He knew by me doing it that I’d made up my mind, which was exactly what I wanted him to know. People tended to waste a lot of breath on words when a simple action communicated much more succinctly.

I wasn’t going to cage him. And I wasn’t going to let his heart be my cage either.

I was going to do exactly what I used to do. What Dancer was doing.

Live now.

As if there was no tomorrow.

That didn’t necessarily mean it was going to be easy. But I was damned well going to try.

He had on faded jeans and a white tee with the words, HOLY SHIFT! LOOK AT THE ASYMPTOTE ON THAT MOTHER FUNCTION! emblazoned on the front. “Does this mean you’re going to take me for a ride on that badass bike of yours, too?” He flashed me that one-of-a-kind Dancer grin that always lit up his face, holding nothing back, aqua eyes brilliant, full of life.

I nodded. Then I leaned in and kissed him. Not anything like I’d once kissed Ryodan. I’d done that to mess with him, and it had worked even though he tried to pretend it hadn’t. It’d messed with me, too.

I kissed Dancer with some part of myself I didn’t even understand. The me that kissed Ryodan, I got. She was hard, powerful, had an ancient soul and a fierce heart. The me that kissed Dancer was young, innocent, and although there was a massive door between the world and her soft heart, there was a path that could be walked to it, with a key hanging by the door, engraved with a D for Dani and Dancer. Sometimes I really did feel like I had two different people inside me, even though I knew I didn’t. One version of me was drawn to Dancer and another was a moth, obsessed with Ryodan’s flame. They evoked completely different qualities in me.

I kissed Dancer soft and slow, butterfly wings against his mouth, waiting to see what he did, how it was going to go between us.

He slipped his hands into my damp hair and said against my mouth, “God, I love it when you wear your hair down, Mega. It’s like you, full of fire and larger than life.”

We just kind of stood there, kissing slow and talking a little, and he told me he used to think he might never get to kiss me and he sure never thought I’d kiss him like this. And I told him I always thought he had the most incredible eyes, to which he replied he has a lot of incredible parts and I was welcome to check them out anytime I wanted.

His arms slid around me and I shivered because no one ever put their arms around me and held me close like he was doing. Like I really meant something to him and he never wanted to stop touching me. Like he couldn’t believe he was so lucky to get to hold me and I was the biggest prize he ever could have won in his whole life.

He backed off with the kiss and we just kind of breathed into each other while he gave me time to settle into the feel of his body, arms warm and strong, close but not holding tight. It was hard for me to make myself stay put. I never let anybody touch me. Too personal. Too much risk involved.

So it took maybe ten minutes of just hugging and being close to really let myself go fluid like I do when I meditate. It was the hardest kind of meditation I’ve ever done because there was another person in it with me. I felt like I was made of all exposed edges, and I kept craving my walls and personal space back.

But I wanted this, too, and had started to think it was possible, if I never let anyone touch me, I might never be able to. That it would get easier and easier to keep everyone at arm’s length and harder and harder to let anyone in. I think we get a window for intimacy. And it can close. I’d be Jada forever, and if Jada had sex, it would be a one-night stand, and the color of the rainbow I’d never get to know was love.

Eventually, I slid my arms around his neck and, with enormous discomfort, rested my head against his shoulder, absorbing the sensation of leaning into a man. This was my Dancer. The boy who’d found me as a child, racing down the street, exploding out of freeze-frame with blood-spattered head to toe and guts in my hair, and liked me instantly. And while I’d talked a million miles a minute, spitting “dudes” and “fecks,” he’d stared at me as if I was some exotic creature from another planet, and the most stunning, brilliant thing he’d ever seen.

I melded our bodies together, my chest to his rib cage, my pelvis to his thighs, focusing only on his strength, refusing to think about that great, deceitful inner muscle of his.

It felt good. Safe harbor. Port in a storm. Something in me relaxed, a part of me that maybe never even once relaxed in my whole life.

So, this was why people hugged. Why intimacy was desired.

It was like stopping at a gas station and fueling yourself up.

It was as if time stood still when you hugged, and something was made from someone else’s arms around you, which hugging yourself could never replicate. I wasn’t alone in life anymore. Someone was by my side, standing ground with me, ready to move forward and face things together. It was the most bizarre, uplifting sensation I’d ever known.

Then we were kissing deep and hot and hungry, that kiss he’d promised me, the sexy nineteen-year-old one, and my hands were in his hair and I started to feel dreamy and sex-obsessed and like someone that had grown up normal and gone to school like other kids, maybe even attended a high school dance, and I was slow dancing with a boy for the first time. But he was a man.

And I was definitely a woman. I could feel the hardness of him pressed against me and I wanted to touch him and taste him and feel him inside me. And I wanted to tear myself from his arms and race out the door without ever looking back. Me, who wasn’t afraid of anything, stared down any foe, fought any war, killed without hesitation, now quailed, waging a battle I’d avoided all my life: intimacy.

“Mega,” he groaned, “you’re killing me, kissing me like this. You want to get out of here?”

I drew back and looked at him. My lips were swollen and sensitive and wanted to keep kissing. I felt warm and bubbly inside, languorous but humming with energy that wanted to go somewhere. This was such a big deal to me. I’d always promised myself it would be epic. I’d always thought it would be with a superhero, like myself. I was pretty sure Mac thought I’d already done it. Or worried that I had anyway. But it wasn’t as if I’d ever gotten to stay in one place long, and although there had been humans Silverside, I had trust issues and one goal on my mind: get back home.

Ryodan was the first man I’d ever kissed.

I was good at everything I did. I’d watched a lot of porn movies and thought a great deal about sex. I had a brilliant imagination. And hunger—I had a megaton of that. I knew when I finally did have sex, I was going to be epic.