That thought arrives early and stays useless.
It gets ignored while I lean against Nikolaj’s marble counter, drinking coffee in his kitchen like I haven’t spent eight years bleeding from his absence and another several days letting him drag me back to life by the throat.
I know exactly how this looks. Worse, I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m pushing. Testing. Leaning into every glance and every filthy little opening because I can feel the effect I’m having on him. Some weak, starving part of me wants to stand in that warmth for one more minute before sense returns and throws me out into the cold again.
He still hasn’t told me to leave.
That is the problem.
If Nikolaj truly wanted me gone, I’d be gone. There is nothing vague about him when he decides something. He doesn’t hedge or imply; he removes. The fact that I’m still here, coffee cooling at my elbow while dawn brightens the windows and he standsin front of me naked, annoyed, and visibly affected, is its own answer. Not a simple one, or the one I want. But an answer all the same.
And because I have always been at my most reckless when he gives me even an inch, I push my luck.
He’s leaning one hip against the opposite side of the island now, coffee in one hand, eyes on me over the rim of the cup with that infuriatingly stoic face he’s grown into.
The years have made him quieter on the surface—less likely to snap first and speak second—but I know him too well to miss the tension held in the line of his shoulders or the way his gaze keeps cutting lower when he thinks I won’t notice.
He’s trying to look unaffected, and he’s failing. Spectacularly, by Nikolaj standards, which means only someone who knew the younger version of him well enough to track every twitch would catch it. Unfortunately for both of us, that someone is me.
“So,” I say, letting my voice go lazy because I know exactly what that does to him, “we’ve established your guards are shit, your second is a traitor, and you still haven’t thrown me out. That feels significant.”
His eyes narrow over the cup. “It feels early.”
“Ah, but that’s not a denial.”
“You talk too much before breakfast.”
“You used to like that.”
His mouth shifts, not quite a smile, not quite irritation. It stirs something stupidly fond in me anyway. “I used to enjoy punching you, too. Timing matters.”
I let my gaze drag slowly over him because if he’s going to stand there looking like every violent prayer I’ve ever answered wrong, I reserve the right to be obvious about it.
His body catches the morning in obscene ways, all broad shoulders, heavy muscle, and tattooed authority wrappedaround a man who once came apart under my mouth and now glares at me as if he might again if I annoy him correctly.
“Timing rarely stopped us,” I murmur.
His throat works once around a swallow that has nothing to do with coffee. His eyes dip to my mouth before he can stop them, then lift again with fresh annoyance, as if he’s angry I noticed and angrier that he did it in the first place.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” he says.
I widen my eyes innocently. “Breathing?”
“Existing.”
“That seems harsh. I’m very good at it.”
He sets the coffee down then, slowly enough that the control in the movement reads like a threat. “You’re fucking insufferable.”
I smile. “And yet you’re still standing naked in front of me while I disrespect your kitchen.”
That earns me a look so direct and dangerous it nearly feels like a hand. “Do you ever hear yourself?”
“Usually only when I’m being charming.”
He pushes off the counter before I can get another word out. The movement is quick enough that by the time I process the fact that he’s crossing the small space between us, he’s already there. One big hand wraps around my wrist and pins it to the marble behind me.
His body crowds mine with the kind of effortless physical dominance that was always easier for him than it was for me. Even when we were younger and closer in size, Nikolaj had a way of using space that made it feel as though walls and air alike had chosen his side.
