“You’re ahead of me already,” he murmured. “I’ve never bought furniture.”

“Sometimes you luck out.” She couldn’t keep her smile going for very long. “Anyway, coming back here feels just like being in that store. It’s nothing but a space crammed with useful objects I don’t feel connected to. Except … I live here.”

When he didn’t say anything, she looked his way. “I’d give you a tour, but …”

Murhder came at her on long powerful strides and she was ready for him, lifting her mouth for his kiss, throwing her arms around him. They were desperate and rough with the scrubs they’d borrowed, yanking, pulling, throwing, and then they were on that anonymous couch she’d gotten so many years ago with a different man.

Who turned out to be a stranger.

Her hands stroked through Murhder’s downy soft short hair. Then she ran them down to his shoulder blades. Caressed the ridges of muscle that wound themselves like rope around his torso. Gripped his hips.

As she split her legs and offered herself to him, he thrust in hard, going deep, making her cry out.

The rhythm was punishing. Just as she wanted it to be.

She was hoping that if the sex was heavy-duty enough, it would make it impossible for him to erase their last time together.

Murhder felt Sarah arch as he penetrated her core. He was too rough, he knew he was being too rough … but he couldn’t stop, and she didn’t want him to. She was talking in his ear, begging …

“Harder … do me harder.”

He pulled her leg up, and shifted the angle, going even deeper. And as he pounded into her, the sofa moved across the rug, leaving tracks in the nap. Something fell with a crash. Her hair tangled.

She orgasmed. He did. They did together.

He wanted it to last forever. But the sex was over way too soon.

To make sure he didn’t crush her—something he always worried about—he put his weight on the arm of the sofa, and he stroked her hair back. Her honey-colored eyes were sad even as her face was flushed from the pleasure and the exertion.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

As they both became very still and very silent, her eyes searched his face. “Don’t do it. Don’t take my memories from me.”

“I have to—”

“Says who?” she cut in. “I promise I will not reveal anything I saw or learned. I don’t even know where that training center is. I am going to go my own way and will never bother the race again. I swear to it.”

“Sarah …”

“Listen to me. If you take my memories, you’re the only one who suffers. That’s not fair. But more than that, if I can’t be with you? Let us be united in our grieving. Let us be together that way.”

“It’s easier for you if I—”

“I don’t want easy. I want you. And if I can’t have you, then I want to remember you for the rest of my life. Besides, you’re taking something that doesn’t belong to you in service to people who you’re no longer tied to.”

“I don’t care about them. All I’m thinking about is how much I’m going to miss you—and how I can spare you that.”

“Don’t do it. You have my word. I will not look for you. I will not look for them. So in this regard, no one will ever know.” She held up his necklace with its sacred shard of glass. “But I will know who gave me this. And I will know who loved me.”

Murhder sat back, his softening arousal slipping from her and hating the cold of the outside. As she closed her legs and tucked them up, she pulled the throw blanket she’d just folded over her nakedness, and though he wanted her warm, he hated that he could not see her body.

“I’ve taken some of your memories already, Sarah.”

She sat up. “When? And which ones.”

Murhder looked across the sofa. She was upset and he didn’t blame her. And instead of explaining, he entered her mind with his will and found the patches, releasing them.

She hissed and dropped her head into her hands as if it ached. After a moment, she raised her eyes to level again. “The FBI agent. Who came by my house and asked me about Gerry.”

“I couldn’t risk you contacting him while you were entering our world. I didn’t know what your motivations were and there was too much risk. Too much to be exposed.”

“Is there anything else that you hid?”

“No.”

She seemed to wait for him to say something. When he didn’t, she murmured, “You’re not going to do it, are you.”

He had to look away. His ties to the Brotherhood were deeper than he’d realized; the idea that he’d given his word to Tohr, to the King himself, still meant something even if he wasn’t one of them … even if he wasn’t in their world any more than Sarah was.

Old habits died hard.

But Sarah meant more to him than his word to those males. And even though he knew damn well it would be so much easier on her—better for her—to resume her life without any conscious knowledge of him or his species, he would not, as she had rightfully pointed out, take something from her that was not his to remove.

