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I kick off my boots, and when I reach for my top, he stops me with a hand on my knee.

He strips off his shirt, and I have to bite my lip to keep my mouth from hanging open. All lean muscle and impossibly still, no rise and fall of his breath until he remembers to take one. A deep scar right over his heart has me hurting for how he got it, and I’m desperate to explore his chest. If I’d known Alaska was home to all of this, I’d have made the trip years ago.

Then he’s standing between my knees, tipping my face up until I meet his eyes. He looks at me like a man who has been told he can have something and doesn’t believe it yet. My shirt goes over my head and lands on the floor behind him. He pushes down the straps of my bra, and I reach back and unclasp it myself, letting it fall.

“This exact vision,” he says, low. His gaze travels over me. “Has kept me awake more nights than I care to count.”

“Vampires sleep?”

“We try.”

Easing me back across the bed, he leans down and kisses me, one hand scraping up my leg, under my skirt, and over the thin fabric of my tights. His fingers reach the seam and stroke along the line, pressing in. One pass, then another. Every coherent thought I’ve ever had dies. His mouth is on my collarbone, then lower, over the peak of my breast, teeth dragging over the ridge.

I am going to combust. I’m going to take this patchwork quilt, this bed, and my entire apartment with me if he doesn’t…

He lifts his mouth from my skin and smirks, and I remember too late that he can hear exactly what’s happening in my chest.

“Your heart,” he murmurs and presses a kiss right below my ear. “It’s very loud.”

Wildly invasive. I said so this afternoon. Maybe it’s also the best part.

He retreats enough to stand, and I prop myself up on my elbows. His fingers climb the outsides of my legs to my waistband, tugging down my tights, and taking his time with the rest.

His pants go next, and I swallow hard.

He notices. Of course he does.

Again with the smirk.

“Come here,” I say before I can register just how close I am to drowning, so far beyond gone. Then, because some part of my brain is still working, I ask, “Wait. Should we—” I gesture vaguely at the general situation. “Is that a thing that can happen? Between a human and a…”

“Yes.”

That lands differently than I expect. “Oh.”

“Yes.” He’s watching me carefully now. “It’s not common, but it’s possible.”

“Okay.” I file that away for later. “I have an IUD.”

“Noted.” He kisses my palm. “And you can’t catch anything from me. One of the perks.”

The mattress dips. Everywhere his skin meets mine—my hip and my ribs and the back of my knee—I break out in goosebumps. Fingers search me out again, circling, then curling inside. Cold where I’m hottest. It nearly finishes me on the spot, and he watches my face the whole time like he’s taking notes. And then he stops.

I call him something unrepeatable.

“Not yet,” he whispers as he kisses down my arm and guides my thighs apart, making room for himself.

He pushes into me, slow, stopping every time I make a sound until I tell him not to. My head drops back into the mattress as he fills me. Cool and growing warmer from my body heat.

“Ellery.” Somewhere near my ear. “You feel⁠—”

He goes still. Absolute, inhuman stillness. For a second, I think something’s wrong, that he’s mistaken my drumming heart for fear. Then I get it. He’s holding himself together because he promised he wouldn’t hurt me, and he meant it.

“Hey.” I cup his face.

His eyes open, and they’re black, like they were in the alley when he saved me.

“I won’t break.”