I woke to the scent of bacon. Definitely not a bad thing, but a strange one for my apartment. My cooking skills weren’t legendary. I slipped on a T-shirt and a pair of boy-shorts before investigating.

Dorian stood at my counter, eating a slice of bacon shirtless, in his dress pants, reading the local newspaper. More food covered the countertop and the longer I stared at him the weirder the scene became. He appeared relaxed, and not in a way I’d seen him yet. A strange mix of content and leisure.

“You saved me some, right?” I asked to alert him to my presence.

He glanced up and gave me a smile. The one I really liked. The one I was beginning to think he reserved only for me. “Good morning, how are you feeling?”

I scoped out the spread and sat down on the stool in front of an empty plate. “You mean, if my brother hadn’t kidnapped you, this is what I had to look forward to the other night?”

Instead of answering me, he came around the bar, slid his hands around my waist, and drew me in for a kiss. Coffee and bacon were on his lips, and I didn’t mind in the least. It was a quick kiss, one meant for good mornings before soft sweet lovemaking. But he didn’t take me back to bed, he did the next best thing and handed over a mug of fresh coffee.

He released me and went back to standing in front of the newspaper. I leaned over to scope it out, but of course, the paper had been printed in French. “How many languages do you speak?”

He turned the page. “About ten. Most of the romantics and a little Arabic and Farsi.”

A man of many talents. I took a sip of my coffee and propped my feet up to draw my knees into my arms. “Oh just a little Arabic and Farsi, huh?”

I watched him for a while before idly spinning on the stool between sips. A brown box sitting by the door caught my attention. “What is that?” I asked as I pointed to it.

He glanced up and scratched his cheek. His five o’clock shadow was already making him look a little rugged and sexy. “I don’t know. I think it was delivered last night. I grabbed it this morning before I went to the market. It was just sitting against your doorframe.”

I placed the mug on the counter, grabbed the box, and returned to my stool. There was an envelope taped to the top of the brown Kraft tape securing it closed. The envelope pulled off easily, so I ripped it open and unfolded the plain white paper inside. My brother’s handwriting immediately caused me to clutch the paper tighter.

---

Dear Iz,

There was more I didn’t tell you about that night. I spoke to his scientists, and they have a possible cure in the works, but for now they have a daily injection for their patients that works as sort of a hard drive backup, fortifying the brain’s synapses.

I didn’t want to tell you, hoping that if you two stayed apart than it wouldn’t matter anyway. Also, I don’t want you to murder me when we go on vacation to Italy.

Be safe. I love you.

J

---

I pointed toward the drawer urgently, and Dorian got the hint. In two seconds, I had a knife in my hand and the box open on my counter. Inside sat rows of bottles and a package of syringes.

“What is it?” he asked.

Answering him would take too long. I handed him Jake’s note and pulled a small glass vial from the box. It didn’t have the usual prescription number on it, instead the vial read 52.

Dorian dropped the paper to the counter and reached in to pull out an identical bottle. “He’s telling the truth.”

“How do you know?” I asked, still studying the clear liquid.

“That’s the number on all my case files. I was the 52nd person they studied.”

The revelation sank in. “How many of you are there?”

He shook his head still inspecting the bottle. “I have no idea.”

Now I was curious. “I wonder how old the oldest study they have is—it’s fascinating.” I was avoiding asking the obvious questions. The hard ones that I knew could take him away from me.

The silence stretched as he pulled out each individual vial and then read a small card in the bottom of the box. “How did your brother even get access to this?”

I shrugged. “He can pretty much get access to anything if you ask him nicely.”

“Your brother is a dangerous man,” he said, finally placing the last bottle in line with the other ten.

I didn’t bother responding to that since he knew first-hand how Jake could be. “Are you going to take it?” I finally asked. One of us needed to.

He leaned down so his eyes were level with the medication. “I’m not entirely sure. I’d like to discuss it with the doctor first, just in case. What if there are side effects Jake didn’t mention or know about?”

Neither of us voiced the other question. What if your brother is just trying to kill me?

“And in the meantime, while you figure this out?”

He glanced up at me over the vials. “In the meantime, I think I should stay away from you.”

