She averted her eyes and started to scoot away, muttering, “It doesn’t matter.”

He hooked her with an arm at her belly and yanked her back. “Answer me.”

She twisted to look at him again. “You know, I’m going to be essentially immortal too. So all that gut-wrenching despair I felt for you and with you and for me when I got my head out of my ass and realized how shitty your life had to be and how awesome and tragic it was you finally got me, that was for nothing. We should be celebrating. Not edging toward a fight.”

“I agree, except about the part you’re using not to answer me.”

She turned in his arms to face him. “We have a world to save, Abel.”

“And now you’re using that not to answer me.”

“I don’t touch your face,” she declared suddenly.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t touch your face,” she repeated.

He shook his head in confusion. “Why not?”

“Because the first time I tried, you pulled away from me.”

Fuck, he did.

And she was right, she’d touched his neck, she’d kissed him, she’d touched his hair, but she’d not once touched his face or even tried since that night.

And she’d given him total access from the first time he fucked her. Nothing was off limits, not when they were fucking, not when they weren’t.

He’d waited lifetimes for her. He had her. He touched her all the time, held her all the time. But more, she shared liberally and he always had her attention. Fuck, as she was walking to her friend’s burial, the burial of a man Abel had known for days, when he let her hand go, she looked to him to include him in something that wasn’t his to have.

“I explained that then too,” he reminded her, beginning to feel uneasy.

“Yeah, and the first day we met, you calmly discussed banging other women. The first morning I woke up in your bed, before you even kissed me, before I even realized to its fullest what you were to me, I still lost it just thinking of you with other women in that bed. What we have isn’t natural. What it does to me isn’t natural. Fuck, you can’t leave with me not knowing where you are without me eventually getting the pain back that I’d had for years. You pulling away from me doesn’t affect me like it would some normal biker bitch. It guts me.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Yeah, Jesus,” she agreed. “And trust me, this does not make me happy. I’m not clingy. I don’t want to be clingy. Not one guy I’ve been with have I been—” She stopped on a sharp cry because he was squeezing her side uncontrollably, with all of his strength.

All of it.