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“Maybe it's the country air.”

“Maybe I should send you back to Vegas.”

He didn't even hesitate before telling me I'd miss him, and although the words were teasing, something underneath them wasn't.

I caught the front of his sweatshirt and drew him the last few inches toward me, suddenly far less interested in winning an argument about whether rescuing a three-legged cat qualified as adorable. I could've answered with another joke, because that would've been easier, and for most of my adult life it would've been automatic.

Instead, I held his gaze and admitted, “I can’t do that.”

The teasing slowly disappeared from Ash's face, leaving something much softer behind. My hand remained curled in his sweatshirt while he searched my expression, and for several seconds, the entire farm seemed to disappear around us.

Then he leaned forward and kissed me.

There was no urgency behind it, no hotel room or desperation, and no fear that one of us would regret what happened when morning came. His mouth moved slowly against mine while the wind carried the smell of earth and hay across the fields, and something inside me settled with terrifying ease.

My dragon had been quiet since we arrived.

Not absent, but content in a way I rarely experienced anywhere except here.

That should've reassured me.

Instead, it frightened me because this was what I'd denied myself for fifteen years.

Not sex or attraction, because I'd found ways to satisfy both without letting anyone close enough to matter.

I'd denied myself this.

Ash standing on my land with mud on his shoes and his mouth warm beneath mine. Ash laughing at my animals, talking to Claire as though he'd known her for years, and leaving his jacket over the back of a chair in my kitchen without asking where it belonged.

Ash fitting into the place I'd built for myself as though there had always been room for him.

I wanted him here permanently.

The realization was enormous enough that I broke the kiss before I accidentally said it aloud.

Ash didn't seem offended. He stayed close, resting his forehead against mine while we caught our breath, and after a moment he murmured, “This place makes sense.”

I wasn't sure what he meant until he added, “You make more sense here.”

That wasn't much clearer, and my confusion must have shown because he smiled.

“I thought your farm would be some expensive place you escaped to because you could afford it, but it's not. You actually built a life here.”

My throat tightened.

There wasn't any point denying it. “Yes.”

We walked back to the farmhouse, past the barns and fields beyond it. When he told me quietly that he liked it here, four perfectly ordinary words hit me harder than they had any right to.

“I've spent months listening to people act like Max Renaud descended fully formed from the heavens with a hockey stick in his hand. Finding out you once stapled yourself to a fence is incredibly reassuring.”

“I didn't staple myself to the fence. I stapled my glove.”

“While your hand was in it,” Luc pointed out, joining us in the kitchen.

I turned to him. “Whose side are you on?”

Luc appeared to consider the question far more seriously than it deserved. “The fence's.”