She weaved on her feet, then backed up into the door to give herself some support. Could anything have brought the recent battle at the Borderland closer to home than this?

She closed her eyes and breathed through it, through the reality of the decision she’d made, that she’d basically entered a war against powerful monsters who drank people to death.

Her stomach turned, but she breathed some more. She reminded herself of what she’d seen in the death vamp’s head, the pregnant woman murdered, her child lost as she died. She held to that. She created a shrine to the woman deep within her mind and she promised herself that no matter what else happened in the coming days, weeks, maybe even centuries, that she would hold this woman’s death as her touchstone, the reason why Commander Greaves and his army of death vampires must be defeated as soon as possible, and once and for all.

The part of her that functioned well when her world was orderly, approved of the shrine and subsequent resolve. If she just kept her head, both metaphorically and literally, she might discover she had the skills to survive all the coming tests and challenges.

With that, she folded off her all her clothes, and sent them straight to the trash can she kept in the side yard of her home in Surprise.

She turned the knob on the shower and as the water heated up she brought a few things over from her house: toothbrush and Colgate, peppermint soap, a hairbrush, body lotion, and a few more incidentals, a chemise and baggy silk shorts for sleeping, as well as a chenille robe. She hung the clothes on two hooks on the back of the door. Then she took a minute to arrange the rest of the goodies in a row.

Something about the neat line of toiletries gave her pause and a slow smile curved her lips. Maybe she didn’t know everything the decision to ascend would bring her or even cost her, but being able to just be herself, to utilize powers she possessed, really caused her heart to swell.

A half hour later, her hair was still damp as she sat in Gideon’s bed near the headboard, the covers to her waist. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

Gideon had returned to the doorway, this time barefoot but wearing jeans and a T-shirt that pulled across his pecs. His longish hair was damp, which made his strong cheekbones look even more prominent and so damn sexy. She wanted to ask him to join her in bed, but for some reason that earlier odd, shy feeling returned to her.

Even though his toffee scent was a strong indication that he wanted to be with her, probably as much as she wanted him, he hadn’t budged from the doorway.

“Hey,” he said, the tenor of his voice low, so very low. “So this has been a rough night for you.” He looked solemn, concerned, his forehead creased.

“Yeah, it has, but I’m good, really.”

The shower had given Gideon time to think. His plan to share the bedroom with her had seemed like a good idea at the time, but when he arrived at the door and saw her sitting in his bed,in his bed,some ridiculous primal beast had risen once more, maybe a symptom of this really frustratingbreh-hedden myth, and he’d wanted to launch through the air and throw himself on top of her.

So he remained by the door, trying to calm down. But it didn’t help that she kept looking at him, her gaze sometimes dropping to his neck, then his chest, his abs. More than once even lower, and he wasn’t exactly being shy right now. His jeans had shrunk.

In addition, her strawberry scent was an olfactory nightmare that kept on giving.

Gideon knew the rational part of his brain was in there somewhere. He summoned it now and worked hard to put himself in her shoes.

She had been through hell, given the nature of her initiation into the world of ascension. It was now past ten. She needed her rest and he needed … dammit, he didn’t know what he needed.

When he realized what she’d done at the Borderland, while he was battling his last pretty-boy, some tremendous shift had occurred in his mind. Here was an untried woman of power and of substance who had used two boulders, one that she’d moved kinetically, the other that she’d held in her hands, to kill a death vampire. She’d also coordinated his battle movements and because of that alone, he’d been able to slay four,four, death vampires. Unheard of for a Militia Warrior.

So who the hell was she, this powerful ascendiate, sitting with damp hair, a thin, strappy shirt over her full breasts, nipples peaked, her arms clasped around her knees, loosely, like she was doing okay, and shedding strawberry scent? Who the hell was she?

The woman meant for him.

He was reminded, however, that he didn’t really know Elise, that she had lied to him for two years, that she had pretended to him, faked him out. But he wasn’t even sure if that was what kept him immobile right now.

Then he understood that this didn’t feel small to him. It was one thing to meet a mortal woman once a week in a sexy booth at the Blood and Bite and take her from every position imaginable. But it was another to meet her on the other side of her call to ascension in which she had demonstrated all this preternatural power and acquitted herself remarkably on the battlefield.

