I stepped inside and was hit with the mouth-watering aromas of sizzling garlic and wine.

Ro stood at the stove, his jaw all stubbled and his damp hair tousled, dropping fat white prawns into a pan while Ella Fitzgerald sang about being bewitched, bothered, and bewildered on the stereo. A cut-up crusty baguette was arrayed on a wooden cutting board on the table next to a big colorful salad. “Wine’s chilling in the fridge.”

My breath caught at the cozy picture of domesticity. This. The world was exploding around us but tonight we could have this bubble.

We could have us. And then I’d tell him I loved him.

I hugged him from behind. “You’re the best.”

“I am. But that’s old news.”

“Are we going to talk about earlier?”

He shook his head. “I respect your decision. Hell, I understand your decision. But I can’t talk about it. Not tonight, okay?” He squeezed some lemon onto the prawns. “Shower off and come get comfortable.”

I ran a hand down his abs and under his shirt. “What if I’d rather eat and then take a bath with my boyfriend?”

I teased him for a good minute before he relaxed and turned to me with a grin that was so sinful, I surreptitiously checked my red polka dot bikini bottoms to ensure they hadn’t spontaneously combusted. They were still there but what little dryness they’d achieved had just suffered a serious setback.

He captured my lips with the sweetest tease of a kiss.

Seriously. It lasted all of two seconds. I stood there with my mouth puckered but he’d already turned back to the stove. I poked him in the back and he chuckled.

“Pour us both a glass and let me finish, or we won’t eat.”

“I can wait.”

“You’ll need the stamina.”

I shivered at the promise in his voice. “Dinner first it is.”

I still planned to bathe with him later, so I just threw a wrap over my bikini.

Dinner was lighthearted, filled with delicious seafood, a Moscato that went down like fruit punch, and a confessional about words we’d misunderstood as kids.

I wiped a dollop of salad dressing off my upper lip. “My turn. When I was about seven, Ari and I were playing Monopoly and he was being a total brat.”

Ro swiped a piece of bread through the buttery wine sauce from the prawns. “He was winning.”

“Exactly. So, to insult him and prove I was smarter than my science nerd brother, I decided to call him an organism. Except I couldn’t remember which was the single-celled life form and which was the sex thing and, well, orgasm it was.”

“He must have had a field day with that one.”

“He knew I meant organism but he wasn’t too sure what an orgasm was either, so being the curious child he was, he had to find out.”

Rohan shook his head, his expression half-amused, half-fearful.

“We were staying with my bubbe that summer who didn’t have internet. Imagine this perfectly coiffed woman nervously twisting her diamond ring while her twin grandchildren peppered her with questions about orgasms. I think she tried to answer the first one, then she gave us ten bucks and told us to go buy candy.”

“Why do I sense an extortion scam?”

“Because you know me. To be fair, Ari was just as bad. We must have raked in a couple hundred bucks that summer. Just stayed high on Gummi Bears and Chupa Chups. Mom had to detox us when we got home.” I speared a piece of avocado. “That was also the year Ari broke his ankle rollerblading off a homemade ramp and I ended up with a really bad case of road rash trying to ride my bike on one wheel.” I picked out the lone candied pecan left in the salad bowl and tossed it in my mouth. “There may have been a correlation.”

“At least your story had a happy ending.” Rohan covered his eyes with his hand. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.”

I pried his hand away. “But you are.”

“I used to think that hot and bothered meant annoyed.”

“When was this? When you were seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Funny. No, I was six. I walked up to my mom and Asha and said, ‘You know what gets me hot and bothered?’ Mom got this weird look on her face like she’d swallowed something the wrong way, but asked me what.”

“And you said?”

“People picking their toe nails.”

I snorted, my fork clattering to my plate. “That poor woman. Thinking she had a little foot fetishist.”

“It gets worse. Years later, when I was dating Lily, unbeknownst to me, Asha dropped that little tidbit into a conversation with Lils without saying I’d been a kid when I said it. And she did it on the very night Lily and I were planning to sleep together.”

I tried to keep a sympathetic expression on my face, but my shoulders shook. “Your cousin was an evil genius. Please keep over-sharing.”

“I had this whole romantic night planned.”

“Dude, you were sixteen when you lost your V-card. How romantic could you have been? A black candle, a hotel room, and Morrissey crooning sweet nothing matters on the CD player?”

“Morrissey is more post-organismic.” He smirked at me. “Did I use that correctly in a sentence?”

I shot him the finger.

