Unfortunately, after last night, I’d seen everything else, and I knew what she hid now. Arousal wound its way through my body.

I stepped out from behind the column, walking toward her between the pews. Her head immediately snapped to me.

“Are you here alone?” she questioned, her eyes flitting about again.

I fought not to smile. What was she up to? She seemed nervous.

“Not anymore,” I said, playing with her.

“Well, I just…” She continued to look and around, glancing at the balcony and down the aisle toward the altar. “Um, I knew you’d be here, that’s all. Thought it would be, um…”

“Um…?”

“Uh.” She swallowed, still looking around, for what, I didn’t know. “Uh, I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss the wedding. This is a nice space for it. Should I reserve it?”

I laughed under my breath. “Sure. Why not?”

Whatever. I wasn’t getting fucking married, and even though I no longer needed access to the hotel, I really loved having access to her. I liked her.

A lot.

Plus, she was my only link to Damon. I wasn’t ready to give her up yet, and she’d be gone the second I told Gabriel there was no deal.

“Did you already have your ‘confession’?” she asked.

“No. I haven’t done that since…” I lowered my voice. “Since the last time with you.”

“Really? But you come here every week.”

“Do I?” I teased.

Now how would you know that?

But both of us knew she’d been my own personal satellite, circling me from a distance for God-knows-how-long before I showed up at Gabriel’s that day.

I moved toward her, down the aisle, and let my eyes roam the vast hall. Dark wood gleamed everywhere, from the ornate arches a hundred feet above us, to the confessionals in the back to the dozens of rows of pews around us. I hadn’t been here for a mass in years, but the smell of incense and sickly sweet flowers still lingered from Lent six months ago.

“Did you know that out of Michael, Will, and Damon, Damon was the first one I met?” I told her. “We didn’t all become friends really until high school, but I knew Damon long before that. We were both confirmed here when we were ten.” I looked up and around again before meeting her eyes. “Together. Classes every Wednesday.”

Her eyes shifted. “And you come here, because…”

“Because I might not know where he is, but I know where he’s been. He’s as likely to come back here as anywhere.”

She thinned her eyes, looking confused. “Why would he have any reason to return here? To the cathedral?”

She really didn’t know? Huh.

Well, I suppose Michael and Will didn’t know, either, so it wasn’t odd for Damon to keep things to himself. Some things anyway.

Things that made him vulnerable.

Well, I wasn’t going to be the one to educate her. I came here every Wednesday, the same day of the week we had our classes when we were ten, for several reasons, the most important being I knew this church was significant to Damon.

In this one instance, though, I liked being one step ahead of her, and since she still wasn’t on my side, I wasn’t going to give up my information.

“You look really pretty,” I said, noticing some faint mauve lipstick that closely matched the regular dark pink of her lips.

“You’re not answering my question. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Everything that you can use to get ahead of me.”

She looked away, annoyed. But she knew she’d do the same in my position. We weren’t partners—not yet.

“Fine,” she bit out, backing away. “Fair enough. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

Spinning around, she headed for the back doors, but I called out, stopping her.

“I saw the charges on the company card,” I informed her. “Why aren’t you wearing your new clothes?”

“Oh, I am.”

She twisted back around, reached inside her jacket, and lifted up her shirt, displaying a dark gray lace piece of lingerie accentuating the fuck out of her stomach, perfect breasts, and beautiful skin. The bottom hugged her waist just above her belly button, and every curve—the mound of her breasts to the swoop running down to her hip—was like someone squeezing my lungs.

“Shit.” I locked eyes on her and lunged.

She yelped, darting into a row of pews and leaping three rows down before I could get to her. I laughed.

Whipping around, she held my eyes, fire flowing between us, and I placed my hands on the back of the pew in front of me as she stood rigid and waited.

“You have good taste,” I teased. “I’m surprised.”

“Will picked it out.”

My smirk fell. “Did he see you in it?”

She nodded, looking all too pleased to admit that. “He even got my underwear size correct. Although I don’t think there’s really enough fabric there to call a G-string ‘underwear’.”

That motherfucker! I leapt over the pew, and she ran down the row, back into the aisle. I followed, chasing her and watching as the hat fell off her head and her hair came tumbling down, swaying as she tried to escape.

I caught the back of her jacket, pulling her into me and then pushing her into the wall of the confessional, pressing my body to hers. God, I could feel her now. The binding on her breasts was gone, and she was soft everywhere.

Threading my fingers through the back of her hair, I lightly pulled, forcing her chin up and her eyes on me.

“You’re such a brat, you know that?” I said. “I might spank you if I didn’t think you’d ask for seconds just to piss me off.”

“I’ll never behave for you.”

“Is that so?”

She leaned in, whispering over my mouth. “You’re not scary without your mask, Kai Mori.”

I tightened my fist in her hair, and she grunted, arching up on her toes to relieve the pressure.

I wasn’t scary? Meaning I didn’t intimidate her in the least.

Dammit, she was a handful. Constantly pushing me, her fucking pride not willing to acquiesce an inch.

I bared my teeth, speaking low as I pulled her closer. “You got quite a mouth on you on top of the trouble you’re already in for fighting today.”

I heard her swallow as she stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“I think you need to.” I pulled my head back up, looking down at her. Anger deepened the crease between her eyes, and I could tell she wasn’t playing anymore.

I grabbed her by the jacket again and pulled her around the confessional.

“What are you—”

“We need to go someplace we can really talk,” I told her, forcing her through the door.

My foot hit the kneeler, but there was also a wooden chair, and I pulled the door closed, sitting down in it and bringing her into my lap.

“Just let me go.”

“No.”

“No?” she burst out.

The room was pitch black, and I could barely even make out her shadow, let alone any colors. A small bit of light breached the wicker screen and a little more through the cracks in the door, but other than that, we were hidden from the world.

Again.

“I won’t touch you,” I promised. “I’ll take my hands off right now, because…” I rested my forehead on her shoulder. “what started between us here six years ago started off honest. If nothing else, just let there always be that. Just listen.”

The last time we were here together, she heard everything. Everything I didn’t want people to know. And I wanted one person who knew me. I didn’t want that tainted between us simply because I was afraid of what she would think. I needed her to understand.

She breathed hard, but she was still, making no move to leave.

Loosening my grip, I kept my hands rested on her waist. “My father used to tell me stories about Japanese warriors,” I told her, keeping my voice low, “who, if they were defeated in battle, would commit what’s called the seppuku. Ritual suicide.” The images from the books I’d seen flashed in my head—men and women kneeling with a sword clutched in their hands. “Using a short blade, they’d impale themselves and slice open their stomachs. This would regain them their honor.”