That makes two of us. Although I never want to see him lose control in the real world, I hunger to strip it from him in bed.

One inch, then gone, rubbing between my legs, where I’m swollen and achingly wet. Then two inches inside me. Then gone, then back and slow, so slow I nearly scream with frustration as he eases into me as if we had all the time in the world.

“We do.”

Laughter explodes from me, pure joy. Eternity. I get to love this man forever.

“Fuck, Dani, stop laughing!”

“Afraid you’ll lose control?” I tease and laugh again, a husky, wicked sound as I kicked it up a notch, and began to vibrate from head to toe.

“Son of a bitch!”

* * *

π

Later, I sprawl on top of him, staring into glittering, lazily sated silver eyes.

It’s a good thing the room was already wrecked, because we’d have wrecked it anyway. I have no idea how much time has passed down here where no light of day penetrates but am willing to bet we’ve spent twenty-four straight hours exploring each other’s bodies, testing limits, discovering what drives each other wild.

And this man is definitely wild. Hot and sexy and just the flavor of kink I like.

“I’ve only got one week,” I remind him softly.

He stiffens and growls as I fill him in on all that happened, explaining the parameters of my new existence; his silver eyes blaze with joy.

“Half the time we’ll be human. The other half, we’ll be beasts together,” he says, laughing softly. “What a fine fucking life.”

Indeed. Still, something’s bothering me. I need to know why he thought I wasn’t coming back, what Y’rill did with my “text.” “Ryodan, didn’t you get my message? I sent you—”

“A bloody chunk of star. Christ, that damned piece of rock has been the bane of my fucking existence.”

So, he did get it. “It was meant to set your mind at ease.”

“Your aim sucked, Stardust,” he growls. He rolls me off him, surges to his feet, stalks to the hearth where he collects something from a box on the floor and brings it back, handing it to me.

I peer at it in the low light and gasp.

It says:

I’M OKAY I’M

“But that’s only half of it!”

“I bloody well know that. What the fuck is the end of that sentence? You have no idea how many words I plugged in. I’m okay, I’m happy. I’m okay, I’m free. I’m okay, I’m never coming back. What the fuck, Dani?”

I turn the chunk of star over and study the edge. “It broke. It must have hit something on the way to you. Where were you when you got it?”

“On a beach.”

I frown. “A beach? You went to the beach?” Lor said he’d not come out of Chester’s since I left.

“I used to walk the ocean at night. It plunged from the sky and landed next to me.”

“When?”

He laughs but there’s a deep undercurrent of bitterness, a hint of torment in it. “Woman, you have driven me crazy far longer than you know. I got your bloody damned star three thousand, one hundred forty-one years, five months, nine days, and two hours before you turned into a Hunter at the abbey.”

I gasp. “Three thousand years ago?” What was Y’rill thinking? Was her aim that bad? Was manipulating time trickier than she’d cared to admit?

“You’re the reason I began to study linchpin theory, over three millennia ago. You’re the reason I began trying to project the future. You, Dani O’Malley, have been the greatest and most irritating mystery of my existence. I smelled you on the star that night on the beach. The scent of a woman I hungered to know, unlike any woman I’d ever met. I waited to meet her. And waited. And bloody fucking waited. Found her one night in Dublin, an uncontrollable, swaggering child with a bloody death wish, balls of steel, a superhero complex, and a teenage boyfriend.”

“Oh God, you knew I was the one who’d thrown the star when you saw me that night?”

“I’d given up on the whole matter long ago, decided the star was the equivalent of a text message sent to the wrong phone. Then I moved in behind you that night and smelled your scent. I knew you were her, the one who would one day throw a star at me, across time.

“My world went to hell from that moment on. I had no idea what you were or what to do with you. I only knew one day you’d toss a bloody celestial body my way. Admit it, you never wrote any more than that. I tortured you so much, you decided to torture me back for a few thousand years.”

