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  “How do you know?” I whispered.

  “On the way out, the guy bumped me, and when I reached out to get my balance, I touched him, and he yelled,” he said, his fingers curling into mine. “He scared the crap outta me.”

  “Okay.” I took a breath. “And this guy was there to extort money from your father.”

  “Marcus,” he said sharply.

  “Fine, but he was, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I told him not to come back.”

  “You threatened him.”

  “This is my father we’re talking about, Marcus.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Terrified.”

  But I would bet the guy had no idea. “You’re amazing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” I said, taking his hand in both of mine, holding tight. “Who’s the guy?”

  “His name was Arcan,” he said. “I heard my Dad say it.”

  “Arcan what?”

  “Just Arcan. He told me after that that’s all there was.”

  One name, unless you were Cher or Madonna, was not a good thing. A singular name, a guy that Joe had hurt just with a touch of his hand, added up to demon.

  “Did this guy say anything to you?”

  “He told me he would find out who I belonged to.”

  Which meant he had not mistaken Joe for a warder but knew exactly what he was.

  “I told him to go to hell.”

  “Baby.” I took a breath because he was scaring me. “Why would you—”

  “Because you were coming, Marcus,” he cut me off. “I’m not scared of anything when you’re with me.”

  God, the faith the man had in me. I put an arm around his shoulders, leaned him against me, and breathed him in.

  “You deserve every bit of it,” he told me, turning to wrap his arms around my neck. “You’ve never done anything for me not to trust you or believe in you.”

  My heart hurt just holding him, looking at him. “I need you to stay close to me, you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” I said, calming.

  “Maybe he won’t come back.” He was trying to soothe me further. “I mean, maybe he’s scared, huh?”

  I saw him swallowing down his fear, forcing a smile for good measure.

  “Right?”

  “Yes,” I assured him.

  “All right, everybody, let’s go eat.”

  Elliot came back with my bags, and I stood and took the garment bag from him as Joe rose and leaned into me. With one arm around him, we followed his father toward the parking lot.

  II

  The person who provided a home for a warder, the one who loved them and grounded them and centered them, was their hearth. Being the hearth of a warder was not something to be taken lightly, and while a warder could seal their home, keeping his mate safe within their sanctuary, if a hearth was attacked outside, he or she had little defense but the one they could offer with whatever skills they naturally possessed. Added to that was the branding touch. If a hearth was truly loved, when a demon came to take or harm them, they could burn the demon. It was the same power a warder had, but where a warder used it to inflict pain and then go in for the kill, a hearth used it for surprise so they could run. Joe was telling me that with the defense of a hearth, he had accidentally hurt a stranger.

  Or thought he had.

  “I might be crazy,” he told me as we sat together in the back of the van. His parents were in the front, Barbara and Ellen behind them, and Joe and I were allowed to have a little privacy after four days apart.

  “We both know you’re not. Just spill it,” I ordered him, taking his hand in mine, lifting it to my lips, kissing his knuckles.

  He whimpered softly, and I could not help the smile. Here we were talking about something scary, and all I could think about was getting him under me and how good he would feel.

  “Say you missed me.”

  “I told you on the phone last night,” I sighed, leaning sideways against him, my breath on his ear, my teeth biting down gently on the silky lobe.

  “Tell me again.” He shivered as I kissed behind his ear and then sucked the delicate skin.

  “I missed you,” I told him, pressing my lips to the side of his neck. “So very much.”

  He made a noise in the back of his throat that made his sister turn around and look at me.

  “Hi.” I smiled at her.

  She shook her head. “You two are so damn cute.”

  I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she blushed a beautiful shade of red.

  “Me,” Joe demanded, pressing my hand down onto his thigh. “Concentrate on me.”

  “Jesus, Marcus.” She sighed heavily. “I had no idea my brother was such a diva.”

  “No?” I chuckled. “Really?”

  Joe growled, and we both laughed.

  At the restaurant, I got out first, helped Joe down, and then passed him his cane before I took his hand.

  “Oh.”

  I looked at Ellen and saw how tense she looked. “What?”

  “You’re holding his hand.”

  “Yes, I am.” I flashed her what my assistant Lolita Powell called my lion grin: all teeth, heat, and power.

  “It’s fuckin’ freezing out here,” Joe groused at us, tugging on my hand. “Let’s get inside.”

  “Joseph!” Deb scolded her son.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I soothed him, lengthening my stride and slowing him down at the same time. “Don’t get upset.”

