“You don’t have to protect me,” she said.

After a moment, he looked over his shoulder at her—and his face was grim. “Fuck that. I’m protecting myself.”

As Butch drove them over the river in the Lexus, Marissa stared out the window next to her. The supports of the bridge made a pattern that cut through the view of the water down below, making her think of windshield wipers on a slow repeat. They were up so high, she couldn’t tell if there were waves on the surface. Probably not. It was a quiet night weather-wise.

For some reason, she kept going back to when the two of them had fallen in love—probably because her brain couldn’t handle where they were headed and so it was escaping to a part of her past that had been filled with wonder and joy and excitement.

Nothing like that first touch. That first kiss. That moment when you had sex for the first time, and you looked at the face above yours and thought, I can’t believe we’re really doing this!

“What are you thinking about?” Butch asked, squeezing her hand.

“Do you remember where we first kissed?”

Her mate laughed softly. “God, yeah. It was out on the second-story porch at Darius’s. I broke the arm off that wicker chair.”

She smiled and looked across at him. “You did, didn’t you.”

“I hadn’t expected you to be so … strong.”

In the dim light of the dashboard, his features were just as sexy as they had always been to her, and she thought about what he looked like when he was aroused, his hazel eyes going all hooded, his face becoming so serious, his body stilling before he pounced.

“I want to have sex with you when we get back home,” she said.

His head whipped around so fast, the sedan swerved in its lane. “Well, what do you know. That can so be arranged.”

“I feel guilty about it.”

“Don’t.” His eyes met hers. “It’s very natural. You want to feel alive in the face of death—it doesn’t mean that you aren’t sad for the girl, or won’t do right by her. The two are not mutually exclusive.”

“You’re very smart.”

“Just had a lot of experience in nights like tonight.”

Easing back in the luxurious seat, she let the familiar, erotic sensations pump through her body … and imagined herself ducking underneath his arms, and getting into his fly, and sucking on him as he drove along.

But he would never let her do that.

And besides, as they hit the far side of the Hudson, her brain switched gears. “Please don’t hurt him.”

“Who? Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be a gentleman through and through.”

She glanced over at him. “I mean it.”

“So do I.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “You got nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t do that to you—and that makes him a very lucky guy.”

Butch followed the directions that had been texted to her when she’d asked for the way in by car, and about fifteen minutes later, they were bumping down a dirt lane that meandered through the forest. This time, the entry building was a modest two-story farmhouse, and there were a couple of sedans parked on its cobblestone driveway. When they got out, they proceeded around back to what appeared to be an outbuilding for tractor equipment, but which was actually the same kind of kiosk she had been to earlier in the evening.

The procedure was the same: checking in, stepping in, getting scanned by a laser. And then a wall of tools was displaced and they were in an elevator, heading down into the earth.

“This must have cost a lot of money to build,” she murmured as they both stared up at the dinging lineup of numbers over the doors. “Four stories underground? Wow.”

“It needed to be done.”

She looked across at him. “Wait, so you know about this new clinic? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Butch shrugged. “I didn’t want to upset you by bringing up your brother.” He glanced over at her pointedly. “Tell me Havers behaved himself when you were here earlier.”

“He did.”

Her mate nodded and jacked up his fine black slacks. As always, when he was off duty, her Southie cop hellren was dressed like something out of the Neiman Marcus catalog, his crisp white shirt and his paper-thin suede jacket every bit as expensive as they looked. He smelled good, too, although that was courtesy of his bonding scent and not any kind of cologne—and his Piaget watch and that large gold cross he always wore were sexy without being overdone.

And yet he was right. If he’d wanted to, he could have killed her brother with his bare hands—and he probably did want to. She believed him, however, when he said he would never do that in front of her.

“He’s amazing to his patients,” she heard herself murmur.

“That has never been his problem.”

No, it hadn’t.

The elevator bumped to a halt and they emerged into another waiting area that was smaller and more self-contained than the other one she’d been in.

The receptionist at the desk looked at Butch first—and then took her time in giving him the once-over. Not that he noticed. “Welcome,” she said. “The doctor knows that you’re here. May I get you coffee while you wait?”

Or perhaps something more personal? her tone seemed to suggest.

“We’re good, thanks.” Butch took Marissa’s elbow and led her over to the line-up of chairs against the far wall.