She did some floor-staring herself. She smoothed a pair of jeans over her arm. She shrugged again. “I think I should go.” She met his gaze. “Don’t you think I should go?”

“If you want to, of course.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She turned back to her suitcase and laid the jeans on top of a sizeable pile. He wasn’t sure if she’d be able to close it.

“Where’d all the clothes come from?”

At that she faced him and smiled. “I’ve been practicing my folding skills. I brought all of this from my home in Surprise.”

“Nice,” he said.

“Thanks. I’m getting better.”

His heart started racing. Ah, shit. He had to talk to her. He had to take her home with him. He just had to.

But man, doing this felt like he’d just set a flame-torch to every nerve on his body.

He took a few deep breaths. He stood up and steadied himself, then turned toward her. Even though he was dizzy, he crossed to her. He got a little too close because when she turned around, she bumped into him.

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.” She looked up at him and he froze. Could a woman be more beautiful than Elise? No. Never. Her glittering brown eyes, full lips, sculpted cheekbones.

When a wave of strawberry flowed over him, he staggered, righted himself, then caught her chin in his hand. “Aw, fuck, Elise. Won’t you come home with me? Won’t you stay with me? I want you there. Bad.” As declarations went, this one really sucked.

Elise’s eyes opened wide. “You want me to come home with you? Really?”

Why so much disbelief? Oh, yeah, he’d been screaming about how much he didn’t want to be with her for the past twenty-four hours.

He gathered his courage and said, “I’m not the most eloquent man. I never will be. You should know that. But here it is. I’m in love with you, and not just that ratty little hey-sleep-with-me kind of love, but the deep kind, the kind that wants a forever and a life with you and kids, maybe, if any of that appeals to you. Shit. Does it?”

“Appeal to me?”

“Yeah. Can you see a life with me, even though it will probably be fucked up with a lot of danger, and death vampires, and horrible wounds, and all that shit?”

She moved to the side of the bed, sat down, put her hands over her face, and burst into tears. Jesus H. Christ. A woman crying. Acid on his skin.

But he summoned his courage once more and crossed to sit down on the bed beside her. He put his arm around her and she turned into him, planting her wet face against his right pec. Her body heaved up and down as she sobbed.

His heart sank to his feet, but he didn’t move. He just held her and let her get it out. Rachel sometimes did this. She said he was a jerk to think it was personal; women needed to cry on occasion. That’s all.

The problem in this case, however, was personal. He told the woman he loved that he loved her and now she was making his T-shirt all wet.

When her body calmed down, and only a few ripples of sobs escaped her, he said the only thing he could think of. “I’m sorry. Right after the battle, I changed into this T-shirt and jeans and I must smell like hell.”

She lifted her gaze to him, all wet and slobbery, her nose swollen and red. She chuckled. “You smell like heaven to me, like toffee and Gideon, and everything I’ve come to love.”

Love? “You love me?”

“I don’t want to go to a hotel. I want to go home with you, and live with you, and sleep in your bed, and take you inside my body as many times a day or night as you want to be inside me, and I want to have babies with you, if that’s what you want. And I don’t care if you come home all cut up from fighting. I don’t give a fuck if my life gets all disorderly and chaotic, because I want you, Gideon. That’s what I know to be true. I want you, in my life, forever.”

Relief, like an ocean, flowed through him. He stood, lifted her up, gathered her into his arms and he kissed her, hard, full on the lips. He cupped her buttocks and dragged her against him. She bounced against his chest a few more times. He let her, though. He was learning.

But there was something he had to say to her, something that needed saying. He drew back. “There’s just one thing.”

She nodded in brisk jerks of her head. She folded a tissue into her hands and blew her nose. “What?”

“I want it all, Elise. No half measures. I want all of you. I want to go as far along the path of thebreh-hedden as our powers will allow and given that you can share your clairvoyant visions with me, I think we might be able to take it all the way.”

Elise looked at him from behind her tissues. Thebreh-hedden. He wanted to complete thebreh-hedden. She blew her nose again then lowered her hands to her lap. “So what we’re talking about is essentially a kind of mate-bonding.”

He nodded.

“I want to, but it’s all so overwhelming.” She glanced around the hospital room. “But maybe we should leave here first, go to your house. Then you can tell me what to expect.”

