∞∞∞
I come up out of it a long time later.
The lamp is off. The room is dark and warm. The window is cracked an inch and the smell of the sea is moving through it. Thunder rolls in the far distant like a constant hum. The sheets have been changed—I don't remember that happening—and there is a quilt pulled up to my collarbone that smells like cedar and amber andhim.
Bane is wrapped around my back.
I can tell it's Bane before I open my eyes. The bond knows. The thread between his sternum and mine hums steady and warm and present, and his arm is heavy across my ribs. His thumb—slow, slow, careful—is working a small circle into the bite at the side of my neck.
"Hey," he murmurs. Into my hair. Soft. Awake. "There you are."
I make a small sound. My throat is wrecked.
"Yeah." He laughs quietly. "I know. Atlas wasn't gentle."
"Mm."
"How are you feeling?"
I take stock. Sore everywhere—jaw, throat, hips, the deep low ache between my legs. The bite throbs warm under his thumb. My head is heavier than my own bones. My body has gone quiet like the soft storm outside—the low warm hum of heat still there, banked, sleeping, but not crashing against me ready for destruction.
"Quiet," I say. After a long moment.
His thumb stills.
"Quiet?"
"The fire turned down."
He exhales. Long. I feel it through his chest at my back. "Yeah, baby. The bond will do that. Won't kill the heat off—your body still wants what it wants—but it cuts the worst of it out. Lets you rest."
"...oh."
"Did you think it would all just disappear?"
"I don't know. Maybe. It feels like I could sleep for three days."
"You can." His arm tightens around me. "You should. Your body's going to flare up again sometime tomorrow, probably the next day too. We've got you. But right now? Right now you sleep."
His mouth presses against the crown of my head. His thumb starts moving on the bite again—slow, small circles, the kind of touch you give a thing you can't quite believe you're allowed to touch.
"I've wanted to do that," he says. Into my hair. "For so long, Max. So long. Since the library, that first afternoon, when you stumbled and I caught you and your scent went straight to the back of my brain. Since the cell. Since every time I have been in a room with you and had to keep my hands at my sides. I thought about it every single night."
"Bane—"
"I had a whole speech," he says. Wet, half-laughing into my hair. "The whole drive up here. I had decided I was going to do it some other night. Take you somewhere quiet. Make a meal of it. I was going to be very chivalrous about it."
I laugh, and it scrapes against my throat, and he winces against my hair.
"Sorry. Sorry. Don't laugh."
"You had a speech?"
"I had a speech. The speech got—" He kisses the crown of my head. "The speech got beat by your body and my brother's better idea."
I press back into him. He tightens his arm. We breathe.
After a long time, he speaks again. Quieter.
