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of your life. I just want you to…to get over it. To be whole. And happy.”
    Whew. Talk about a challenge.
    He positioned himself carefully over her body so that he put no pressure on that precious bulge, and pressed himself inside her. They sighed, in tandem, at the throbbing clasp of her body around him. “I’m working on that,” he said. “It’s complicated. But I’m trying. Just keep loving me. That’s gotten me the closest I’ve ever been. Closer than I ever deserved to get.” He sucked in air, at the perfection of being so close. “Just keep loving me,” he repeated, his voice raw.
    â€œOh, please.” Tearful laughter made her body contract, minute shudders of perfection around his cock. “As if I ever had a choice.”
    He rocked inside her. “I’m not scared about the baby,” he told her.
    She clutched at him, with arms, legs, every part of her. “It would be nothing to be ashamed if you were, doofus.”
    â€œBut I’m not,” he protested, stubbornly. “Really. I’m so happy about that baby, it just about makes my heart explode. Believe me.”
    She gave him a tremulous smile. “Um,” she murmured. “OK. That’s nice to know. And now,” she wiggled against him, and he gasped with delight as she squeezed him, deliciously inside herself. “So. You were talking about, ah, exploding? You want to elaborate on that?”
    He grinned at her, and proceeded to do just exactly that.

CHAPTER
3
    T he guy across the poker table in the big blind position was staring at him. Chilikers. The one who’d cornered him in the men’s room and begged him for a stake a couple of hours back. Chilikers had been desperate to get back into the game and make up his losses, so Kev had fronted the guy fifteen thou against his car. But he hadn’t done Chilikers any favors tonight. Kev could practically smell the guy’s shit luck. As bad as his foul breath. And now he was staring.
    To be fair, there was a lot to stare at. It was weird for a guy to wear sunglasses at four in the morning in a darkened room. Add to that the webwork of old scars across one side of Kev’s face, the redder, fresher scars that showed through the spiky ash-colored hair sticking up all over his scalp; mementos from the waterfall bashing and the subsequent surgeries. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. The tremor in his hands had nothing to do with the cards he held, but if his fellow players should misinterpret that as a tell, fine with him.
    Chilikers snapped to attention as the dealer distributed starting hands. Kev glanced around for tells. Laker was petting a stack of chips even before the rest of the cards were dealt. Moriarty didn’t like his hand. Kev felt it, from the set of his shoulders, the muscles contracted on either side of his nostrils. Chilikers’s eyes had a hot gleam of excitement. Kev’s eyes swept the other players, plugging in data.
    He squeezed out his hole cards. An ace of hearts and an ace of spades. In a ten-handed game, pocket aces were good almost a third of the time, but the table was modestly tight. There’d probably only be three or four players in the pot, and he’d be a 3-2 favorite. He wished he could take pleasure in it, but he hurt too much. His head throbbed, and he had a heavy knot in his guts. Sensory overload. The volume was turned up to the highest decibel, and he couldn’t turn it down. Whatever had damped him down before was gone. Going over Twin Tails Falls hugging an enormous tree had killed it.
    And ah, Christ, how he missed it now.
    Sunglasses helped, and ear plugs, and the poker game itself. But smells got him, too, and he could hardly go around with a plug on his nose. He was used to being stared at, but even he had his limits.
    He could have endured the sensory overload, if that had been all it was, but the overload came from inside, too. Emotions blazed