Axe ended up leaving Novo at The Keys after she found a likely candidate—in fact, it was that human woman Axe had been with a number of times, the one with the nipple piercings and the Cruella de Vil hair. Knowing that his fellow trainee was in good hands—namely, her own—he nodded at her, pointed to the exit, and got a nod in return.

For the first time in recorded history, it was a relief to get home—and damn, he was in a hurry to get clean. The second he walked in the front door, he dumped his black cloak on the back of a chair, and went directly to the shower.

Even though he hadn’t had sex or even touched anyone, he wanted to scrub every inch of his body before he saw Elise.

The hot water and all the soap was a godsend, and he spent a lot of time with his head back under the spray, the delicious rush pouring down over his face and his chest. He was just about to step out when he sensed he was no longer alone in the cottage. Sure enough, a soft knock sounded out.

He started to smile. “You’re early.”

“I’m sorry,” she said through the closed panels. “I’ll wait for you downstairs—”

“I can’t reach my back.” He pushed the shower curtain aside. “Can you help me?”

The door opened little by little, and then there she was, her lovely face peeking around the corner, her blond hair down, her cheeks flushed from the cold … or maybe she was thinking about the same kinds of things he was.

Axe’s erection was instantaneous, and he kept himself facing her as it rose.

Even though there was hardly any light, he could tell where her eyes went—and stayed.

“Do you like what you see?” he growled.

“Yes.…”

“Then come in here. The water is warm.”

Elise stepped in and shut things closed behind herself. In the cramped, steamy space, she took off her sweater and her shirt. Peeled those jeans down her long legs. Lost her bra … then her panties.

As he moved back for her to join him, she lifted her lips so he could kiss them at the same time she put her hands on him.

And not as in on his shoulders or his biceps, his stomach or even his ass.

Axe arched so hard, he threw his head into the back wall of the shower. “Fuck—”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry—”

“Like I care?”

With a guttural sound, he kissed her, his hips jerking as her grip restrengthened, the sex surging between them, going from a low-level burn to a solar flare in a split second. And he was not gentle with her. Desperation made his hands rough as he yanked her against him, and his mouth was brutal on hers, and his need went out of control.

But dearest Virgin Scribe, she matched his desperation with a starvation of her own.

“I want you so bad,” he groaned against her lips.

“So take me now.”

Even though her thighs were slick from the warm water, he grabbed them and popped her up, fitting her around his hips. Then he found her core with his fingers—she was so ready for him—and oh, yeah, she took charge, reaching between their bodies, taking his erection and—

He cursed again as he found home. She gasped his name.

And then he pumped furiously into her, banging her against the shower wall, going in deep. She took everything he had to give her, holding on to his shoulders and squeezing her legs around his pelvis as tightly as she could.

Axe gritted his teeth as the smooth, hot hold of her got to him on all his levels. But he wasn’t orgasming first. He wasn’t going to go before she did, because how she felt was more important than what was going on for him. And soon enough, she started bucking against him, her head kicking back, her arms clenching.

Her sex tightening against him.

Holy hell, she was milking him so well that he let himself go flying, too, releasing into her, filling her up, her wet hair whipping him in the face, his body feeling like she was surrounding him all over even though they were connected in only one place.

A really fucking important place, granted.

When the first wave was over, Axe eased her down from him until her feet caught her weight and she was standing on her own.

Smoothing her wet hair back, he cradled her face in his palms. “Hey,” he whispered as he kissed her in a much more civilized way. “So I’m glad you came—I mean … you know … are here to … shit. I’m just happy to see you.”

“Me, too.”

Her smile was a little shy, and he loved the contrast between how hot she was and how demure she could be.

As he went after her again, he took his time with the kisses, lingering at her mouth, plying her with his lips, licking at her with his tongue. The steam boiling up around them was like a soft summer breeze, the winter’s cold breath—like any other reality aside from the two of them—locked out of this sacred space.

Her breasts were just as perfect as he remembered, and as he lowered himself to his knees, he came up right at her nipples, sucking at them as he kneaded her ass … and then dipped his hands between her legs.

She cried out his name as he touched her, her fingers dragging through his wet hair as that warm spray continued to fall all around them.

When he put one of her legs up onto his shoulder, she fell back into the corner of the shower, gasping and going on a shiver as he nuzzled his way into her sex. With a pumping growl, he lapped at her, teasing her, penetrating her with his tongue, and she ended up bracing her palms against the walls, holding herself upright thanks to the tension he was creating in her.

