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I opened my mouth to contradict him, but he didn’t let me.

“But right now, think of me for you like you were for Vinnie. The only thing you could do that I couldn’t forgive would be to leave without giving us a chance. And even then . . . if there was anything left of my heart . . . I might put it together if you came back and asked.”

I stared at him, shaken by that much . . . raw emotion radiating from his eyes, his hands on mine, the tension at his mouth. Oh God . . .

Vinnie, I can’t—

Coward.

Vinnie, you’re still in my head—

But not in your bed, asshole. Give him something.

Noah smiled then, and patted my cheek gently. “I’m going to let you contemplate your island for a few minutes,” he offered. “I’ll be back when the dishes are done, and we’ll see about that bike ride.”

But I couldn’t look at my island after that. I stared after him, and tried to come up with words that would do justice to the words he’d given
me
.

I had no words—none. Only this sudden warmth when I hadn’t realized I was cold, and this sudden need to
do
something for him, because he’d just offered so much to me.

I stood up restlessly and thought one last wistful time about jumping in the water and trying to swim, and then walked into the kitchen. Noah was throwing away napkins and putting the leftover pastries back in the box, his movements loose and unhurried.

He
was
the real deal. He’d given me everything he had to make sure I knew I could lean on him for strength—and then relaxed and hoped I’d take it when I needed it.

Oh, little did he know.

I
always
needed it.

Carefully, because he moved with efficiency, I slid behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, resting my cheek against his neck.

“Mmm . . .” His voice rumbled through his chest.

“You’ll never be just my healing guy,” I said after a moment. “You are . . . so much more than that.”

He dried his hands on a dish towel and turned around to hold me against his chest.

“I didn’t need to hear that today,” he said kindly.

“I really needed to say it.” I didn’t want to look at him, into those all-too-perceptive eyes.

“Then I’m not going to complain. Do you still want that bike ride?” he asked.

I tilted my head back, and he played with the hair around my hairline. “Oh yes.” I looked forward to being on a bike with him again. “I . . . I’ve always loved it, but I’ve never been able to find company.”

His smile was contented like a cat’s. “So
not
something that you and Vinnie . . .”

I rolled my eyes. “No, not something that Vinnie and I used to do.”

“Then I’m all for it.”

Noah refused to take me mountain biking this day—we had to stick to the roads and the easy trails, no off-roading or risk taking for me.

I got the feeling he was expecting me to do something that would jinx what we both knew was going to happen that night.

But because Noah was a
stellar
lover and a fantastic human being, I didn’t have to think about what was going to happen that night. I concentrated on the forest as the bike wound in and out. I concentrated on the flatlands running the edge of the sound, or on the beauty of a gorge we crossed, hugging the side of the bridge like limpets, afraid two cars would need to use the bridge with us.

Noah took me to a lookout, the plateau of a tiny mountain that embraced the sound, the hamlet of Bluewater Bay, and the awesome backdrop of Mount Olympus in one majestic panorama. I must have stood there for half an hour, glutting my vision on my new home.

From this angle, my island was much smaller but just as mysterious, and I couldn’t see my house at all.

Still, I stared out there, thinking about my obsession with the place. It was small, but if I reached out and touched it . . . right there . . . I could hold it in my hand.

“What do you see there?” Noah asked quietly. He could tell where I was looking, I guess.

I flushed and struggled for words. What did I think was there? Vinnie, wearing ragged jeans and a flannel shirt, stocking a cabin with firewood, smiling and saying, “I’ve been waiting for you here!”? Vinnie had hated the Pacific Northwest. Hell, Vinnie had hated the ocean north of Monterey.

Was I going to see his family, there on Christmas Day, all happy and smiling and offering me a place by the tree and some hot cocoa? His mom, Denise; his father, David; and his grown brother and sisters? Would I see his nieces and nephews playing by the tree, all seven of them? Would I get to be “Vinnie’s friend Connor” again?

“Uncle Connor,” I mumbled to myself. I should have been Uncle Connor.

No, I didn’t want to see Vinnie’s family on that island. Come to think about it, I didn’t want to see Vinnie, either.

What would I see?

Unconsciously I looked at Noah.

“You’d be on that island,” I said, smiling at the thought. He probably rocked the plaid shirt/jeans and waffle-stomper look. There was something rugged about him in spite of his youth and his ranginess and that sarcastic wit. If anyone could
do
a small cabin on an island, Noah could.

But right now, Noah was looking at me uneasily. “I’ll be wherever you are,” he said, and I was suddenly in the real world and not the ghost world of people who weren’t real, walking about on the San Juan Islands in the mist.

“Then maybe we’ll take a boat out there one day and see,” I said lightly, trying not to obsess anymore.

Noah nodded suspiciously and pulled two energy bars out of the pack at his waist. He handed me one, and gestured to the water bottle attached to my bike. I grabbed it, and together we shared a snack.

