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“So,” I said, when language returned. “Wolf shifter. Mate. Life-altering oral. It’s been a big morning for me, developmentally.”

His laugh rumbled through his ribs and into mine where we touched. “You handling it okay?”

“Ask me in an hour. Right now my bones are decorative.” I turned my head against his shoulder and looked at him—the crooked pillow crease still faintly visible on his cheek, the smug, soft curve of his mouth, the way he watched me, like checking my face for damage was just something he did now. “Nobody’s ever done that for me before. Not… like that. Like it wasn’t a chore.”

Something flickered through his expression, tender and fierce at the same time, and his arm tightened around me. His lips pressed against my hair and stayed there when he spoke.

“Get used to it,” he said. “That was me saying hello.”

A helpless little laugh shook out of me. My hand found the center of his stomach and rested there, rising and falling with his breath, and for the first time in longer than I could measure, my body wasn’t braced for anything. No footsteps to track. No moods to read. No cameras. Just a warm bed, a warmer man, and the distant smell of bacon grease that we should probably deal with before the puppy staged a heist.

Chapter Thirteen

Phineas

“For the record,” I said, drawing an idle pattern through the hair on his stomach, “I have questions.”

“Figured you might.” Drift’s hand made a slow pass up and down my arm, warm and unhurried. “Ask away.”

“Okay. Question one.” I held up a finger. “The bite thing. You mentioned mates. Is there a ceremony? Paperwork? Do I need to notify my dentist?”

His laugh moved through me where our bodies touched. “There’s a bite. Mine, on you. It seals things. Makes it permanent.”

“Permanent like a tattoo or permanent like a mortgage?”

“Permanent like permanent.” His fingers stilled against my shoulder, and when I tilted my head back to look at him, his expression had gone serious in that quiet, steady manner he had, the one that made my pulse trip over itself. “It only happens if you want it. No pressure. No timeline. I’d wait years if you needed years.”

Years. The man was offering me years like they were spare change, like time with me was a currency he had plenty of and no better place to spend. My throat went tight. In my old life, I’d learned to negotiate for minutes. Five more minutes before the questions started. Ten more minutes before I had to be home. A whole lifetime of small, desperate haggling, and here was Drift sliding the entire clock across the table and telling me to keep it.

“What if I don’t need years?” The words came out before my anxiety could file an injunction against them.

Drift went very still under my hand. His heart, which I could feel against my palm, picked up speed. “Phineas.”

“I know what you’re going to say.” Propping myself up on one elbow, I looked down at him, at this enormous gentle man who had slept on his own bedroom floor for me, who had sat on hardwood and told moose stories until I could breathe again, who had just spent an obscene amount of time telling my body it was worth something. “You’re going to say it’s too fast. That I just left a bad situation this morning. That I’m emotionally compromised and running on trauma and bacon.”

“All true.”

“Probably. Almost definitely.” My finger traced the line of his collarbone, needing something to do while I assembled the rest of the sentence. “But here’s the thing. I have spent every day with Ben being absolutely certain about things that were killing me. I was certain I couldn’t leave. Certain I deserved the rules. Certain the cameras were normal and the bruises were my fault and the third hook was where keys belonged.” My voice wobbled, and I let it. “This is the first time I’ve been certain about something that feels like living instead. I don’t want to waste it being sensible. Being sensible got me a color-coded chore chart and a foot-shaped bruise.”

For a long moment, Drift just looked at me. Sunlight had crawled higher up the wall, and it caught the greenish-amber in his eyes, turning them molten. His hand came up and cradled the side of my face, thumb sweeping across my cheekbone, and I leaned into the touch like a plant finding a window.

“You sure?” His voice had dropped low, rough at the edges. “Once I bite you, kitten, there’s no undoing it. You’d be stuck with me. Grumpy mornings, grill smoke, all of it.”

“You had me at grill smoke.” My attempt at levity came out breathless, because he had shifted beneath me, rolling us so that I lay back against the pillows and he hovered above, braced on his forearms, his weight a warm promise all along my body. “Also, full disclosure, I’ve never been anyone’s permanent anything. So if I cry, it’s not sadness. It’s just my emotional infrastructure collapsing under an unprecedented load.”

“Cry all you want.” His mouth brushed mine, feather-soft, once. Twice. “I’ll be right here for it.”

Then he kissed me properly, deep and slow, and my brain finally, mercifully, shut up.

His mouth tasted like coffee and something warmer underneath, and he kissed the way he did everything else, patiently, thoroughly, like the destination mattered less than the road. My hands found his shoulders then his back, mapping the shift of muscle as he settled between my thighs. Against my hip, his cock pressed hard and hot, and the reality of it sent heat rolling through my belly.

“Drawer,” he murmured against my jaw and reached past me toward the nightstand without breaking the line of kisses he was pressing down my throat. The drawer rattled open. A bottle of lube landed on the mattress beside my head, and my pulse did something athletic.

“You keep supplies within arm’s reach,” I observed, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near strangled. “Optimistic of you.”

“Hopeful.” He caught my earlobe between his teeth, gentle, and the small tug shorted out three or four of my remaining brain cells. “Big difference.”

His mouth traveled downward, unhurried, retracing territory he had already claimed once this morning. Lips at my collarbone. Tongue at my nipple, circling until I squirmed. His beard dragging soft friction over my ribs, careful around the bruise, reverent everywhere else.