But when we’re naked and he’s touching me and his hardness rises up as the perfect match for what I need so, so badly, I stop him for a second. I reach into my clutch where it landed beside my bed and pull something out of it.
Kir looks down at what I’m holding, then back up at me.
“Old habits,” I explain with a shy grin.
He takes the white mask he left behind in the alley and pulls it on. As soon as he does, this aching, delicious easing steals through my core. A deadbolt opening. A thrown-wide door beckoning for him to enter.
“Sometimes,” I whisper, “I can’t believe you’re real.”
“Likewise,” he agrees, and then he’s inside me, and we take each other somewhere way beyond where death or threats or rain could ever possibly touch us.
I jolt awake gasping, but the nightmare that woke me