I burst out laughing. If I’d thought of it, I might have.

“That was all I had to go on. Then when you began to turn black—”

“That’s why you were so certain I was becoming a Hunter,” I exclaim, “because they live among the stars!”

He inclines his head.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He’s silent a long moment then exhales gustily. “It was mindfuck to an extreme. I was concerned I might change things.”

“Illogical. If it—”

“—already happened, yes, it would no matter what. I thought of that, too. Barrons and I discussed it endlessly.”

“Barrons knew?”

“My brother is the only one I told. I’ve learned to take nothing for granted in this world.” He’s silent again then says, “I’d begun to suspect that because of my feelings for you, I’d try to sabotage whatever might happen. I questioned my motives.”

I still as the enormity of what he is telling me sinks in. From the day he met me he’d known I would one day throw a star at him. No wonder he hadn’t thought I was human! Then once I started turning Hunter, he’d known the what of it but not how things would end. He’d not known, even as I branded him, even as he encouraged me to embrace my destiny, if he would ever see me again. Still, he’d helped me through it.

“No cages, Dani. Ever. Not for you. It was possible being a Hunter would be everything you wanted. It was possible the final word was “happy.” If it had happened then it was supposed to happen, and the only thing I could do was be there while it happened. I thought I’d lost you forever. The moment you turned, I could no longer feel you. I thought your star was your goodbye.”

“Never,” I say swiftly. “It was my promise to you that I was returning, to set your mind at ease. Because I didn’t call you for those two years and I should have. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. I wasted those two years because I was stubborn and proud and kept boxing my emotions instead of admitting them. That I loved you. I’ve always loved you.”

“So, what the fuck did it say? Imagine working a cryptoquip for three thousand bloody years and never solving it.”

“I’m okay, I’m coming home.”

“Is this, Dani?” he says quietly. “Home? Will you live here with me?”

“Always. Well, half the time. The other half of the time—”

“Bloody hell, I’m going with you when you go.”

“As high as I can take you without killing you,” I promise. We would sail the night sky together, watch over our city, our friends and family.

“I might surprise you,” he says, smiling faintly. “I don’t need to breathe, Dani. Not all the time. Besides, I always come back.”

I cup that beautiful face and kiss him, long and deep. “I always will, too. That’s our number one rule, Ryodan. No matter what, we will always come back to each other.”

“A rule I’ll never break.” He flashes me a wolfish grin. “All the others are up for grabs. You’ll have to keep me in line. I’m not an easy man to handle.”

I know that already. It’s one of the things I like most about him. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that he’d been waiting over three thousand years for me. Something about the length of time he’d been waiting teases at my brain. “Wait a minute, how long was it again from the time you got my star and I turned into a Hunter?”

“Three thousand one hundred forty-one years, five months, nine days, and two hours,” he says flatly. “Wondered when you’d notice that.”

I stare at him. “Ryodan, that’s pi.”

“The first seven digits of it. It was the hope I held onto. That we would somehow get all the rest of those digits, too.”

I’m stupefied. Dancer was right. There’s pattern and purpose to everything.

This spectacular universe knew exactly what it was doing.

“We will,” I say, smiling up at him. I can feel it in my Hunter bones.

An eternity with this man was all I’d ever wanted. Whatever comes, whatever challenges we face, we’ll ride them out together. It will be intense, it will be dangerous, it will be unpredictable, but it will never be dull. Not with him.

As he surges above me, stretching his big beautiful body over mine, I let go of everything, sprawl back and tell him in great detail exactly what I want him to do. He complies with one thousand percent devotion to the task at hand as I lay back and take what I want, understanding finally that I deserve to. That I don’t have to be super-anything to be loved.

Cages were funny things.

Although I’d escaped with my body long ago, only recently had my heart finally broken free.

Healed by the love of a man who’d been willing to sacrifice everything, even give me up if he had to, just to see me rise.