Axe was in heaven.

And he didn’t intend to return to earth anytime soon.

As Elise looked down past her breasts and her stomach, it was an erotic shock to see the huge male crammed into the bottom of the shower stall, his hot eyes staring up at her, his tongue licking free of her core, flashing pink before he went back in again—

Another orgasm racked her body and she ground down on his mouth, working herself against him.

In response, he came at her with even greater intensity.

He was possessed and possessing her … and the erotic pleasure was almost too much for her to handle, the sensations ricocheting through her body, her brain sizzling, her senses on fire.

She didn’t want him to stop.

And he didn’t.

Sometime later, much later, after he put her up on his hips again and they had more crazy, wild sex, the water started to go cold and that was when they got out together. Axe only had one towel and he attended to her first, drying her off with gentle hands—and as he cared for her body, his face showed a tenderness that all those tattoos and piercings seemed to suggest he would never show to anyone.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go down by the fire before you have to leave. We need to make sure your hair is dry so you don’t get pneumonia.”

He made a quick pass over his own body with the totally damp terry cloth and then he told her to wait and left her in the bath. A moment later, he came back with a clean blanket and wrapped her up.

Scooping her into his heavy arms, Axe carried her down the stairs as if she weighed nothing, and as he set her before the fire, she saw that he had restocked it first so that she would be warm.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said as he stretched out next to her on the blankets.

Okay, wow … he was so very naked. Really, very naked … and even though they had just hooked up in twelve hundred different ways, all she wanted to do was ogle the way his sex lay on his thick thigh muscle.

“I’m not,” she heard herself say.

“Excuse me?”

Shifting her eyes to his, Elise shook her head. “I left my phone at Peyton’s. He’s going to take care of it if my father calls me—and my sire is thrilled about where I supposedly am and what I’m doing, trust me. He thinks we’re planning Paradise’s birthday party.”

When Axe grew silent, unease rippled through her. “Unless you want me to—”

Axe kissed her into silence. “I don’t want you ever to go.”

Well … didn’t that warm her even more than the fire did. Too bad the admission didn’t seem to strike the same chord in him.

As his eyes went to the fire and his jaw got hard, she touched his face. Ran her fingertips down the tattoos on his neck. Traced over his shoulder.

Trying to recapture the mood, she whispered, “I can’t believe I met someone like you.”

“A degenerate?”

“Hardly.”

His face got a faraway look to it. “Don’t try to make a hero out of me, Elise. I’m anything but.”

“You’ve always been good to me.”

He sat up, and disappeared even as he stayed right where he was.

“Axe, why do you find it so hard to believe the good in yourself? I mean … Peyton told me what you did for the Brother Rhage. You saved his—”

“Don’t go there.” He put his face in his hands. “Elise. Please stop.”

As she laid her hand on his shoulder, he flinched away, and that hurt. But she gave him his space.

“Help me understand why, Axe. And I’ll leave it alone.”

He was quiet for so long, she became convinced he was going to ask her to leave. But then he cleared his throat.

“So you know that my father was working at an aristocrat’s house on the night of the raids. I told you that.” He paused. “Actually, let me go back earlier. You remember that kitchen you liked so much when you came in here?”

“Yes. It’s incredible.”

“It’s a memorial to my mother.”

“I’m so sorry that she passed, too—I had wondered—”

“Oh, she’s still alive. Living in a rich gentlemale’s mansion, earning her keep on her back like any other prostitute.” His brows sank so low, his eyes all but disappeared. “So yeah, my father actually died long before he was killed.”

“He loved her that much,” she said sadly. “Oh, Axe …”

“I hate that kitchen. I hate every one of those fucking leaves and the dumb-ass roses he carved for a female who didn’t want him—and Christ, you should see what’s in the basement. My father spent his daylight hours down below, working on all these figurines after my mother left.” The firelight played over features that were harsh with anger. “That male was fucking pathetic, the way he mourned her. She leaves him and her kid behind, just walks out one night—so disgusted with their life as a family that she didn’t even bother to take any of her clothes or her things. And what does he do? Collapses in mourning. I mean, whatever, he should have just fucked her off and gone about his life.”

Elise shook her head. “How old were you?”

