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Thank God.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” he said, just now noticing that her sweater and jeans were gone and her slender curves were draped in a shroud of his black tee-shirt. All he wore were his pants.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, pulling at a loose thread. “I put this on a while ago, when Dante came by looking for you. I told him you were in bed, asleep.” She blushed a little. “I thought he’d be less inclined to ask questions if I answered the door in this.”

Lucan sat back, frowning at her. “You lied for me.”

“It seemed pretty important to you that nobody see you…like you were.”

He looked at her, sitting there so trusting with him, and he was leveled with admiration. Anyone else who’d have witnessed him like that would have put a titanium blade through his heart—and rightly so. But she hadn’t been afraid. He’d fought through one of his worst bouts so far, and Gabrielle had been there with him the whole time. Taking care of him.

She had protected him.

His chest tightened with respect. With deepest gratitude.

He had never known what that could feel like, being able to trust someone like that. He knew that any one of his brethren would have his back in battle, as he would theirs, but this was different. This was someone looking out for him. Protecting him at his most vulnerable.

Even when he’d been spitting and snarling at her, trying to drive her away. Letting her see him for the true beast he was.

She had stayed beside him, despite all of that.

He didn’t have the words to thank her for something so profoundly generous. Instead, he leaned in and kissed her, as softly as he could, with all the reverence he could never adequately express.

“I should get dressed,” he said, groaning at the thought of leaving her. “I’m better now. I should go.”

“Go where?”

“Topside, to take out a few more Rogues. I can’t let the others do all of my work.”

Gabrielle moved toward him on the bed, putting her hand on his forearm. “Lucan, it’s ten o’clock in the morning. It’s daylight up there.”

He swiveled his head to the bedside clock and saw that she was right. “Shit. I slept through the night? Dante’s going to ride my ass for a while about this one.”

Gabrielle’s lips curved into a sensual smile. “Actually, he’s under the impression that you were riding mine all this time. Remember?”

Arousal sparked inside him like flame on dry tinder.

Goddamn.

Just the thought…

She was sitting with her legs folded beneath her, the black tee-shirt bunched high on her thighs, giving him a shadowed glimpse of tiny white panties at the top of all that peachy skin. Her hair fell around her face and shoulders in sumptuous waves, making him want nothing more than to bury his hands in it as he sank down into her body.

“I hate that you had to lie for me,” he said, growling the words. He smoothed his hand along the silky curve of her thigh. “I should make an honest woman of you.”

She caught his fingers, and held them still. “Do you really think you’re up to that?”

He chuckled with dark humor. “Oh, I’m more than up to it.”

Although her eyes were warm with interest, she gave him a dubious look. “You’ve been through a lot. Maybe we should talk about what happened. It might be a better idea for you to get some more rest.”

The last thing he wanted to do was talk about his problems, especially when Gabrielle was looking so tempting in his bed. His body was recovered from its earlier trial, and his sex came easily to life. As usual, whenever he was near her. Whenever he so much as thought of her.

“You tell me if I need more rest.”

Taking her hand in his, he guided her toward the hard ridge of his erection, which bulged against the zipper of his pants. She rubbed the aching bulk of his shaft, then rotated her wrist to cup him in her palm. He closed his eyes, losing himself to her touch and the warm perfume of her own arousal as she edged into his arms.

He kissed her, long and deep, a slow joining of their mouths. Lucan slipped his hands under the tee-shirt, letting his fingers travel up the silky skin of her back, then around to her ribs, and