“So Lils comes in and things are happening and then she asks me if I want her to take off her socks. Thinking it was go-time, I said yes, super enthusiastically, and took off my socks. I also took off my pants and my shirt and when I turned around, naked, she was trying to trim a toenail with this determined look on her face.”

I choked on the mouthful of wine I’d taken.

“Probably jumping back in horror and yelling ‘What the fuck, Lily?’ wasn’t my finest moment.”

“You think?!”

He knocked my leg with his knee under the table. “She yelled back that I was the one who got hot and bothered with toenails to which I really cemented my chances of never getting laid by telling the A.P. Honor Roll student that she was an idiot because hot and bothered meant aroused, not grossed out.”

I put my foot in his lap. “Wow. And yet she did eventually have sex with you.”

“After two months of me groveling.” He massaged my instep, exactly how I liked it.

I sighed in delight. “Did you get Asha back for that?”

“Hell, yeah. I left a herpes test kit in her open purse for Drio to find.” His smile faded and his massage stilled. “Did killing Oskar help?”

“In the moment. But taking a life for a life didn’t give me any closure.” I brushed some crumbs off the table into my palm, sprinkling them on my plate. “What a stupid idea. Taking his life isn’t going to heal my heart. It isn’t going to bring Esther back.” I stared out into the indigo night. “It hammered home one thing though. I finally understand on a visceral level that this is war. The first shots have been fired and they won’t be the last. And even though I feel like I have this permanent taint inside me, guilt isn’t going to do me any good.”

“What is?” Ro asked.

“Winning.” I gathered the plates, but Rohan shook his head, motioning for me to stay seated. “It’ll be different for you,” I said. “Hybris isn’t human.”

“Human or not, you killed a monster.” Ro stacked dishes. “I’m not sure killing Hybris will bring me any peace around losing Asha.”

“What will?”

Rohan kissed the top of my head. “Finish your wine. I’ll draw a bath.”

This may have been a guest bungalow but even the bathtub was deluxe, wide and deep.

I sank into the steaming hot water with a sigh, leaning back against Rohan. For a while, neither of us spoke. He played with my hair while I raked my nails along the soft dusting of hair on his inner thigh, our legs tangled together.

“I’m sorry about Esther,” he said. “But it wasn’t your fault. I heard you in the pool. No. Wait.” He put his hand over my mouth for a second. I nipped his finger and he pulled it away, playing with my hair once more. “You think that you brought her into this fight, but you didn’t. The witches were never going to be passive bystanders.”

“I only just got to know her and there’s this giant hole in my heart. What if…”

His arms tightened around me. “I’m terrified of who I could lose, too.”

I flipped over to straddle him, my arms draped around his neck, falling into the sensation of being wrapped around his hard body with the water softly lapping against my back. Our gazes locked.

He rocked into me ever so slightly, rubbing himself against my clit, his eyes never leaving mine.

Deeper and deeper I fell.

My heart jumped into my throat. We’d hit a point of intimacy that would usually have me making a joke or reframing the action into something I could handle.

I didn’t want to “handle” anything. I wanted to be lost in him, let that undertow drag me under and revel in how gloriously deep this went.

I stood up, water sluicing off my body, and held out my hand, catching sight of myself in the partially fogged up mirror. Hair in wet curls, eyes glassy with a drugged dizzy need, I looked like a sex-crazed Botticelli.

No. I looked like a woman deeply in love with the man before her.

From the way Rohan’s eyes darkened, making a very slow and very thorough sweep of me, it worked for him. He rose and twined his fingers with mine, letting me lead him into the bedroom.

My hand shook slightly as I pushed him back on the cool sheets.

Rohan reached for the small lamp, but I stopped him, my eyes adjusting to the dark enough to see.

Reverently, I traced his jawline, his stubble prickling my fingertips, following up with kisses pressed to the softness of the underside of his jaw. That secret vulnerable spot that Rohan exposed with no hesitation to me.

He raked one finger blade slowly up and down along my spine, pressing my chest against his.

“Do you have any idea what you mean to me?” I said.

His mouth found mine with an urgency I matched kiss for kiss, our lips sliding together messily, tongues dancing.

I pulled away. “Final frontier.”

“What? You want to watch Star Trek? Now?” He glanced down at his very hard cock with a pained expression.

“Yes. It gets me hot and bothered. Did I use that correctly?”

He barked a laugh.

I slid off the bed, opened my suitcase, and pulled out the object I wasn’t sure I was going to have the nerve to try. I tossed it on the bed, along with a small bottle of lube. “Final frontier.”

Ro’s brows wrinkled then his eyes lit up and he reached for the butt plug. “Is this for me or for you?”

