His hand finds my face. He pushes the hair back from my cheek with a gentleness that cracks something open behind my ribcage, his thumb tracing along my jaw.
He looks at me in the low light. Tender. Steady.
"You're right where you belonged all along," he says. "In my arms."
He tucks me against him and his arm comes around me, warm and sure. Safe, surrounded by his warmth. I close my eyes and nestle against his chest, my eyelids going heavy as I listen to his heartbeat.
Maybe he's right. Maybe this is where I belong.
I fall asleep thinking it.
Chapter Twelve
Demetrius
She'snestlednexttome when I wake up.
That's the first thing my mind latches on to. Before the pale strip of pre-dawn light at the curtain edge registers as morning,before any rational thought arrives to spoil the moment. Just that Maddie is there, in my bed, in my arms.
She's tucked against my side with one hand loose on my chest and her hair spread across my shoulder. Like she's been sleeping next to me every night of the past fifteen years. Like our long separation was just a bad dream after all.
My arm is around her, molding to the soft curves of her body, keeping her warm and protected.
I stay very still.
Her hair smells like citrus and something warm underneath, spicy. Cinnamon, maybe. Her back rises and falls against me, slow and even. The hand on my chest is slack, fingers curled against my fur, and I cover it with my own without thinking about it.
God, she's small.
I always forget, when she's awake and running her mouth and absolutely refusing to be impressed by anything, just how small she actually is. Tucked against me like this, she could fit under one arm, and somehow that makes her more dangerous, not less.
She stirs. A small sound, barely anything, and then she shifts against me. She turns her face into my shoulder and goes still again. She's not moving, but there's something different about the quality of her stillness now. Then she moves again, slow and unhurried, and her hips press back against mine. I can't see much of her face in our position, but what I can see is decidedly wicked. Wicked, playful, and so sexy I barely remember to breathe.
She stills when her hips find my cock, rock-hard against her.
Her smile widens.
"Good morning to you too," I say.
She huffs a sleepy laugh against my shoulder and keeps her hand moving south.
By the time her fingers close around me I have lost the thread of any thought I was trying to maintain. She strokes me once and I draw a sharp breath through my nose. Twice. I close my hand around her wrist.
"Maddie." I warn her.
She lifts her head and blinks at me, expression entirely too wicked for someone who technically just woke up.
"Problem?"
"Yes." My voice comes out low, almost a growl. "Come up here."
She blinks. Her brow goes up. "But I'm busy down here."
She slides down the length of me before I can stop her, settling between my thighs and looking up at me. She grips my shaft with both hands and looks up at me, then her mouth closes around my cock. I suck air through my teeth as she flicks the sensitive tip with her tongue and all higher cognitive function leaves my body through the top of my skull.
She is not in any hurry. That much is immediately clear. She works me with her tongue in slow, thorough passes, tasting and teasing, and her eyes come up to mine with an expression that could finish me on the spot. I press my head back against the pillow and breathe through my nose.
"You're going to be the end of me," I say.
