The rain lasted all that day and into the night, flinging sheets of water on the windows and pounding on the roof, a clamorous reminder of Lorelei’s rage. It was especially loud in my bedroom where the ceiling had recently been raised to add a skylight. Brock had thought it would be good to let more light into the room.

“People around here sometimes get depressed in the winter when they don’t get enough light,” he’d told me.

Instead of light, though, the skylight now afforded me a view of murk-green sky the same color as Lorelei’s eyes. In spite of how tired I was, I lay awake for a long time, twisting back and forth so often that my newly knit spine felt like a wrung-out dish towel, and listening to the rain, hearing in its mournful sough and sigh a thousand recriminations for all my mistakes. I’d led the undines into the Borderlands and nearly gotten them killed, I’d used a spell in Faerie, I’d had sex with Liam …

Twice!

True, women hooked up with their exes all the time, but most ex-boyfriends weren’t incubi. What had I been thinking? I’d taken one look at his sad eyes and forgiven him all the lies he told me, brushed my face against the rough stubble on his cheek and shed my panties …

As he’d known I would.

Each detail of his physical manifestation – the stubble on his cheeks, the way his arm muscles strained against the weight of the manacles I’d clamped on him, even the scars they left – all were calculated to make me feel sorry for him. How could I have forgotten that he was an incorporeal being? Those scars on his wrists weren’t real. He’d played on my sympathies just as he’d tweaked certain other attributes to play on my desires.

At the thought of those other attributes I felt a twinge low in my belly and between my legs. I squirmed at the memory of him above me, teasing me, and then … finally entering me.

I moaned at the memory and clamped my thighs together, but the pressure of my flesh only made me recall his flesh.

For months I’ve done nothing but remember the exact contours of your body outside and in, he’d said.

How long would I remember the exact contours of his body inside me?

Uff!

I punched my pillows and wedged one between my legs. I had to stop thinking about him.

But I couldn’t.

When at last I fell asleep he was waiting for me.

Under the willow tree, he was stretched out on the moss-covered bank, golden in the Faerie sun that was everywhere and nowhere. I lay beside him, on my side, facing him. Although inches apart, I could feel the heat of his skin pulsing against mine.

“See?” he asked. “I am flesh and blood. Feel for yourself.” He nudged himself closer until we were nearly touching. I laid my hand flat on his chest to keep him from coming any closer, but even that small touch of his skin was intoxicating.