Even knowing what he was going to say, it still hurt. Like a sledgehammer to the sternum. I wished I were the kind of woman who threw a fit about what she wanted. The kind who would use any and all means to make him stay. But that wasn’t me. I refused to convince a man to stay with me, even if I wanted him to.

Instead, I grabbed my cup and a slice of bacon, and slid off the stool. When I reached my bedroom door, I turned back. “You do what you have to do.”

I entered and threw myself on the chair by the window so I could think about the situation. Thinking Gray would take his things and leave, I didn’t expect him to enter the room a few minutes later. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t want to look at him right now, especially with the scent of him clinging to every inch of my skin. “I’m fine.”

He sat on the bed facing me. “I’ve been around a few years. I know the look and tone of a woman who is definitely not fine.”

Finally, I met his eyes. “I’m not going to ask you to stay with me. I want you to, and I think we would have a lot of fun together. But you’ve made up your mind about how you want to proceed. I’m not going to be able to change it, so why should I try?”

He blinked. Maybe he didn’t expect me to be so honest. Most men I’d spent time with in my life didn’t.

“And what would you have me do? Endanger you?”

“How is a week from now, a month from now, any different from what we did last night? And what we were just doing in my kitchen, or over the last week? Is it different now because you know your mind is deteriorating, or is it different because I’m not Sibyl?”

I blinked rapidly and took in a big breath of air. I hadn’t expected quite that much truth to come out.

“Is that your fear? That I’m pushing you away since you play no factor in my journey to rectify my sins? You think I don’t care about you now that I know you’re not her?”

I didn’t answer and instead stared out the window. If I looked at him, I knew I’d climb out of the chair and go to him.

“You should know; I knew you were nothing like her from the first day you told me off in the square.” He dropped to his knees in the carpet and shuffled forward until he could put his hands on my legs. “She was meek, and you’re strong. She was giving only to receive, whereas you give because it’s the only way you know how to be. She was a child, and you are a woman. Even if my mind couldn’t visibly see the differences, I know very well you are not her. And she could never live up to you. Not the other way around.”

Damn. What did I say to that? I met his eyes, and there was a sincerity there that reached inside my chest and broke down every single wall I’d ever created to keep people out. The bastard kept doing that. Tearing into my heart and my memories and the way I saw the world.

“I only want to protect you,” he said, before laying his face, cheek down, on my curled up calves.

I ran my fingers through his silky soft hair. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll wait and see, because I want to be with you.”

He lifted his head, and I shifted my hand to the side of his face. “Why would you do that? You don’t know how long it might take for me to become stable.”

“Because I want you. And if this is the only way I can have you, so be it.”

“I think I could fall in love with you, Isobel Vale.”

I sat my coffee mug on wide window sill and leaned down to press my lips to his gently. Then pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “I know you could. Why wouldn’t you?”

He growled, an actual growl, before sliding his arms under me, lifting me up, and throwing me on my bed. Before I could right myself, he crawled between my open thighs. “I want to hear you say it,” he said.

A laugh bubbled out before I could reel it back. “Say what?”

He lifted my shirt and bit the side of my waist hard enough that I swore and swatted at his shoulders. Once he released me, he met my eyes again. “Say it.”

I feigned innocence but wiggled my hips into him, his erection already greeting my movements. “Say what?” I asked, this time a little more breathlessly.

He shifted up my body until we aligned in that oh-so-beautiful way. “Say it,” he whispered.

“I think I could fall in love with you too, Dorian Gray.”

He smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled up, and looking at him was like trying to look into the face of the sun. I wanted to earn that smile every single damn day. “I’ll take that,” he said.

With a sigh, he surged his hips up against, me and I stalled his shoulders. “Nope, Mister. This is not keeping your distance.”

He kissed the curve of my neck, and I tried to hold on to whatever argument I formed in my mind. But it was fleeing fast under his mouth

Somehow, the man had already discerned that I loved the way it felt when he nibbled on my earlobe, and as he drew one between his lips and sucked on it gently, I began unbuckling his belt.

“Let’s just start that distance-keeping thing on Monday,” I whispered before using my feet to push his pants down his legs.

It was hours before either of us spoke again.