I said nothing to that.

“Tease that out, honey,” he said in a gentler tone. “Ryn takes that to the cops, how do you think that’d go? She decided to have sex with that guy, in their scene, and from the cops’ perspective, they could think it’s just that she didn’t like the way he did it. Even if they found some charge to lay on him, she put that in front of a jury, a defense lawyer would chew her up. She consented but didn’t like the way it went. The fact he rendered her defenseless in a way she did not consent to, and doing it, probably scared the shit out of her, wouldn’t matter. A case could be made that was what she wanted. And maybe it was on the bones of it, but the way he did it, it absolutely wasn’t. And he’s free to keep doing this to women? No.”

He was right.

No.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he replied.

I took in a deep breath.

And got to something else that was now very heavily weighing on my mind.

“It isn’t lost on me there’s an element of danger to your job,” I began, and stopped.

“Mm-hmm,” Axl hummed in an encouraging way for me to go on.

“And it’s very much you. We haven’t talked about it, but I think it feeds something in you.”

“It does,” he confirmed.

“Okay, that may be for a deeper discussion later. But for now, with whatever you were just talking about, are you in more danger than normal?”

He reached his hand out to me.

Like always when he did that, I took it.

When he had it, he said, “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. The guys are going to be okay. We got our teeth into something that’s tough and we aren’t finding it easy to tear it free. But we’ll get there, and we’ll be good when it’s done. Promise.”

“Can you make that promise?” I asked.

He didn’t hesitate.

“Yes.”

It was because this was Axl.

And the zero hesitation helped.

But I believed him.

“Okay,” I repeated.

“Okay,” he replied.

We were quiet the rest of the way home.

Only Axl was quiet on the way into the house. I baby-talked Cleo when I saw her and Axl learned I not only called her shmoochmagooch, but also Supreme Queen Grayfur and Sleekmeister General.

So he wasn’t entirely quiet.

He chuckled.

We did the couple’s bathroom dance when we brushed our teeth and I moisturized.

We both changed into sleepwear in the bedroom, and we both tossed our clothes on the chair as we undressed.

But when we got in bed, on his back, Axl tucked me to his side and that was it.

I had my head resting on his shoulder, my hand on his ridged stomach, and I didn’t know what to do about this situation.

Because I wanted to have sex.