He smiled softly as he gathered her up once more in her arms. “What happened to all that embracing of chaos?”

She laughed, a very wet laugh. “Well, it doesn’t mean that I won’t try to lasso the tornado once in a while. Okay, maybe all the time. Order can be a good thing.”

“Yes, it can.”

He kissed her again, but it wasn’t a simple kiss. He dipped his tongue and explored the recesses of her mouth. He kissed her until she leaned against him and threw her arms around his neck. He kissed her until she was groaning softly, his hands exploring more and more of her body.

Only then did he pull back. “I guess we’d better get out of here.”

“Yeah, before anyone walks in and we make them go blind.”

He chuckled.

She glanced back at her suitcase. “Can you send that on ahead for me?”

He chuckled. “Sure.” A moment later, the suitcase vanished. Turning back to her he had to ask one last time, “Are you sure you’re ready to do this?”

Elise looked into beautiful blue eyes. Was she ready to do this? Was she ready to embrace so much chaos? Was she ready to love this man with all her heart?

“Yes,” she said, and she meant it.

She felt the vibration and closed her eyes. His arms were around her as they swished through nether-space. She felt her feet touch down and she smiled because she could feel the roughness of the stone, the floor of his foyer.

She opened her eyes and here she was, in his home.

All the inset lights in the timbered ceiling above came on, setting his castle-house in a soft glow.

Again, she looked up at him. “So thebreh-hedden. We’re really going to do this.”

He nodded.

She took a deep breath. “You’ll take my blood and I’ll take yours.”

His gaze shifted back to her mouth and a soft growl left his throat. He became one heavy roll of toffee and she staggered under the rich scent. “Yes.”

“And we would be connected low.”

His eyes fluttered as he nodded.

“Then you’ll be in my head and I’ll be in yours.”

“A back-and-forth flow while everything else is going on. We all thought it was a myth and mostly it’s relegated to those ascenders of Warrior of the Blood status, but …”

“But you’re on the brink of becoming a Warrior of the Blood.”

He nodded. “I’ve been on the brink since I met you two years ago. I know that now.”

She smiled. “But I’ve never heard you say one generous word about the WhatBees.”

He shook his head and offered a half smile. “It’s a territorial thing and I’m sure I could adjust in time to a new calling. The WhatBees serve as we serve, so of course on a really basic level I approve of what they do. But my loyalty will always be to the Thunder God Warriors and I honestly hope I never have to leave militia service.

“But Elise, if we close the circuit, there’s something you have to understand. We’ll be a couple. I meanreallya couple. I’ve seen how thebreh-hedden impacted Warrior Kerrick. He goes Neanderthal if any other man gets too close to Alison. It’s a primal connection, a deep one. So, we’ll be … a couple and I won’t be able to keep away from you.”

Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …

Another vision …

She saw him naked in a room she didn’t recognize, a room made up partially of gray stone walls. Probably his bedroom. He was fully aroused.

Heaven.

She gasped, then shut her clairvoyant power down hard.

Some things needed to be experienced in the proper order, without foreknowledge. Yet somehow, the sudden vision ended the last of her fears. She was made for this, for Gideon and for this new world, in every possible way. The only thing she didn’t know was what would happen once they traveled the path of thebreh-hedden.

But like Endelle said,whatever.

She drew in a rough breath. “So where do we do this? Did you want to go back to the Blood and Bite where it all began?”

His smile was warm and grew very male and beautifully dark. “I want you inmy bed, Elise. In my bed.”

She sighed. “Then let’s do it.”

He took her hand and inclined his head toward a hallway to the left. “My bedroom’s this way.”

Her heart pounded but she nodded and let him lead her down the long hall, to a room that opened up on the left to another view of scattered lights and the valley stretched out below.

His bedroom.

The bed was big, flat, and had a wrought-iron headboard. She thought of the ropes he’d used on her earlier. She’d like to tie him up. Desire didn’t just flow through her, it cascaded in heavy sheets of sensation.

“Mmmm. Strawberries.”

“I could use ropes on this bed.” Did she actually say that aloud?

But he laughed and caught her up in his arms. “Oh, Elise, you are so my kind of woman.”

She laughed as well but the sound was a little tinny and her heart wouldn’t quiet down.