“Good thing you thought of these,” I said, after we’d downed them. “We would have been starving when we got back.”

“We’ll still be starving,” he said glumly. “So we don’t have any more time for me to worry about what’s going on in that pointy little head of yours.”

“Nothing!” I defended. “Nothing is—”

Noah shook his head. “We’ll take a boat out to the island, Connor, and we’ll see whatever’s there. But stop obsessing about it. There’s something going on,” he tapped the center of my helmet, “right in here that makes me
very
uneasy.”

I grinned. “Nothing’s happening up there,” I promised him. “That’s usually the problem. Now let’s go back—I can make us dinner!” With that I turned the bike around on the small service road and coasted back down.

It didn’t come up during dinner, and when we were done, we spent an hour on the couch, flipping through the channels for the shows on summer hiatus.

“Look, there’s our baby,” I said, pausing on
Wolf’s Landing
. “Ooh—it’s back in the first episode, before whatserface got replaced by Amelia.”

“Have you worked with her yet?” Noah asked curiously.

I shrugged. “Not so much—she seems okay.”

“I’m waiting to see that new director on set—Rafael something. He’s supposed to be hot shit.”

I grimaced. “Yeah. Ah, the young, the cocky, the absolutely sure that camera angle hasn’t been done a thousand times before.”

Noah chuckled. “Yeah, well, it’s all been done a thousand times before—it’s up to the individuals to make it seem like they
discovered
that idea, right?”

I thought of stories told about the late, great Kim Manners, and how he’d literally lain down on the ground to film a shot from the actors’ feet on up.

“Yeah,” I said thoughtfully. “Make the individual touch matter, right?”

Noah was smiling, that wicked smile he’d had this morning when he’d caught me feeling myself up. “Speaking of individual touch,” he said gruffly. “You need to go shower.”

He’d showered while I’d started dinner, and I stretched self-consciously. “Yeah . . . yeah—I’m sorry, do I offend?”

He shook his head. “No, Connor. I just . . . left some things up there. I think you need to take a look at them before you clean up.”

I started to squirm, remembering that he’d dominated me that morning, and that he was probably going to keep doing it until I said stop.

I didn’t want to say stop. So long, I’d been waiting for someone to tell me what to do.
Noah
could tell me what to do.

“Uh, okay.” I found that everything down south had clenched, was aching, because of the things that may or may not be upstairs waiting for me. Oh man—I could hardly take a real kiss! “Uh, you know it’s been a while, right?”

Noah nodded soberly. “Yeah, sweetheart. That’s why the things. You’re going to need some help, I think, not to rocket off the bed.”

I smiled, feeling light and airy and . . . pliable. “Okay, Noah. You’re the boss here.”

He looked startled, like I’d maybe said or done something important without realizing it, but I couldn’t stay and figure out what.

He’d given me an order. I needed to follow it. I loved it when life was simple.

I let the water run and then turned to the counter, more twitchy than curious. He’d left a note on top of the three boxes balanced there:
Choose your favorites. I just want you ready.

Choose my favorites?

He’d raided the sex-toy shop like a
boss
.

The plug set was graduated—and I could see his thinking there.
Noah
was pretty big—he didn’t want to hurt me, and it had been a year. There was also a dildo, bigger than the plugs but smaller than Noah, and two cock rings—one rubber, one leather—and that was just what he’d set out on the counter. In the little boutique bag on the back of the toilet seat he had everything from nipple clamps to handcuffs to blindfolds to paddles and ticklers—Jesus, Noah, how many times were we going to have sex tonight?

I stepped into the water and started to wash, practically panicking from all of the possibilities. A thousand scenarios, all of them overwrought, overstaged, and kinky as hell, filtered behind my eyes like a porn film on Super 8.

Vinnie, have you seen this shit?

Yes, Connor, I’ve seen it and used it.

Oh.

My hands were shaking by the time I got out of the shower, and when I picked up one of the boxes, Noah’s voice from the next room surprised me into dropping it. “Don’t overthink that shit! That’s for later if we get there.”

“Get out of my brain!”

I must have sounded a little panicked, because he opened the door and fixed me with those fathomless eyes. “I could hear you stressing from downstairs—it’s weird. It’s like radar. Now calm down, make a decision, choose a plug, forget about the cock ring and the other stuff—think of it as sort of a gift. You didn’t pack any sex stuff because you thought sex was dead. This is a welcome-back-to-your-sex-life present—but we’re not going to use it all tonight, or even ever.”

I looked at the bag again, feeling both relieved and disappointed. “Not ever?” I reached in and pulled out the butt plug with the flogger tail. “’Cause this is sort of cool—I’ve never seen one of these.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “No, you were too busy trying to land roles, Mr. I’m-a-Hollywood-slut. You have seen
nothing
like horny until you’ve been in a college dorm room with a bunch of repressed jocks who want to go college-try-bi.”