Please know that I love you. I wish there was a way to open up to you now, but I cannot risk your safety. I miss you. I love you. Every night, while you sleep, I stand in the doorway of our bedroom and cry. How has it come to this?

Love, Gerry

Sarah could not stop reading the words, tracing the messy penmanship, looking at the jacket. The release of the tension she had carried for two years was so tremendous, she got dizzy and had to throw out a hand to catch herself from falling backward.

Gerry was still gone. This much was true.

But he was back now, too. The letter resurrected the man she had always thought he was, replacing the version of him she had feared he’d become.

If only he had known the other half of the story. Had he been aware that the boy he wanted to protect was of a different species? Or maybe he had realized that from the scans …

Bringing the jacket across her lap, she put the letter back in the envelope and returned everything to the inside pocket. For some reason, she wanted to leave it all exactly as Gerry had. It was like their last embrace.

There was no bringing him back. And no going back to who she’d been when they’d been together. Murhder had changed her. Nate had changed her. Her knowledge of that species had changed her.

Time had changed her.

But this … brought a measure of peace that she desperately needed.

Shifting up onto her knees, she hung the jacket over the slacks and set the suit back on the dowel inside the box. There was no re-sticking the tape on the top. It was two years old to begin with, and had lost a lot of its adhesive properties. She tucked the four flaps into each other, however, and she would return with better tape later.

Sarah stood at the box with her palms on the closed top for a while. It seemed appropriate to take a moment. And she would make sure that wherever she went, the suit came with her. She would not leave him behind, even if Gerry was not a part of her future.

He had played a substantial role in her past, for sure.

The loss of Murhder was still going to hurt like hell. But at least it wasn’t compounded by the sense that the man she had almost married hadn’t been who she’d believed him to be.

Fucking Kraiten. She was glad he’d stabbed himself in the gut and had bled out all over his no doubt fancy kitchen. He deserved worse.

And in a way, Murhder and his kind had avenged Gerry’s death for her—

A knocking on her front door, loud and insistent, brought her head up. Then … silence.

More knocking now.

Why didn’t she have a gun in the house?

“Because you don’t know how to shoot one,” she muttered as she went down the ladder.

Heading to the dark guest bathroom in the front of the house, she peeled back the curtain and—

Now, her heart raced for a different reason. What was … was she seeing things?

Knocking on the glass, she waved and then turned around so fast, she slipped on the throw rug and nearly broke her arm catching her fall on the tub edge.

She hit the stairs on a full scramble, and almost did a roadrunner through her own door. Fumble … fumble … fumble with the dead bolt—

Sarah nearly ripped the door off its hinges.

There on the other side was her short-haired, beautiful vampire, with a bouquet of evergreen boughs gathered in a satin bow.

The instant he met her eyes, he dropped down on one knee and held up the fragrant, fluffy branches. “These should be roses. I’m sorry that they’re—”

“What—what are you doing here—”

“—not roses. I understand that human males present their females with red roses—”

“Murhder, how are you here?”

He stood up slowly, his eyes traveling around her face as if he were re-memorizing her features. “I fought for us. I am a warrior, and I fought for us.”

“What?” she breathed.

“Here, let’s go inside, it’s cold for you.”

“Is it?” she whispered as she backed up.

Murhder shut them in together, she couldn’t believe he was standing in front of her.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked.

“No.” He touched her cheek. “This is real.”

“Kiss me, then?”

He closed his eyes in reverence. And then leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. Once. Twice. Again.

Sarah wrapped her arms around as much of his shoulders as she could manage—which was granted not much given his size. “How are you here?” she repeated against his mouth.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in a lifetime.” Those incredible peach-colored eyes of his bored into hers. “I ached for you.”

“And I ached for you.”

There was babbling at that point. Both of them were speaking, but no one was making sense, and none of it mattered anyway. She had been trying to get used to the emptiness of his absence, swimming in the cold murky waters of loneliness—and yet now he was here. They were together, they—

She pushed him back. “What happened?”

“I realized that I needed to fight for you. The Brotherhood, they wanted me back with them, they asked me to fight for the race with them again as one of them. But there was no way I was doing that without fighting for us first. And Wrath had a change of heart.”

“So I’m allowed back?”

He stepped away and held up his hands. “I looked you up on the Internet.”

“Well, at least I don’t have to worry about any naked pictures surfacing.”

“You are not just any scientist. You’re a very important—”

“No more important than anyone else. I don’t believe in the ego stuff.”

Murhder’s slow smile made her blush. Then again, that expression on his face was telling her without words how much he respected her.

“Be that as it may,” he said, “I’m not going to force you to come with me. I can come to you, if you don’t want to leave your work—”

Sarah tucked his bouquet under her arm, grabbed his face, and kissed him. “Oh, my God! So I can continue my research at the training center? Because I need to work with Doc Jane on the storage of blood. I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but you have a critical issue as a species when it comes to blood storage …”

God, he loved this female. He loved her so damned much.

Only his Sarah could embrace him and kiss him, and look like he had delivered the entire world to her just by showing up on her doorstep—and then promptly get excited about the science she was going to do.

Murhder’s smile was so great, his cheeks stretched wide. And he was oh, so content to let her go on for however long she wanted to.

“—looking at me like that?” she said with a grin.

“Because I love you, Dr. Sarah Watkins. I love you so much, and I just … want to be with you.”

On that note, he took his “bouquet” from her, set it aside, and got serious with the kissing. The next thing he knew, they were on her couch again, this time with her on top, her thighs split over his hips. She lifted her shirt up and over her head, and then … the bra. Her bra disappeared on a oner. Naked, so beautifully naked. And as he cupped her breasts, and then sat up to worship them with his mouth, he knew he was home.