Page 15

I had to get out of this bed. I had to do it now, before the sun came up, before the world remembered that I was the captain and he was the player and because of my dragon neither of us was allowed to want this.

I shifted my weight carefully, trying to ease my arm out from under his hand without waking him, and I felt Ash move.

For a second, he was still in whatever dream he’d been having. Then reality caught up with him, and I watched it happen in real time, watched the exact moment he registered where he was and what he was pressed against.

His whole body went rigid. Not the small tension from the tunnel, but complete, absolute stillness, the kind that came right before fight or flight.

“Max,” he said, and his voice came out rough with sleep and something else, something that sounded dangerously close to want.

“I know,” I said, and I should have pulled away, should have put distance between us before this became something neither of us could bury.

Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, my hand still on his chest, my body still pressed against his back, and waited to see what he would do with this.

“Don’t,” Ash said, and there was an edge to it that cut right through the fog of arousal still clouding my thinking. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“This.” He pulled away from me, rolling out of bed in one sharp motion and putting the width of the mattress between us.

In the half-light from the Strip bleeding through the curtains, I could see the hard line of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders.

“Whatever this is. I’m not—” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair, and when he looked back at me there was something like desperation in his eyes. “I’m not just the last person in Denver you haven’t slept with, Max.”

The words hit differently than he probably intended them to.

What he meant was: Don’t treat me like one of them.

What I heard underneath was: I matter more than that.

And he was terrified I was going to prove him wrong.

“I know that,” I said quietly.

“Do you?” His voice rose slightly, and there was a rawness under it that told me this wasn’t about this morning, wasn’t about the bed or the proximity or any of the immediate circumstances.

This was about weeks of distance, about Melanie’s hand on my arm, about every careful choice I’d made to keep him at arm’s length.

“Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you collected another one. Another notch. Another—”

“Stop.”

I was out of bed before I could think better of it, and he took a step back, which somehow hurt worse than if he’d stood his ground.

“That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it, Max?” He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Because I can’t do this. I can’t be another distraction, another person you pick up and put down whenever it suits you. I can’t—” His voice cracked slightly. “I can’t afford to let myself believe you actually want me when we both know that’s not how this works.”

I took a step toward him and watched him flinch, actually flinch, like my proximity was something painful to endure.

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“Am I?” There was a brittleness to his laugh that sounded like breaking glass. “Show me one time, Max. Show me one single time you’ve looked at me and didn’t immediately turn around and find someone else to look at instead. Show me one moment where you didn’t choose distance over—”

He didn’t get to finish because I was moving, because fifteen years of restraint were cracking apart and I could not, could not let him stand there believing that I didn’t want him more than I wanted my next breath.

I crossed the space between us in two strides and kissed him.

It was nothing like I’d imagined it would be. It was harder, deeper, more desperate, my hand coming up to cup the back of his head and pull him closer because if I didn’t, I thought I might actually die from the need of it.