Talina ducked wide around a gotcha vine. This was some lowland variety she’d never seen before. The thorns were longer, the leaves almost those of a succulent versus the thinner ones from inland and up north.

“Damn you, Dek,” she whispered, following along the trail he’d left.

What the hell was she going to do with him? She’d awakened that morning to an empty bed when all she wanted to do was wrap herself around him and enjoy delicious sex. Instead of grabbing Dek and dragging him back to the mattress for refreshing bed play, she’d walked out to the kitchen to find breakfast simmering on the stove, a pot of tea steaming, and a note.

Tal:

I’ve gone to the forest under the escarpment to deal with Demon. Since I can’t put a Mayan bowl back together, I have to win or lose this as a Taglioni.

You are the love of my heart.

Dek.

She’d panicked, turned off the stove, ran for her clothes, and was dressed and out of the dome in minutes.

She’d found his tracks in the trail that led to the edge of the falls and backtracked to the narrow gap. Didn’t matter that she knew the route now; on the climb down she’d almost fallen to her death—and worse, ended up in the tangle of deadly vines that filled the bottom.

But there, beneath the falls, she’d found Dek’s tracks. He’d been headed downriver.

As she hurried along at a trot, heedless of bruising the roots she trod on, Talina ground her teeth.

Dek, you idiot! You’ve got nothing to prove to me.

She’d been slowly but surely falling for the guy. And it wasn’t just the remarkable sex. The man had a sense of humor, one sharpened and made wry by trial and testing. To her surprise, Dek Taglioni had turned out to be somewhat like Shig in that he’d seen all sides of life and had found peace with the vagaries of existence. She’d never spent time with a man who was as sure of himself when faced with his own ignorance, one who just accepted that he was going to have to learn in the most efficient way possible. And he did it with a complete lack of ego. Except when it counted. Like now. When whatever insanity had led him to charge out into the lowland forest—a place no one had even explored—to face who knew what kind of danger.

She had never known a man of such complexity—let alone one who seemed to deal with all of it in such a holistic way.

“I was a monster,” he had told her. “Once I figured that out, I decided I didn’t like myself. Since I’d been trained to be that way, I realized I could train myself to live another way.”