“It was before my transition. I must have been ten or so. She upgraded us like we were stereo equipment. An eight-track tape player when she wanted to be with an iPod. She never looked back—and my father never looked forward again. He got stuck, always convinced she was going to walk through that door at any moment, say she was sorry, and fall right back into place by his side and mine. He was so fucking deluded, though. Come on. We lived in this shitty little house, with a beater for a car and his rough workman’s hands on her. Her son? I was this scrawny little shit.” He shook his head. “But I grew up fast after she pissed us away. I wasn’t going to miss her, fuck no. I hated her and I was glad she stayed away. I don’t know where she is and I don’t fucking care—shit, I wish they’d killed her in the raids.”

Elise took a deep breath. “I can imagine how betrayed you must have felt. Both for her leaving and your father for deserting you as well.”

Axe shrugged. “He didn’t leave, though. He fed me. Kept a roof over my head. But he was too wrapped up in his fantasy of her and her divine return—” He frowned and focused on her properly. “I can’t believe I’m talking about this.”

Taking a risk, she reached out and stroked his arm. “I will never judge you, Axe. You’ve got to believe me.”

“You sure about that?”

“Keep talking and I’ll prove it.”

One by one, Axe cracked his knuckles, the huge muscles of his shoulders bunching and releasing as he did. “I took a lot of drugs. After my transition, you know. I just couldn’t stand being here with my father. I hated him, I really did, even though none of it was his fault. He was a good male, a little on the soft side, maybe, but he deserved more than what he got for a shellan. More than what he got for a son.”

“You were a child. As children, we have to survive, so we contort ourselves into whatever family of origin we grow up in. We are forced to cope and sometimes it’s in ways that harm us.”

Axe shook his head. “I wasn’t a child when I started going on benders. When I’d disappear for nights at a time. When I froze him out. I ended up breaking his heart as much as she did at the end.” He ground his jaw. “The, ah … the night he died? I was out in the city, I’d been high for … shit, for three, four days at that point, bouncing between cocaine and heroin like the two were a circus ride.”

“You couldn’t have saved him,” she whispered. “I don’t even need to know the particulars. But you couldn’t have saved him, Axe. You’ve got to forgive yourself—”

“He called me. When the attack happened. He left me a fucking message on my cell phone—right when it happened. You want to know how I know what time it was? Because I bumped him to voice mail. And when I saw he’d left me a message? I erased it. I fucking …”

Axe looked away, hiding his eyes.

“Axe, you were not responsible for your mother leaving him. And you were not responsible for his death, either—”

“Is that what they teach in all those psych classes you took?” He sniffed up hard and rubbed his face into the crook of his elbow. “To placate everyone even though they were wrong and bad? You know, give ’em participation trophies just for breathing, even though in reality they’re fucking shitheads who let people down?”

Elise looked at him steadily and wished he would meet her eyes. “No, they teach us that self-hatred is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

“Until you learn to let go of the responsibility for your parents’ relationship and choices, you are going to see everything through a prism of blame. And you’re going to eat yourself alive.”

“But I erased his message.” He scrubbed his face with a hard hand. “The last thing he said on the planet, I let it go like it was worthless. I’m no different than she was. I left him when he needed me.”

“Is that why you nearly killed yourself last night to save Rhage? You just had to be there for someone and you weren’t going to let anything stop you?”

He was quiet. “Maybe.”

“We find ways of repeating things until we get them right. But that can be dangerous. Especially if we’re trying to fix things we never should have owned in the first place.”

Thinking of herself in front of the door to Allishon’s apartment, Elise wondered if maybe she shouldn’t heed her own advice.

“Axe, you might just want to consider the radical idea that your mother didn’t leave because of you or your father. She left because of herself. She deserted both of you because of some failing she had. Or maybe it was that she and your father weren’t compatible. Or … maybe she fell in love with someone else. There are a whole host of reasons why relationships fail. But one thing I know for sure? No child, no matter how they behave, is responsible for keeping their parents together or in a healthy relationship. That’s up to the grown-ups. That’s their job.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then he got up, wrapped a blanket around his waist, and stood over her.

Shit, she thought.

She should have known better than to try and act like his therapist. It wasn’t what anyone needed in a personal relationship, for one thing. For another, she wasn’t trained as a shrink.

Just because you took psych classes, as he’d said, didn’t mean you were qualified to tell people how to frame their lives.

“I’m sorry,” she said sadly as she, too, stood up. “I’ll go—I shouldn’t have let my mouth get ahead of me. I’ll just grab my clothes from upstairs in the bathroom.”