I lie there still awake.
My body stays aware of her. The slow rise of her breath, the way her scent has gone deep and warm since she fell asleep. The orc in me chantsmine, mine, minein a rhythm that matches the pulse in my throat.
The man in me stares at the ceiling. The hollow in my chest where Maren's heartbeat used to live still aches on cold nights and quiet mornings. It aches now.
Ellie breathes against my shoulder. Her heartbeat taps steady and alive against my ribs.
I close my eyes and hold on to a living woman and feel the phantom pulse of a dead one, and I don't know how to carry both yet. But I'm not letting go.
Chapter 9
Ellie
A sound I can't place pulls me out of sleep—steady, rhythmic, close. Pen on paper.
I lie still for a second, orienting myself. The sheets smell wrong for my apartment and the pillow carries leather and something sharper underneath, not-human, and my body aches in places that make my face heat. His shirt hangs off my shoulder, the hem sitting mid-thigh, the sleeves rolled twice and still covering my hands. I pull the cuff to my nose and breathe in.
The pen keeps scratching. I follow the sound down the hall and stop in the kitchen doorway.
Colt sits at the table with a mug of coffee and the club's ledger open in front of him. Reading glasses low on his nose. He writes with his left hand, entries in columns so neat they look printed, the pen moving without pause. He trusts his own handwriting more than software.
He hasn't noticed me. Or he has, and he's letting me stand here.
I lean against the doorframe and watch him. The morning light through the kitchen window catches the green-grey of hisforearms, the scars across his knuckles, the way his shoulders round forward over the ledger. He pushes his glasses up. They slide back down.
My body remembers every hour of last night. The width of his hands on my hips. The growl that vibrated through the mattress into my spine. The careful, slow push into me and the way he watched my face for permission with every inch. I press my thighs together and the soreness sends a flush from my collarbone to my ears.
I don't want to go home. The thought lands plain and simple.
"There's coffee," he says without looking up. "Second shelf, blue mug."
"You heard me."
"I smelled you." He turns the page. "Three minutes ago. You linger in the hallway."
I pour coffee and sit across from him.
He closes the ledger, takes his glasses off and looks at me across the table. His eyes without the frames are darker, wider, and when they drop to the shirt hanging off my shoulder his mouth parts and his expression tightens my stomach.
"I need to do something today," I say. "Before I lose my nerve."
"Derek?"
"I should have done it a week ago."
He nods. "I'll be here when you're done."
I drive home, shower, put on my own clothes. His shirt goes folded on my passenger seat because I'm not ready to wash his scent out of it.
The Cove Hotel lobby smells like espresso and furniture polish. Derek sits in one of the leather armchairs by the fireplace, legs crossed, dressed in the charcoal blazer he wears when he wants to look important. He has his phone in his hand and his serious face on. I bought that face for eight years.
He sees me and stands. "El. I'm glad you came."
"You sat on a bench outside my library and used a twelve-year-old girl to make your point." I don't sit down or move closer. "You told me I'm playing house with her because I never had a child of my own."
His mouth opens. "That's not what I—"
"That same week I sat in front of a county board and defended my job because someone filed complaints about my personal life. And then a man I've never seen found me in a parking lot and told me he knows what time I lock up." My keys press into my palm. "You showed up and my life started falling apart. Maybe that's a coincidence or maybe not but I don't care."