  “First you’re black, now you’re gay,” he grumbled as he walked. “Fuck this, Marcus. Why are we even here?”

  “Because you love your grandfather and that’s what families do: deal with sometimes-uncomfortable situations together.”

  “I can deal with anything when it’s me, but not when it’s you.”

  And I knew that. Joe had the patience of a saint in all areas that did not pertain to me. He was a little protective.

  “Ellen didn’t mean anything. She was just making an observation. You gotta stop being so sensitive, okay?”

  He only grunted, making no promises.

  “Joey!”

  I stopped as a man came jogging toward us. He was tall with golden-brown hair and striking blue-gray eyes and fine, chiseled features.

  “Ohmygod, Kurt, is that you?” Barbara squealed, her mouth dropping open in surprise.

  “Barbie.” His smile for her was huge and when she flung herself at him, he caught her easily.

  I stood there and waited as Kurt hugged everyone before he turned to Joe.

  “Joey,” he sighed, and there was a lot of affection in the single word.

  “Hey,” Joe said coolly, tightening his grip on my hand.

  There would be no hugging.

  “It’s good to see you,” Kurt said, moving forward, arms out, closing in.

  Joe knew my body as well as his own, he knew how tall I stood, how much space I took up and how far he had to move around me to put distance between him and other people. He didn’t have to guess. He also knew that if he was retreating, no one would get by me.

  “Mom!” he called out to Deb, taking one step back and sideways, hands fisting in my suit jacket. “Do they serve Hot Browns at this restaurant? I want Marcus to try one.”

  “Of course,” she called back, but I didn’t see her; my entire focus was on Kurt as he stopped his forward momentum before he plowed into me.

  It was perfectly clear to me that Joe did not want to hug him, but because Joe was Joe, he had given the appearance that because he was blind he had simply missed the motion. It was extraordinarily thoughtful but clear at the same time. And it was strange.

  It wasn’t like him. Joe hugged and kissed everybody. He even hugged my fellow warder Jackson’s new boyfriend, Raphael, and Raphael wasn’t even human. Something was really wrong.

  “Joe,” Kurt chuckled, “you accidentally hid behind your bodyguard bu
ddy.”

  “Kurt,” he said quickly, clutching at me, “this is my boyfriend, Marcus Roth. Marcus, this is my cousin Kurt that I told you about.”

  Cousin.

  That he told me about.

  That he… told… me…. I felt my stomach twist and my eyes narrowed.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Marcus,” he said, offering me his hand.

  If I took his hand, I would crush it. My eyes locked on his as I clenched my jaw tight.

  He withdrew his hand, grabbed Barbara’s, and told us that his mother had reserved a big table in the back of the restaurant. Ellen followed after her two cousins, and Elliot and Deb turned to face me and Joe.

  “What was that about?” Joe’s father asked.

  “Nothing. Let’s just go in,” Joe assured them, tugging on my hand.

  Elliot put a hand gently on his son’s shoulder. “Please, Joe.”

  He let out a quick breath. “It’s no big deal. I’m just being oversensitive because I’m tired since I don’t sleep well in a strange place.”

  At home, even though he didn’t like to, Joe slept fine without me. He could wake up in the night, know exactly where he was, where everything was, and what had not moved. In a new place alone, if a noise woke him, he had no one to shake awake and ask what the noise was. He slept lightly when he wasn’t home. At home, the man slept like the dead.

  “Honey?” Deb prodded him.

  His exhale of air was sharp, exasperated. “It was just a prank, but when I was fourteen we came here, out to Uncle Glenn’s farm in Irvine, and I went swimming with him that time. Remember?”

  “Do I remember,” Deb snapped at him. “Yes, Joseph, I think I remember you getting lost and staying out all night and taking ten years off my life. It rings a bell.”

  “Well, the reason I was out there at all was because Kurt said that he was going to show me this great spot where we could swim that wasn’t deep, that I would love.”

  “Kurt said you wandered off.”

  “He lied because he lost me, Mom.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, but who cares. It was like a million years ago, right?”

  “I’m gonna kill him,” she said, whirling toward the front door.

  “Dad,” Joe said fast.

  Elliot caught his wife, who promptly fell apart in his arms. And even though, as Joe said, it had been a million years ago, for his mother the scare was still very real and well remembered. And he had only told her a very small piece of it.

