"Spam."
He laughs, soft and sleepy, and burrows closer. His breathing evens out within minutes.
I lie awake a little longer, staring at the ceiling, my hand tracing slow circles on his back.
Sam shifts in his sleep, mumbling something that sounds like "flashcards," and I press a kiss to the top of his head.
Sam
Iwake up to the smell of pine and the weight of an arm that could probably bench-press me draped across my ribs.
For a second, I have that disoriented panic of waking up somewhere unfamiliar. Wrong ceiling texture. Navy sheets instead of my chaotic tie-dye situation. And I am naked. Like, aggressively naked.
Then I try to move, and my body sends a very loud, very specific memo to my brain:You were claimed last night, you absolute disaster of a human being.
The soreness is everywhere. A delicious, heavy ache in my muscles. A tenderness between my legs that throbs with my heartbeat. But the thing I can't stop feeling is the phantom weight of him inside me. Like my body is still shaped around him. Still stretching.
Get it together.
I turn my head on the pillow—carefully, because everything hurts in the best way—and look at him.
Devan Morse is asleep.
Actually asleep. Not brooding. Not calculating the statistical probability of something boring. Just... out. Face smushed into the pillow. Black hair a complete disaster. Mouth soft and slightly open.
He looks younger like this.
The memory of last night hits me. Him confessing he's known since freshman year. That he's wanted me since the moment I walked in late wearing that stupid red scarf. While I was busy picking fights and trying to prove I wasn't just another omega coasting on my parents' reputation, he was... what?Pining?
It doesn't compute. Devan Morse doesn't pine. He calculates. He assesses. He probably has a spreadsheet somewhere with color-coded tabs.
And apparently, he decided I was the variable he couldn't solve.
That's actually kind of romantic. In a terrifying, obsessive way.
"You're thinking too loud," a raspy voice mumbles.
I jump so hard I almost fall off the bed.
Devan's eyes are still closed, but there's a tiny smirk tugging at his mouth. "I can hear the hamster wheel from here."
"I'm not thinking," I lie, clutching the sheet to my chest. "I'm processing. There's a difference."
One eye cracks open.
"Processing what?" he asks. "The structural integrity of my mattress? Because I'm pretty sure we tested that thoroughly."
I snort. "I'm processing the fact that you're secretly a stalker. You memorized my snack habits, Devan. That's serial killer behavior."
"It's observation." He shifts closer, his leg sliding between mine. "I'm an economist. I observe."
"You're a creep."
"Your creep," he corrects. His hand finds my hip under the sheet, thumb stroking the bone. "Officially. Biologically."
I should have a comeback for that. Something sharp and clever. But his thumb is doing this little circle thing and my brain is short-circuiting.
"You're not allowed to be smug about this," I manage. "You waited forever. That's weird."
