“And this?”
His jaw shifted, the change subtle. “That one’s not for tonight.”
She accepted it with a nod that cost her nothing because she understood—he was giving her access at his pace, story by story, scar by scar. She bent and kissed the shoulder scar. Pressed her lips against the damaged tissue, the ridges and valleys raised against her mouth. He stilled beneath her—completely—before he dragged in a ragged breath.
Harper took his hand and brought it to her mouth. She kissed his knuckles—the scarred, abraded knuckles that had punched her cousin and held her safe in freezing rivers and dark spaces. She kissed the inside of his wrist, Alexei’s watch inches away.
“Whenever you want to tell me,” she said against his skin. “I’ll be here.”
He didn’t answer in words. He turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers. His grip was firm, warm, and unhurried, and it said everything his mouth wouldn’t—yes, and not yet, and I’m trying.
She settled back against him with his hand in hers and listened to the stove, the hail and his breathing.
A sound from outside. Distant. An engine, maybe, or the wind shifting in a way that didn’t quite match the pattern of the storm. Both of them went still in shared vigilance, their nervous systems calibrated to the same frequency.
Three seconds. Four.
His muscles tensed against her skin. The tenderness was still there, but underneath it, the reminder—they weren’t safe. This warmth was borrowed from a world that would demand it back.
The sound faded and dissolved into the wind. Nothing. She breathed him in and chose not to think about tomorrow.
His breathing slowed. The long, even rhythm of a body finally surrendering to rest. His fingers still loosely threaded through her hair, losing the argument with sleep.
She pressed the words into his skin. “I’m glad it was you.” Barely voiced. Almost asleep, the filter between her thoughts and mouth thinned to nothing.
Silence. Long enough that she thought he’d drifted off.
Then a rumble in his chest beneath her ear. “You shouldn’t be.”
His good arm tightened by a fraction as if letting go wasn’t an option he trusted himself with. “Men like me don’t last.”
She didn’t argue.
He could say whatever he wanted.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
38
Pav wokewith Harper tucked into him, her back curved against his chest. His arm around her waist—the same position that had started as survival and become something else entirely. Her breathing was deep and even, her hair spread across the pillow. His face was close enough to breathe in her clean scent. He lay still and let himself have it.
The warmth. The hush. Her weight against him.
It was temporary.
He knew that.
He’d forgotten what this felt like. Or he’d never known. Maybe whatever this was between them had never existed before last night. Something she’d made just by being here.
His thumb traced the curve of her hip, committing her to memory because some part of him understood that this might be all he got.
The doubt was there. Quiet and persistent. Running underneath the warmth like the current beneath still water.
If they found her because of him. If his world, his enemies, the violence that followed him like weather, brought harm to her?—
She stirred and turned her head. Sleepy eyes found his. A small smile that hit him somewhere unprotected.
“Hey.”