  Kurt had told Joe that he had a friend who thought Joe was cute. He had then lured my boyfriend down to a creek and introduced him to this friend. What Joe did not know was that there was not just the three of them. There had been six, counting Joe and Kurt. Joe was young and trusting and horny at fourteen and so had dropped his pants because the other boy was going to as well. And he had gone to his knees, but once he heard another voice tell him he was pretty, he got scared. He didn’t know who was there, and when someone tried to shove a cock in his mouth, he tried to get up, only to have his shoulders held. The laughter unglued him, and when he fought to be released, they all took turns hitting him, calling him a faggot, before pushing him into the water.

  At that point Kurt’s brain had apparently kicked in, but the water was higher than it should have been that time of year because of the rain, and there was just enough current to suck Joe under and pull him into a connecting stream that was swollen from a rise in the river. He lost his pants as he tumbled around and swallowed enough water to drown him. But he made it to the bank, and there he stayed all night, freezing, with only a T-shirt to keep himself warm. They found him the following morning, bruised, scratched up, with a mild case of hypothermia. He had never offered a good explanation as to why his clothes were off, but everyone had figured the poor kid was out of his head at the time. The bruises were credited to his ordeal, and while Kurt had been in trouble for not looking out better for his cousin, nothing more had come of it.

  “I’m gonna drop him in a well and see how he likes being cold and wet all night long,” I promised, my voice low.

  “No, you’re not.” Joe smiled and turned toward me, sliding his arm under my suit jacket and curling it around my waist, his head notched under my chin. “You’re gonna leave him alone. But make sure he doesn’t come near me so I don’t have to make a scene and tell him off.”

  As always, Joe worried about making other people uncomfortable.

  I clutched him to me, because just thinking about the fact that the dear, sweet man I held in my arms could have died at fourteen, and therefore never been at the club the night I met him, and not have been able to love me dearly and desperately for the last six years hurt my heart.

  What if there were no Joseph Locke for me to love? I could not imagine me without him; it just wasn’t possible anymore. He was my home, my whole life. Without him, nothing worked. I could be me out in the world, both professionally and as a warder, because I had a sanctuary to return to.

  “Baby?”

  I shivered hard.

  “I can’t breathe,” he laughed against my throat, his warm breath tickling over my skin.

  “Okay,” Elliot said as I let Joe go. He pulled his wife around in front of me, and Joe’s mother grabbed him, crushing him again.

  “Christ,” he muttered. “Mother, come on.”

  But she needed to remind herself that it was in the past and that she had her son safely in her arms before we could go in. Mothers were like that. Because Joe was the same way, he hugged her back tight and whispered into her hair. Everything was okay.

  Inside, the hostess led us to a large room in the back of the restaurant where two long tables were set up side by side. Each table sat twenty-five, and that was enough for just the family. For the party on Saturday, they were expecting a good three hundred people, but for the rest of the time, fifty was the high end.

  “Are you the only non-white guy in the room?” Joe asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Am I the only blind guy?”

  “Yes again,” I said, squeezing his hand.

  “And are we the only gay people here?”

  “For the third time, and the win,” I teased him, scanning the crowd. “I’m gonna go with yes.”

  “Oh thank God, I wanted us to be special.”

  “No worries about that, love,” I assured him.

  “Awww, thank you, honey. I—hey, wait a minute… that’s not a compliment.”

  I tugged him after me, and we went to speak to his grandfather.

  You could tell that when he was younger Henry Locke had broken hearts. The man was still stunning at eighty with his thick white hair, ruddy complexion, broad shoulders, and strong build. I was certain that women had swooned when he walked down the street at twenty-five.

  “Marcus!” He greeted me loudly, standing up, big grin on his face, arms open to receive me. “So glad you could make it.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” I said as I stepped into him.

  He hugged me tight, pounded my back with his fist, and let me go before turning to his grandson. Unfortunately, he was careful with Joe—which my boyfriend hated— always treating him like he was fragile. Henry liked me better, and we all knew it, because I could do all the things he could, but mostly I had won him over when we took turns target shooting two Christmases ago. I had stood outside for hours with him, never tiring, never complaining, and we had bonded. Now whenever I visited, I was received warmly.

  After he spoke to Joe for a few minutes, we walked down the table to where Barbara had saved us two spots. Unfortunately, Kurt was sitting beside her. When my eyes flicked to his, he looked away, so I figured we were all on the same page.

  People kept stopping to see Joe, put their hands on his shoulders. The women leaned down to kiss him, and the men patted him affectionately. Everyone shook hands with me. The women hugged me when I stood, and the men clasped my hand as well, making me feel welcome.

  �
�So,” one of Joe’s cousins asked from the other side of me. “What do you do now, Joey?”