches away from his.

8

Clothes? sufficient

Keys? found ’em

Coffee cup? full

Sanity? sanity?

—T-SHIRT

I woke up what seemed like seconds later to a hand over my mouth, and that’s just never a pleasant way to wake up. Alarm spiked so fierce and so fast, Reyes was there instantly, incorporeally, engulfed in his black robe. It grew like a tidal wave around me, and I heard the sing of a blade being drawn. But I didn’t know what was happening. I held up a hand to stop him, trying to gain my bearings. A man in a black ski mask stood over me, a gun in his right hand, the tip of which was lodged against my left temple. A fact that made me very uncomfortable.

Reyes growled, and I could feel his visceral need to slice through the man, to overtake him. He pushed it back. Swallowed it down. But it wasn’t easy, and his control wouldn’t last long. Which meant I didn’t have long.

I forced myself to relax, to control my reactions, and sought the intruder’s intentions. Did he want me dead? If so, I was about to unleash an enraged son of Satan on his ass. But I recognized the reason for his presence instantly. He was carrying out orders. I could feel obligation, along with a disturbing sense of enjoyment, rush through him. He was a messenger, a fact that raised the question, whom was the message from?

The man laid a piece of paper on my chest, then used that hand to clutch my throat. “You have forty-eight hours to find out where they’re keeping her or your friend dies.” He shoved into me, crushing my larynx and jamming the barrel into my temple as a warning. “And no cops.” He shoved again, pushing off me; then he was gone.

Only as he was leaving did I realize there were two of them. They bolted through my bedroom door, having no idea how close they’d come to having their spines severed.

I coughed and drew in a deep breath as Reyes’s robe disappeared. He rushed to me. “Who the fuck was that?”

I held my neck, tested my throat with a quick swallow. “I have no idea. But I’m okay.”

“Like hell you are.”

“Wait, my friend?”

Dread sent a rush of adrenaline shooting up my spine. I jumped up and ran to Cookie’s apartment. She’d locked it, thank God. I pounded on the door, then went back for my key, but she opened the door before I could find it.

“Charley!” she said, hurrying forward. “What happened?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Cookie glanced around, wondering why she wouldn’t be.

“Amber,” I said a second before scrambling to Cookie’s apartment to check her room.

Cookie was right behind me, as was a flesh and blood Reyes Farrow. He’d thrown on a pair of jeans and come out of his apartment. I opened Amber’s bedroom door and turned on the light. She was sound asleep, her long dark hair tumbling over her pillow like a princess from a fairy tale.

Cookie whispered behind me. “Charley, what? What’s going on?”

I turned off the light and closed the door. “I’m so sorry, Cook. Two men just broke into my apartment.”

“Why the fu—?” Reyes began, his voice loud enough to wake Amber.

“Reyes,” I said in a breathy hiss, “not here.” He was angry with me once again. Men and their mood swings. Women had nothing on them.

I led them both back to my apartment, and the minute I closed the door, he tore into me. “What the fuck was that?”

He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the button on his jeans had yet to be fastened, so it took me a minute to respond. “What? They threatened a friend. They said if I didn’t find some chick in forty-eight hours, my friend was dead.”

“And?” he asked, getting closer to me. His anger undulated around me, hot and pulsing.