When Remi woke up, he came to the clear, terrible realization that he had actually dared to jump off that cliff last night, and that he was still falling this morning. That feeling doubled, then tripled as he opened his eyes to look at the reason he'd jumped.

He had never just fallen asleep with a woman before. That was not something he allowed.

Usually.

Charlie was small and warm beside him, nestled perfectly into the curve of his body. Her head was pillowed on his biceps, her hair a fan of shimmering red over his shoulder. His free arm was around her waist, holding her carefully to his body. He decided not to acknowledge the fact that, when he'd fallen asleep, they'd each been firmly on their own side of the mattress.

He could feel each slow breath, each contraction of her heartbeat.

Sometimes he didn't notice how much smaller she actually was in comparison to him. How delicate and breakable she looked. When she was awake, that fierce attitude of hers made her seem about three times bigger.

Remi lifted his head, careful not to disturb her as he looked at her face. It startled him when she rolled over, her head on his shoulder, her face only inches away.

She looked so...peaceful.

She had really meant what she said last night—that she wasn't afraid of him. That she simply accepted him for what he was. She didn't want him to change, she just wanted to know the truth where it concerned her.

And Remi had come to understand that the truth was he wanted her.

He wanted her. Badly. More than any other woman he had ever met.

She'd forced that realization on him last night, against his will and in spite of his best intentions. She'd dragged and pried and wheedled the truth from him. 

And what was worse was the fact that he'd let her.

He didn't know what kind of fool that made him, but any kind was fool too much. Remi closed his eyes, gritting his teeth at his own stupidity. 

And really, how had it come to this?

How had she turned him into some kind of...of jackass who went around breaking bones and spending sleepless nights over some woman? What about her, exactly, had managed to do this to him, of all people?

"I didn't know if you'd still be here," she murmured, voice sleep-roughened, her breath against his throat enough to send tremors running down his spine. "I wasn't sure if you'd leave."

He'd planned to. Despite all they'd said—or maybe because of it—he'd planned to simply wait for her to fall asleep, and then slip quietly out the door. 

But he couldn't. Devil damn him, he hadn't been able to so much as move after that last, long kiss. All he'd been able to do was lay there, listening as her breathing deepened and evened out. No matter what his higher reasoning insisted, he hadn't been able to convince himself to do much more than stew over what she'd said. What they'd both said.

It had all felt so dangerously close to a confession. 

The problem was he didn't know what sin he was supposed to have committed. He had been tempted to ask if she could simply tell him her own transgression. Maybe that would make his own more understandable. More...knowable. 

Remi sighed and finally opened his eyes to find her looking up at him, an expression halfway between wonder and fury on her face as she waited for him to say something. He felt like anything he could say would be the wrong thing.

So all he said was, "I didn't need to be anywhere else."

By the way her expression flattened, he knew that was wrong. Not wrong enough to make her mad, not right enough to surprise her. But all she did was shake her head and sit up, peeling her warmth away.

Remi reached out and touched her shoulder before he'd consciously made the decision to move. Charlie froze, goosebumps breaking out over her skin when he stroked his finger toward her neck, then down the length of her spine. She looked over her shoulder, something hungry in those beautiful eyes.

Something inside of him all but purred at that look. The creature he had tried for years to beat into submission before finally giving up and just accepting what he was.

That beast inside of him recognized something similar inside of Charlie.

And it wanted him to stay and find out what they could do together.

Remi didn't know if that was necessarily a good thing. But it wasn't like that had ever stopped him before.

He sat up, his hand sliding down to the small of her back, gently pressing her closer. She didn't resist, so he lowered his head, barely touching his lips to the soft skin of her throat. If she wanted to pull away, she could, and a small, ugly part of him wanted her to do just that.

If she was the one to pull back, that took the responsibility off his shoulders. She would be the one running away, not him, which was something his pride could live with.

But she didn't pull away. She tipped her head back, her hand coming up to claw into his shoulder. A soft moan brushed past his ear when his teeth grazed her skin and something hot and heady dumped into his blood, ripping even the illusion of self-control away from him.

He twisted around, using his body to press her toward the mattress until she was stretched out beneath him. Remi hovered for a moment, his fingers tangled in her hair where it was fanned over the blankets.

Charlie traced a finger down the side of his throat, across his collarbone and down his chest and abdomen until she came to the cut on his stomach. A little breathlessly, she said, "I need to take the stitches out."

"Later," he hissed, leaning down to kiss her.

This time, he set the pace and they were both gasping for breath by the time he was done. He rolled to the side, pulling Charlie with him until she was sprawled over the top of him. She shook her hair out of her face, crushing her mouth to his as he stroked his hands over her body, touching everything he had ached to touch last night.

