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She was so used to losing them. It was as different as it was nice to be able to call it up and keep it.
She remembered this room. She remembered that the mattress was perched on a high box spring so there was a bit of a step before her bare foot hit the floor. She grabbed the crumpled quilt that was balled up near the end of the bed. Wrapping herself up with it, like a makeshift toga, Evangeline gently tiptoed across the room. The last thing she needed was one of their neighbors getting an eyeful of her tits when she lifted the window shade.
Slowly, slowly, Evangeline tugged on the shade, wincing when the plastic jerked out of her hand, slapping into the top of the window frame as it rolled shut. Sunlight streamed in through the glass, bathing the room in a bright light that highlighted Maddox’s naked form. His legs got tangled up in a sheet sometime after he fell asleep, leaving most of him revealed.
Evangeline stopped and stared.
God, he was gorgeous.
It was the first time she’d been able to see him sleeping. With his eyes closed, his face relaxed, he seemed softer. She took this moment in time to study him without being hypnotized by his beautiful golden gaze.
She took in the cutting edge of his jaw, cheekbones as sharp as knives… the dark shadow of a stubble he could never fully shave clean. Worry lines were missing when he slept, his forehead smooth, his mouth slightly open as he snuffled and snored.
He let out a rush of air, his hand reaching out. Even in his sleep, Maddox searched for her. His fingers flexed, twitching, his body tensing when he realized that she was missing. She watched as he flared his nostrils, trying to find her scent. He exhaled softly when he assured himself that she was still close.
He didn’t need his eyes to see her when his other senses could pick up on her presence. Good. That gave Evangeline a precious few seconds to climb in the bed before her shifter mate slowly roused himself out of sleep.
His eyes were bright, the gold a burnished shade that brightened when he found her only a couple of inches away from where his palm lay flat on the sheet. He stretched, his fingertips brushing alongside the edge of her bare hip.
“Morning,” he rasped out. “Sleep well?”
“Best night in a long time.”
“Me, too,” Maddox murmured.
And then he smiled.
It was the first real smile he’d given her since he was trying to seduce her at the coffee shop. She’d been oblivious to his tactics then, though now she knew better. Looking back on it, she was kind of shocked that it hadn’t worked.
That smile? It turned him from gorgeous to drop dead sexy with the simple curve of his lips.
Evangeline had to resist the urge to roll toward him, laying her cheek against his chest. With the sheet pooled around his waist, his sculpted body was a temptation that, as his wife, she no longer had to pretend she didn’t want.
Maddox being super attractive had never been the problem. His insistence on what she knew to be false—the lengths he had gone to convince her otherwise—was what had been the biggest obstacle between them. Between that and her missing memories, the two of them were doomed at the beginning.
Then he had shown her the wedding photo. That, added to the few glimpses into the past that she managed to recover, Evangeline knew better now. He was her husband. After last night, he was her bonded mate.
It was time he knew that, too.
So, rather than touch him like she was dying to, Evangeline lifted her hand, shielding her eyes.
“Something wrong, sweetheart?”
“Kinda. The sun’s, um, really bright out today.”
“Oh. Sorry. How did— Never mind. Here, let me get the shade.”
Maddox hopped out of the bed, stalking naked across the room. Evangeline enjoyed the vision of that tight ass moving away from her so much that she almost forgot the reason why she pointed out the glare.
He reached up, tall enough to grab the shade without going up on his toes. His delicious ass went taut, the muscles on his back rippling as he yanked it down, turning the room into a dim shadow.
“Better?”
Much, but that wasn’t the point.
“Not really,” she lied. “Do… do you have an extra pair of sunglasses I can borrow?”
He frowned, as if he could sense her deception, but that didn’t stop him from trying to give her what she asked for. Maddox’s hand slapped at his hip, reaching for a pocket in a pair of jeans that were tossed somewhere in his haste to disrobe last night. It took him a second to remember that he was naked, then even longer to realize that she wasn’t asking him for a pair of shades because she actually needed them.
