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The door clicked shut, and then—God—she was on me. Pressing me against the wall, her body demanding against mine, her lips crashing into me with a hunger that made my head spin.

It was like drinking after years of thirst, like breathing after drowning, like being found after an eternity of being lost.

She was everything I wanted, I needed.

I melted into her, hands grasping at her waist, at her back, at anything I could reach.

I needed her close, needed to feel that this was real. That she was real, and I hadn’t made it all up in my head.

Oh, this was not a dream. This was real. She was real.

I loved this woman. Sometimes it was too much, and other times, it still wasn’t enough.

She pulled back to catch her breath, her forehead resting against mine, fingers tracing the line of my jaw.

“I’m so happy. I have never been this happy in my life, Asher, and… I’m not afraid to be happy.”

With a kiss on her chin, I pulled her to me, my hands tightening around her.

“God, I love you,” she whispered when I kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips.

This was my heaven and hell, and I would pay penance for an eternity. To stay right here. Just like this.

“I know, but I love you more. You know that,” I whispered as we moved toward the bed. She fell to the bed, pulling me down next to her.

Her body flowed with mine as she looked at me with burning brown eyes.

“I know. I KNOW.”

EPILOGUE

DIYA

“Please.”

“Listen. I love you and I’d do anything for you, Asher, but not that…” I shook my head with a frown. “That thing looks like it eats humans for breakfast.”

The gray-eyed menace sat unnervingly still beside its owner’s very, very dead body.

“But you killed his owner,” Asher said, as if that explained why I should now be responsible for what was a demon in feline form. “Now he has nowhere else to go.”

I tore my eyes away from the cat just long enough to glare at Asher.

The cat kept staring at me with those unblinking eyes. “He looks at me like he could point me out in a lineup.”

The cat flicked its tail, looking vaguely disappointed.

“See?! You saw that, didn’t you?” I asked. “It’s plotting.”

The cat blinked. The kind of blink that said, I know what you did, and I will remember it, mortal.

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “Your owner was a piece of shit. He raped his assistant, and then fired her.”

Theobald looked unimpressed.

“He made it look like she was lying out of spite. He made her into a bitter ex-employee trying to ruin his name. And, of course, with all his money and power… he got away with it. And he tried it again. I wasn’t wrong to kill him. I, at least, made it less painful?”

Silence.