That was a violation.

“No, I’m not going to.”

“Thank you,” she breathed.

“I can’t come see you, though. I will always want to and I will always miss you. But the Brotherhood would know. They know everything. They’ll check on your house to make sure I’m not around. They might even monitor you for years to come—I mean, you’ve seen the training center. You know what kind of technology they can afford. If I show up in your orbit and you recognize me? God only knows what they’ll do.”

“I won’t bother anyone, I promise.”

There was a pause. And then he asked, “What are you going to do?”

Sarah’s eyes went to the fireplace and fixated on it as if there were flames in there. “I have a standing offer to interview out in California. I may go work there. I don’t want to be here in Ithaca anymore—and I’d kind of reached that decision before … you know, all this.”

Everything in him wanted to say that he’d go out west with her. That he’d find her there. That he’d … be with her there.

“With Kraiten dead,” she continued, “and BioMed closing, all I was worried about is a non-issue.”

“If the FBI comes to you, you can’t—”

“I know.” She looked back at him. “I mean, I feel like I have friends in your world. Jane and Manny and Ehlena. John and Xhex. Nate. And then there’s you … I would never endanger any of you. Ever. I’ve seen how the human race treats your kind, and it’s an abomination.”

As she stared at him, he felt so responsible for how this was all ending. Maybe if he hadn’t so impulsively gone looking for Xhex all those years ago… if her relatives had not taken control of his mind … if he hadn’t come out of the colony obsessed with finding her …

If he hadn’t taken responsibility for what she’d done at that first lab and then done the same kind of thing himself at the second.

Maybe the Brotherhood wouldn’t be so …

What did it matter. However he and Sarah had come to be at this point, here they were.

“I should go,” he said in a voice that cracked.

They leaned in and met halfway, their mouths finding a kiss that shattered his soul. Then he cradled her to his chest.

Of all the suffering he had ever been through, nothing compared to this.

Dawn arrived in the way of the winter season, the sun on a quiet, slow approach low on the horizon, as opposed to summer’s brilliantly streaming pop-up sunrises.

As the weak frosty light bled in through the drapes in Sarah’s living room, she turned her head and played a little game trying to guess what time it was. Not that she really cared.

Seven-ish, she decided.

As things got brighter outside, she continued to stay where she was, on the sofa, still wrapped up in the blanket. She had some vague sense that her toes were cold and her shoulders, too. But she was disinclined to do anything about it.

Next door, she heard her neighbor’s garage door go up. Moments later, their sedan putt-putted down their driveway in reverse, the tires crushing the ice pack of treads. She couldn’t see out into the street from where she was sitting, but she knew when the car went by her house and sped off, another workday ahead for them.

What day of the week was it, anyway?

Dragging herself to her feet, she went around the sofa and nearly burst into tears as she saw the track marks the piece of furniture had left in the carpet from when they had made love and things had gotten pushed out of position.

She left the sofa where it was even though the thing wasn’t lined up properly anymore and ordinarily, wonkiness wasn’t something she could tolerate.

Tucking the blanket around herself, she headed for the stairs, but stopped by the front door. Her backpack was set down by the jambs. He’d obviously brought it in for her, not that she’d noticed.

Even though there was a temptation to leave the thing where he had last put it, she picked the backpack up and carried it to the second floor. As she got to the top landing, she looked into Gerry’s study. Seeing the desk where he had done his work was a reminder there were things she had to take care of. Obligations. Loose ties.

Phone calls to make. A few personal things to pick up at the lab.

And then there was her car in that parking lot.

The former she could maybe leave behind, but her car she was going to need.

In her bathroom, she dropped the backpack on the counter and started her shower. She should probably eat something. But God, that felt like an insurmountable obstacle course of what to choose, where to find it—and then, fuck, the chewing.

Too much like work.

Under the spray, she tried not to think about what she and Murhder had done in that hospital room’s shower. And when she stepped back out and toweled off, she tried not to think about everything she had just washed off of herself.