hair back. Her honey-colored eyes were sad even as her face was flushed from the pleasure and the exertion.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
As they both became very still and very silent, her eyes searched his face. “Don’t do it. Don’t take my memories from me.”
“I have to—”
“Says who?” she cut in. “I promise I will not reveal anything I saw or learned. I don’t even know where that training center is. I am going to go my own way and will never bother the race again. I swear to it.”
“Sarah …”
“Listen to me. If you take my memories, you’re the only one who suffers. That’s not fair. But more than that, if I can’t be with you? Let us be united in our grieving. Let us be together that way.”
“It’s easier for you if I—”
“I don’t want easy. I want you. And if I can’t have you, then I want to remember you for the rest of my life. Besides, you’re taking something that doesn’t belong to you in service to people who you’re no longer tied to.”
“I don’t care about them. All I’m thinking about is how much I’m going to miss you—and how I can spare you that.”
“Don’t do it. You have my word. I will not look for you. I will not look for them. So in this regard, no one will ever know.” She held up his necklace with its sacred shard of glass. “But I will know who gave me this. And I will know who loved me.”
Murhder sat back, his softening arousal slipping from her and hating the cold of the outside. As she closed her legs and tucked them up, she pulled the throw blanket she’d just folded over her nakedness, and though he wanted her warm, he hated that he could not see her body.
“I’ve taken some of your memories already, Sarah.”
She sat up. “When? And which ones.”
Murhder looked across the sofa. She was upset and he didn’t blame her. And instead of explaining, he entered her mind with his will and found the patches, releasing them.
She hissed and dropped her head into her hands as if it ached. After a moment, she raised her eyes to level again. “The FBI agent. Who came by my house and asked me about Gerry.”
“I couldn’t risk you contacting him while you were entering our world. I didn’t know what your motivations were and there was too much risk. Too much to be exposed.”
“Is there anything else that you hid?”
“No.”
She seemed to wait for him to say something. When he didn’t, she murmured, “You’re not going to do it, are you.”
He had to look away. His ties to the Brotherhood were deeper than he’d realized; the idea that he’d given his word to Tohr, to the King himself, still meant something even if he wasn’t one of them … even if he wasn’t in their world any more than Sarah was.
Old habits died hard.
But Sarah meant more to him than his word to those males. And even though he knew damn well it would be so much easier on her—better for her—to resume her life without any conscious knowledge of him or his species, he would not, as she had rightfully pointed out, take something from her that was not his to remove.
That was a violation.
“No, I’m not going to.”
“Thank you,” she breathed.
“I can’t come see you, though. I will always want to and I will always miss you. But the Brotherhood would know. They know everything. They’ll check on your house to make sure I’m not around. They might even monitor you for years to come—I mean, you’ve seen the training center. You know what kind of technology they can afford. If I show up in your orbit and you recognize me? God only knows what they’ll do.”
“I won’t bother anyone, I promise.”
There was a pause. And then he asked, “What are you going to do?”
Sarah’s eyes went to the fireplace and fixated on it as if there were flames in there. “I have a standing offer to interview out in California. I may go work there. I don’t want to be here in Ithaca anymore—and I’d kind of reached that decision before … you know, all this.”
Everything in him wanted to say that he’d go out west with her. That he’d find her there. That he’d … be with her there.
“With Kraiten dead,” she continued, “and BioMed closing, all I was worried about is a non-issue.”