Barbara slid over and pressed against the side of his body. She stroked his chest, feeling the ridges of the old scars. “Yes,” she told him, kissing his neck. “We’re good. But I worry about you. It feels…” She hesitated, not certain how much she wanted to say. “It feels to me like you’re not happy anymore: with the Committee, with all that happened to you since you joined.”

“It’s all changed. It’s not like it was when I started this.”

“I know. And I know you hate all the red tape around everything, and the reports and the meetings, and all that—all the things that I end up handling. Which I don’t mind,” she hastened to add.

“And which you do exceedingly well. Without you, there would be no Committee anymore. So do you think I’m not happy with you?” he asked.

Her fingers stopped moving on his chest. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “Yes.”

He turned to her with that, one arm sliding under her and the other around. “You shouldn’t think that. Ever.”

“But I do, every once in a while. You want to be out there being Lohengrin and saving the world and I understand that, but sometimes the right thing isn’t just to rush in blindly, it’s to wait and to negotiate…” His mouth covered hers, stopping the words. She resisted, wanting to continue the discussion, but there was also the desire to just be with him, to drown all the fears and uncertainties in just being with him. She brought her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. His hands pulled at the hem of nightgown and she lifted her hips to help him.

And for a time after that, there were no words at all.

“She asleep?” Joey asked, stretching out on the couch. Michelle liked seeing her there.

“Yeah. I had to leave the light on again, but after a while she drifted off. I think she’ll sleep. She’s been up since last night.”

Joey kicked off her shoes, then shook her head. “That’s some fucked-up shit, Bubbles. I guess things really are starting to catch up with her. Those fuckers in the PPA—if I could’ve, I woulda killed them twice.”

Michelle lifted Joey’s legs up, sat down next to her, then put Joey’s legs down in her lap and began rubbing them. Something inside Michelle uncoiled. It was a rare moment when they were just together with nothing terrible coming at them from all sides. No leopard men, no Tom Weathers, no secret organizations trying to steal their powers, no assholes causing chaos just because they could. And it was precious to her.

“That feels awfully good,” Joey purred. Michelle knew what kind of mood Joey was in when she used that tone of voice. A quiver ran through Michelle. There hadn’t been a lot of times they’d had sex, but Michelle remembered all of them in great detail. And she wanted more.