When he slid his hand between her legs she arched her back with a sound that might have been a purr, burying her face into the side of his throat where he could feel every panting breath warm against his skin. After only a few moments, she let out a choked cry and slumped into him, her breath shaky against his ear.

She was as starved as he was. Nine days had been a small eternity spent in purgatory.

But when her fingers began to slide down his stomach toward his hips, he grabbed her hand, stopping her. Charlie looked up in surprise.

He gently pushed her off of him and sat back up, running his hands through his hair. He swung his legs off the mattress, the wood floor cool beneath his feet as he sat on the edge of the bed, staring hard at where he'd left his clothes on the floor.

The phone left in his pocket glowed to life, buzzing softly. Remi ignored it.

Where did this end?

A few images flashed in his mind. Charlie walking away from him—horror and fear etched across her face. Charlie asleep next to him in his own bed. Charlie astride him in some exotic hotel when business called him away from New Orleans. Charlie sprawled on the floor, eyes blank and throat spilled open. 

Remi closed his eyes and bowed his head. 

Where did he want this to end?

Only two of those images came back.

He tensed when she placed her hands on his shoulders, relaxing when she began to knead the muscles there, drawing the tension out of his body with every clever movement. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder, then strung a few more up the side of his neck before nipping at his ear. He relaxed further, leaning into her a little. His phone buzzed again.

Did he want this to end?

The thought was almost foreign. It startled him so much that he lunged to his feet, making Charlie squeak in surprise. His chest heaved with a single breath as he attempted to collect himself. He frowned fiercely, working to wrangle every unruly, reckless thought scrambling around in his mind.

Everything came to an end. That was just how the world worked. Once one game ran dry, you were supposed to simply pick up your chips and move on to the next.

"Remi?" she asked, keeping her voice careful and controlled.

Where did she expect this to end?

He turned back to her with a half smile on his face. She didn't buy it for a second. Sitting back on her heels, she raked her fingers through her hair and gave him a bitter smile in return. He waited for her to tell him to leave.

Instead, she murmured, "We changed things again."

Remi blinked, stunned for a brief moment. She just shrugged helplessly, hands falling into her lap. "When we decided that we would keep sex as part of the equation, you said we changed things. Well now it's more than sex, Remi." She laughed, a hollow, terrible little sound. "Or was I just imagining things last night?"

The way out dangled there in front of him—the lie he could tell her. It wouldn't be an untangling so much as a shearing through the strings she had wrapped around him. 

It would...hurt her.

Because you won't hurt me.

Her words from last night—those ridiculous, impossible words—rang in his head. In all honesty, he didn't really know why it mattered so much, the fact that she wasn't afraid. The fact that she believed him when he said he wouldn't hurt her.

But it did.

It brought him an absurd amount of satisfaction, the fact that she didn't back down from him. That she challenged him in a way not even Leon or Moira dared to.

It made her interesting to be around. He liked the fact that he couldn't always predict what she was going to do.

Charlie let out a huff of breath and got off the bed, padding quietly to her dresser. He turned his head slightly, watching as she shuffled through the top drawer for a moment. Then she took off her tank top, exposing the creamy expanse of her back.

The sunlight shimmered on a long, thin scar under her shoulder blade that he'd never asked about.

She put on a bra, then opened another drawer and pulled out a faded green t-shirt. Remi picked up his jeans and stood, tugging them on as she stepped into a pair of torn-up jean shorts. Then she turned and walked past him, eyes unfocused like she was lost in a whirlwind of thought.

Remi pulled his phone from his pocket. There were four texts: three from Leon and one from Moira. He didn't want to deal with either of them at the moment. Not when he was still so distracted.

He picked up his shirt from where it was still lying on the floor and began to make his way downstairs. As he passed the door to the bathroom, he could hear a faucet running.

Once downstairs, he went into the kitchen and began opening cabinets, not really paying attention to what he was grabbing. His stomach growled, bringing him back to the real world and he blinked at the box of pancake batter in his hand.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd had anything but coffee for breakfast. Generally, he wasn't much of a breakfast person.

But his stomach growled again, insistent, and he grabbed eggs and milk from the refrigerator. As he worked, he let his mind wander, trying to force it into revealing some sort of plan.

Charlie was right. They'd changed the game. It wasn't just about a paycheck. It wasn't just about sex. Which meant that it was something sticky and complicated and overall unnecessary for the kind of life he led.

He ground his teeth in frustration as he hunted through the cabinets for a skillet.

He shouldn't want something sticky and complicated and unnecessary. He should just be...content?

