I swallowed hard. Focused on the ceiling — on the steady tick of melting ice somewhere outside.
“This is a bad idea,” I murmured, though I wasn’t sure if I meant speaking it into existence — orwantingit.
Her voice came, drowsy, from somewhere near my throat. “You’re thinking too loudly.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “Oh, am I?”
“Mhm.” She burrowed closer, eyes still closed, her words soft enough to almost miss. “Just be warm. Be here.”
Be here.
As if that were something I even knew how to do anymore.
So I held still. Let her breathe. Let her hand stay there, over my chest, right where everything was unraveling.
And in the dark, as the wind pressed harder against the windows, I told myself it was only the cold that kept me awake.
When I woke, the light was pale and slow, the kind that filters through snow and frost and never really makes it past the window. The fire was a low sigh beside us, a scatter of dying embers that still painted the walls in tired gold.
I woke to warmth.
Genuine warmth. Soft and pliant and tucked against me like she’d always belonged there. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, only that somethingalivewas pressed into my chest and my hand had found a home beneath her shirt.
Then she shifted, and the memory came back in pieces. The fire. The cold. Her voice in the dark asking if she could — just for a little while — be close.
Now my palm was spread over the curve of her breast, my breath fanning against the back of her neck. And she was sleeping still, her heartbeat a small, steady rhythm beneath my hand.
I should have moved.
Moved my hand. Moved mybody.
I should have rolled away before I noticed how her hair smelled faintly of smoke and lilac shampoo, before I felt the way her hips fit against me in perfect, ruinous alignment.
Before I felt my erection growing against the swell of her backside. But the cabin was still dim, the fire burned low, and she was so warm. Soquiet.
I let myself breathe her in, slow and careful, like she might shatter if I exhaled too hard. The tip of my nose brushed her shoulder by accident. Or maybe not.
“Silas,” she murmured, not quite awake, my name turned into a sigh.
God.
I closed my eyes. “Still here.”
She made a small, satisfied sound — half hum, half exhale — and wriggled back until there was no space left between us. My pulse stuttered, shame and longing tangled into something sharp and unrecognizable.
My cock grew harder as she settled back against me. Iknewshe could feel it. And my hand —fuck— groping her underneath her sweater.
Mysweater.
“You seem comfy.” She said softly, voice suddenly as thick as I felt. It wasn’t an invitation. Not really. But it was enough to keep me perfectly still, memorizing the feel of her against me, the morning light pooling over the floorboards, the impossible peace of it.
And when she finally went still again, I pressed my forehead to the curve of her shoulder and whispered, too softly for her ears, “I’m trying to be good.”
I stared at the ceiling. Tried to count the creaks of the cabin, the faint hiss of the fire, the wind rattling the windowpanes. Anything that wasn’t the heartbeat I could feel under my hand, steady and alive and far too close.
My fingers flexed before I could stop them, gently kneading herbreast. She sighed again — like the sound meant something to her — and I felt something in me unravel.
I’d forgotten how heavy peace could be. How dangerous it was to want something so simple.