“Have you decided not to share this bed with me?” she asked.

“I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. We have a new ballgame now, and given our unfailing attraction to each other, I’d hate for things to heat up when there just isn’t going to be much on the other side for us. Understand?”

She drew in a long deep breath. “Gideon, I know it’s asking a lot when you’ve already made your position clear, that you can’t give yourself to me in a long-term relationship, and I get that, I really do, but if you could just stay with me tonight, sleep in the bed next to me, I would be … grateful. ”

He glanced at the floor then back to her, his thoughts spinning. “I guess in all this time, we’ve never really talked aboutyou. I mean I know some things, that your father died when you were young and you didn’t get a lot of support as a child. I can’t even imagine what it was like to have your kinetic abilities and your clairvoyance come online with no one to talk to.”

She took a deep breath. “It was pretty rough when I was so young.”

“I’d like to know more.”

She huffed a sigh. She rolled her thumbs over and over each other and stared at them now. “I don’t remember much about my father, although I remember being sad for a long time after he died.

“The real problem was how his death affected my mother. She wasn’t prepared to enter the workforce and she always struggled to make ends meet. She grew bitter and, I guess you would say she was cold towards me. I never felt like she blamed me outright for the difficulties of her life, but the bottom line was simple: she couldn’t be there for me.

“I tried to tell her about one of my first visions, that one of the neighbor children was going to get hit by a car.” She paused. More deep breathing.

“The accident happened, didn’t it?”

She nodded, still rolling her thumbs.

“My mother yelled at me, called me selfish, told me I used my imagination way too much. She seemed to ignore the fact that an hour later the child almost died from exactly the kind of accident I had foretold. I understand now, though. She was sunk in her own problems and had no way of reaching out to me. So when she told me to go to my room, I crawled under my bed and stayed there, for hours. I guess in my little girl way I was adjusting to my reality. My mother never mentioned what happened and I took her cue and never spoke of my powers again. I learned to organize my life in simple terms and without the complications of relationships, not even one with my mother. She died about nine years ago of cancer.”

He took a step into the room. “I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never told anyone that story.”

“I guess you really couldn’t, could you?”

“Not like that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get where you’re coming from. Neither of us, I think, is exactly built for a relationship, wouldn’t you say?”

“My job is lethal. There’s no other way to say it. I could go out to fight in the next hour and not come home. Why would I want to put that on a woman, any woman?”

He sighed. “The funny thing is, I’ve been to a lot of funerals, deaths of my brothers-in-arms, and I’ve learned to grieve, to adjust, to move on. But you know what I really can’t handle, the thought that someone I love, someone not serving as a warrior, someone really close to me, could get hurt or killed by a death vampire. This thing with Rachel, your vision, has my chest in a vise. But even without the vision, I worry about Rachel all the time. I can never let it go.”

“And now I’m here.”

“And now you’re here.” He moved the rest of the distance to stand at the foot of the bed. “I think you’re going to be happy on Second Earth, I do. You’ll get to be more of who you are every single day. But I’m really counting on you finding your place in this new world far away from me and I hope like hell you understand. It’s not personal. But if I got involved with you or anyone else, I’d be wound up in an even tighter knot, wondering when the other shoe would drop, waiting day after day to get the bad news.”

She nodded. “I get it. You don’t have to say anything more and as soon as I’ve made it through my ascension, I think I’ll strike out for new territory, maybe San Francisco Two or Paris. I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.”

He smiled and something inside him eased. She’d let him off the hook, although, given her history, that hook hung pretty low to the ground as it was.

But would it ever be that simple? Elise in Paris or anywhere else in the world? Would he ever truly be free of this gnawing sense of responsibility he felt for her?

She patted the bed next to her. “Come be with me, Gideon. Just until I get through my rite of ascension.”

He let all of his fucking worries drop to the floor. She needed him and he could be with her for a couple more nights.

He crawled across the top of the comforter. She stretched out on her right side to face him as he settled his way too big warrior body next to her. He drew his knees up then jammed the pillow up under his head so he could see her better. She did something similar.