He stared back at her for a long moment as her chest heaved against the onslaught. She watched Callum’s throat work as he swallowed, like he was trying to push down the three words she had been waiting five years to hear.
Greysonstoodatthekitchen counter, one hand wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee, the other clutched around his tablet. The morning light cut sharp angles through the apartment windows, catching on the obsidian surface of his mask where it rested beside him. Sleep had eluded him most of the night, his mind caught in an endless loop of sounds he shouldn’t have heard, couldn’t stop hearing. The soft moans from her room. The rustle of sheets.
Slowly he lifted the mug to his lips, and the coffee scalded his tongue. He welcomed the pain, anything to focus on besides the memory of those sounds.
Execution orders filled his screen—names, dates, crimes, all neatly categorized in columns that reduced human lives to data points. He swiped to the next file. Lucy Teller, age twenty-four. Cardinalresident caught stealing shoes for her younger sister. Parents deceased. Execution scheduled for Thursday. Sister will be relocated to the Boundary clinics. His finger hovered over the approval button, a hesitation that would have been unthinkable months ago.
Just sign it. That’s all you have to do. Sign it, and move on. Don’t think about whether her sister will die without her. Don’t think about anything except following orders.
Routine. He needed routine. The familiar cold detachment of his work might silence the whispers in his head that felt dangerously close to curiosity about the woman sleeping down the hall. His would-be killer and now, by some cosmic joke, his fucking bride-to-be.
The soft pad of bare feet on marble pulled him from his thoughts. He didn’t look up, kept his eyes fixed on the tablet as if the words there held him captive. But his body betrayed him, attuned to her presence like a tuning fork to its perfect pitch. The air shifted as she stepped into the kitchen, carrying her scent—something clean but with an edge, like rain on metal. He forced his expression into something neutral.
“Is there coffee?” Her voice was rough with sleep, lower than its usual sharp cadence.
Greyson finally lifted his eyes from the tablet and his carefully constructed mask of indifference shattered.
She stood framed in the hallway entrance, auburn hair tumbling loose around her shoulders, sleep-mussed and wild in a way that made his fingers twitch with the urge to run through it. Her inked and battered legs seemed endless beneath the hem of a black T-shirt that hung to mid-thigh.
His T-shirt.
The same one he’d been looking for yesterday. Something primal and possessive flared in his chest at the sight of her in his clothes before he ruthlessly smothered it.
His eyes traveled up her body without his permission—over the curves the shirt couldn’t quite disguise, the dip of her waist, the graceful line of her throat where fading bruises still marked her skin. When he reached her face, her eyes were narrowed, watching him watch her.
“What?” she snapped.
Greyson cleared his throat, forcing his gaze back to the tablet. “Nothing,” he said, voice deliberately flat. Then, because he truly couldn’t help himself, added, “Though I wasn’t aware my clothing was communal property.”
Her face blanched, glancing down at the shirt as if seeing it for the first time. “This is yours?”
“Well, it’s certainly not yours.” He took another sip of coffee, using the mug to hide the quirk of his lips. “And unless there is another person living in this apartment I didn’t approve of, yes, it’s mine.”
“Chapman brought it,” she said, tugging at the hem with sudden discomfort. “If I’d known it belonged to you, I’d have set it on fire.”
“I’m sure.” He watched as she crossed to the coffeepot, his shirt riding higher on her thighs with each step. “Try not to burn anything this time.”
“Try not to be such a fucking asshole this early,” she countered, reaching for a mug from the cabinet. “Though I suppose that’s like asking water not to be wet.”
Something about the domesticity of the moment struck him as absurd. The Daggermouth assassin in his kitchen, wearing his clothes, pouring coffee like this was normal. Like he hadn’t stood outside her door last night, hand on the knob, one push away from a colossal mistake.
“You were loud last night.” The words left him without thought.
The regret was immediate.
Her hand froze on the coffeepot, her back going rigid. “What?”
“In your room.” He kept his voice deliberately neutral. “The walls are thin.”
She turned slowly, her face a careful blank he couldn’t read. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” He raised an eyebrow. “My mistake then.”
A flush crept up her neck, staining her cheeks with color as her eyes darted away from his. Confirmation, if he’d needed it. “You’re a fucking creep,” she muttered, turning back to pour her coffee.
“Says the woman who spent half the night moaning loud enough to wake the neighbors.”
“You don’t have any neighbors.” The coffeepot slammed down with enough force to slosh liquid onto the counter. “And at least I know how to satisfy myself,” she hissed. “When was the last time someone touched you for free?”