“Me for now, but we are definitely coming back to that statement. I, uh, thought we could start with this and work up to larger things.” I flicked a glance at his hard-on.

“Oh yeah, we will.” Ro held the plug in one hand like he was weighing it. He chewed on his bottom lip, studying me. Then he shook his head. “Not yet.”

My eyes darted from the plug to him. I wasn’t sure if the hollowness in my chest was relief or disappointment. “Why not?”

“Because even the Enterprise didn’t just rush out to the furthest reaches of space on their first go. It’s a journey.”

“Yeah? How’s this work then?”

He smiled widely, slightly impish. “First, I’m gonna make you see stars.”

He put his mouth to the side of my neck, his lips cool on my flushed skin.

I tangled my fingers in his hair, pulling him closer to me as I fell to the mattress. I sucked on his lip, then did it again, just to elicit his low growl once more.

He cupped my face. “I love that I get to look at you whenever I want. Touch you.” He caressed my breasts and I arched into his touch. “Taste you.”

He suckled my stiffened peak.

My breasts grew heavy and sensitive and I let out a breathy sigh.

Rohan trailed kisses down the length of my body, nudging my knees apart so he could show Cuntessa some love. He lavished attention on every inch of me, bringing me to the brink time and time again until I was trembling beneath him.

He grabbed the lube. There was a squirt and then he slid his finger into my ass.

I dug my heels into the mattress, coils of pleasure rippling through me under his stellar multitasking and highly talented tongue.

“This is lovely,” I gasped, “but I’m not seeing stars.”

Rohan lifted his head. “Demanding much?”

“I was promised stars. Shame if it was false advertising.”

“I’m gonna enjoy making you beg.”

“Oh no. Please don’t threaten me with mind-blowing sex.” I fluttered my hands. “Scaaaary.”

He squirted out a very generous handful of lube, oiling up both me and the butt plug. “Get on all fours.”

I eyed the friendly green plug that suddenly seemed way too large to fit into me, even though it was a slender starter model.

He slowly inserted it, letting me catch my breath through the stretching burn. “Should I stop?”

I exhaled and shook my head. Except about five seconds later, I was ready to pull the plug myself, so to speak.

Before I could, Rohan said, “there” and things started vibrating.

A wrecked moan tore from my throat.

Rohan’s face popped up upside down in my field of vision. “You like?” he purred.

I could barely nod, awash on a sea of intensity. Every pleasure-inducing nerve ending had lit up.

“We can stop here,” he said. “Or–”

I stretched my neck forward to kiss him messily. “I want ‘or,’” I panted.

The answering grin he trained on me, the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth from between closed teeth, had me reaching for him again, but he ducked away to stand behind me. He gripped my hips, sliding inside me with a powerful thrust.

Rohan fucked me hard, his hips slapping against the base of the plug. I was so full and everything was vibrating and then he brought Cuntessa into the mix and holy fuck.

Sweat trailed down the back of my neck. I dropped onto my bent elbows, rubbing my breasts against the blanket, my right cheek pressed to the mattress and my ass in the air.

“You like that?” he said.

“Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.”

The Bullseye pendant thunked against my collarbone with each thrust. My inner thighs shook. A spark caught in my core, detonating outward in shockwaves.

I growled deep in my throat and fell face first onto the bed, decimated by the most explosive orgasm I’d ever had.

Ro came at the same time, then fell on top of me. He moved my sweaty hair aside to kiss my neck.

My body was all pleasantly throbby and warm and boneless. I checked the hairline fracture on the box, because talk about big bang, and if anything could have woken Lilith it would have been that orgasm, but all was well.

Squirming out from under my boyfriend, I pulled the plug out with a slippery and vaguely uncomfortable pop and put it on some tissue. “Next time we scale up.”

I expected a chuckle or a fist bump, but Rohan was uncharacteristically silent. I propped myself up on one elbow to look at him. “You okay?”

He caressed my cheek. “Killing Hybris isn’t going to heal me, because being with you already is.”

In that moment all was clear. I’d be fine without magic if it meant having Rohan like this for the rest of my life.

Tell him.

I smoothed a lock of floppy silky hair back from his still blown-out molten eyes. “Ro. I–”

Pound! Pound! Pound!

“Open up!” Baruch roared.

Rohan jackknifed off the bed. We each grabbed a blanket to cover ourselves and sprinted for the front door.

I threw it open and stepped back at the fury twisting Baruch’s features. “What’s wrong?”

He clutched the door frame hard enough to crack it. “Benjy’s been taken.”