Remi scoffed at the thought, shaking his head. Being content had not gotten him to the place he was now. He didn't believe in being simply content. Nothing great ever came of just settling for content.

He took what he wanted because he wanted it. He had never made much of a habit of denying himself the things he wanted, so why start now? And Charlie, for reasons he had yet to really understand, seemed to want him just as badly. Who was he to deny her the things she wanted?

A voice that sounded suspiciously like Leon's noted that all of this sounded an awful lot like an excuse. Remi promptly ignored that voice.

"What are you doing?"

Remi nearly jumped, turning to see Charlie standing on the other side of the bar counter, hair in a ponytail, arms crossed and a frown on her face. First thing in the morning, barely making an effort and she was still sinfully gorgeous.

"I'm hungry," he said, gesturing to the stuff on the counter. His phone vibrated again. Her eyes flickered to his pocket, then back up to his.

"So you're...making breakfast?" Disbelief rang in her tone.

"Am I not allowed to?" Remi crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow as he leaned against the counter.

"That's..." she let out a weary sigh, "not what I meant." She closed her eyes for a brief moment, disappointment flashing across her face before she turned toward the door that would lead to the other side of the complex. "I need to take those stitches out."

"It was real," Remi ground out, making her stop and turn back around. He struggled with himself for a moment before he managed, "You didn't just imagine it."

She crossed her arms, raising a brow. She wasn't just going to let him slither out of this. And maybe he was okay with that.

Remi gave her a small, tense smile. "But I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what else to tell you, or what I'm supposed to do next."

Half of him was sick at admitting such weakness. The other half thrilled at the gamble, adrenaline rushing through him at the fact that he didn't know what she was going to do.

That latter half quickly won when she smiled, then bit her lip in an attempt to hide it. "Me neither," she said with a shrug, turning around again. "That's kind of what makes it fun."

She motioned for him to follow her before she disappeared through the door. Remi just stared after her for a moment. Fun wasn't really how he'd describe all of this.

Interesting, maybe. Infuriating, definitely.

Fun, he wasn't too sure about. 

Remi let a quiet groan slip from him as he turned off the stove and followed her through the door, pulling his shirt over his head as he went. Charlie directed him to lay on the table as she rummaged through the cabinets. He lay down on the cold surface, pillowing his head on his hand as she deposited an armful of supplies on the tray stand next to the table.

He listened as she washed her hands, then suddenly she was standing over him. She spent a second arranging a few things, and he let his eyes close when she finally touched him.

Something cold and wet touched his skin, swabbed along the length of the cut. The scissors were cold against his skin, and then he heard a small snick followed by a tugging sensation. He opened his eyes, but didn't look down.

Charlie worked in silence, a furrow of concentration forming between her eyebrows as she worked. He could see the bright spark in her eyes—the true enjoyment she took in this kind of work.

He wondered what it was she liked so much.

The snip  of the scissors and the tugging stopped as she reached for something else. Cold antiseptic was swabbed across his skin again. The crinkle and tear of paper reached his ears, and he carefully craned his head to watch as she smoothed steri-strips between the remaining stitches.

She said, "Just to make sure it doesn't split open again. It's healed pretty nicely, considering."

"Considering what?" he asked as she started removing the remaining sutures.

"That when you showed up on my doorstep and bled all over my couch, I put my unwashed hand right on the wound and nothing was properly sterile. By all rights you should have landed in a real hospital with a major infection."

"You know, I think I keep you around for your optimistic outlook," he said dryly as she pulled out the last stitch.

She snorted, finishing up with the steri-strips before she took her gloves off. "You can get up," she said, then muttered, "And put on a shirt."

He just grinned at that, carefully sitting up and peering down at the mostly healed cut. It didn't look like it was even going to leave that impressive of a scar.

Charlie washed her hands, then turned back to him as she dried them on a white cloth. Her mouth pursed to the side in a thoughtful scowl. "I have to go get a few things sorted out with my volunteering schedule." She gave him a small smile. "Fall semester starts next week."

He blinked in surprise. Was it really already the end of August?

It seemed like he'd known her a lot longer than a month and change.

"I should be back before noon," she continued, "but judging by how your phone was buzzing this morning, you won't be here."

Remi grimaced, but nodded. He opened his mouth to say...something. Before he got the chance, she darted across the room and snaked a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down into a hard kiss.

When she broke away, she whispered, "You said you didn't know what to tell me, about where we go from here."

He nodded, teeth baring in a snarl.

"Tell me you're taking me to dinner tonight," she offered. 

"I—" Remi huffed out a laugh, then shrugged.

It seemed as good a place as any to start this...whatever the hell this was.

When she kissed him again, Remi felt himself hurtling faster toward the bottom of that cliff.