Page 210 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

I let myself be held.

Rafe kissed my forehead.

“You’re thinking,” he said.

I tucked my face against his chest. “I’m thinking Max is going to be unbearable after sleeping on a dragon bed.”

“He earned it.”

“He’s going to expect one at home.”

“We’ll get him one.”

I lifted my head. “Rafe, my bed barely fits in my apartment.”

“We’ll discuss options.”

“That sentence sounds expensive.”

“It often is.”

There were harder conversations coming. The case. The firm. My job. His family. The fact that loving a dragon didn’t magically pay student loans or repair every old fear inside me. But for that night, the world was smaller.

A quiet room.

A steady heart beneath my cheek.

A dog snoring somewhere downstairs, on furniture worth more than my entire building.

And Rafe’s arms around me, holding me like staying wasn’t an accident. Like it was something we had both chosen.

My body felt loose and heavy, my thoughts pleasantly ruined. Every time his thumb moved over the inside of my wrist, I had to remind myself that I was a grown woman with student loans and not a house cat being slowly converted to indoor life.

His mouth brushed the top of my head.

“Quinn.”

“Mmm.”

“I need to ask you something.”

I opened one eye. “If this is about Max’s dragon bed, I stand by my concern that he’ll never emotionally recover from returning to my apartment.”

“It’s not about Max.”

His arm tightened slightly around me, then eased, like even now he was careful not to hold more than I gave him. “The relics have all been recovered.”

My sleep-soft brain took a second to catch up. The necklace. The sword. The mirror. The comb. The incense burner downstairs in its padded case, finally home where it belonged.

“So they have,” I said quietly.

“And the case is effectively concluded. Which means our professional relationship, such as it was, no longer exists in the same way.”

I turned in his arms until I could see his face. “Such as it was?”

His mouth softened. “It became difficult to categorize somewhere around the bribed auctioneer.”

“I feel like the dragon flight also made HR paperwork complicated.”