Page 88 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“You bought five creamers.”

“The store had more, but I made an executive decision to limit the selection.”

“This is the most aggressively thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I pour myself a cup of coffee, add an irresponsible amount of the sweet cream (he was right, it is my preference, though I don’t know how he guessed), and lean against the counter to watch him work.

The snow-light pours through the windows, catching the planes of his back as he moves. The muscles shift beneath his skin with each motion, reaching for a spatula, adjusting the heat, flipping another crêpe. His sweatpants hang low on his hips, revealing the dip of his spine, the dimples at the base of his back.

I find myself cataloging him the way he catalogs everything else. The breadth of his shoulders. The way his hair curls slightly at the nape of his neck. The precise, controlled way he moves, as if every action has been calculated for maximum efficiency.

Three hundred years, I think. He’s been alive for three hundred years, and he’s standing in his kitchen making me crêpes.

He’s been waiting three hundred years, and he’s making me crêpes.

A shift happens in my chest. Not the fear I’ve been carrying for the past two days. Not the uncertainty or the anger or the grief.

Something else.

It feels like a decision.

“I can feel you looking,” he says without turning around.

“You’re shirtless.”

“I run warm. You’ve mentioned this.”

“I’ve experienced this. It’s like sleeping next to a furnace.”

“You didn’t complain last night.”

“My feet were cold. You were convenient.”

He turns then, plate of perfect crêpes in hand, and his expression softens when he sees my face. Whatever he reads there makes him set the plate down on the counter and cross to where I’m standing.

“How did you sleep?” he asks quietly.

“Better than I have in days.” I take a sip of coffee to hide the sudden tightness in my throat. “Better than I have in years, maybe.”

“No nightmares?”

“No.” I’m surprised by this myself. I usually have nightmares after emotional conversations, my brain’s way of processing, or maybe just torturing me. But last night there was nothing but warmth and darkness and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear. “I think I was too tired for nightmares.”

“Or too safe.”

The word lands somewhere in my chest and stays there.

“Those crêpes are getting cold,” I say, because I don’t know how to respond to that.

“They’re fine. I made them fresh.”

“Is there a temperature at which crêpes reach optimal consumption?”

“Between 145 and 155 degrees Fahrenheit, ideally.”

“Of course there is.”