Charged silence stretched between them.Kayne could feel it in the air, thick enough to drag through with his hands.Chloe’s shoulders loosened a fraction, and she let out the smallest breath, as if his certainty steadied her more than she wanted to admit.
#
Kayne stood, scanningChloe’s apartment.His loose, relaxed posture disguised the strategic sweep happening behind those green eyes.She noticed him cataloguing every shadow and reflective surface.Tonight, though, he lingered at the single narrow hallway leading to her bedroom, gaze sharpening just a little, as if he was already calculating exits, threats, and, God help her, sleeping arrangements.
“Where am I sleeping?”he asked.
Chloe’s brain short-circuited.“Um.Well.I only have one—”
“Queen bed, yeah.”He gave a lazy half-smile that did devastating things to her blood pressure.“I’ll take the floor.Your sofa isn’t big enough for a full-grown man.”
Talking about a bed and using the words “grown man” made her body tingle inappropriately.As indeeplyinappropriately.As in,please stop talkinginappropriately.
“The floor is hardwood,” she warned.“You’ll wake up shaped into an origami crane.”
“I’ve slept on worse.”His gaze caught hers and held.“You won’t rest unless you know I’m here.”
Chloe’s breath snagged.Her dignity tried to intervene but subsequently failed.“Wow, arrogant much?”she muttered.Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong.“Okay.You can take the floor.”
His eyebrow lifted, and she was sure he could see every bit of internal flailing she was desperately trying to repress.
“And you,” he said, “can stop looking like I asked you to hand over your firstborn.”
She rolled her eyes.“I donotlook like that.”
“You do.”His mouth tipped up.“A very cute version of it.”
Cute.
Great.Perfect.Just what every frazzled woman wanted to hear from a devastatingly handsome Cajun wall of muscle she wasabsolutely notthinking about in a bed-adjacent context.
She stood too quickly, nearly launching herself into orbit.“I’m going to get you a blanket.”
His smile widened knowingly, smug in that infuriatingly gentle way of his.“Much appreciated.”
She spun toward the linen closet, muttering under her breath.Something about manners, men, and muscle mass not being allowed to smirk like that.
Behind her, Kayne chuckled as if he knew exactly what she was doing.Which, of course he did.Because Kayne noticed everything.Especially things she wished he didn’t.
She grabbed a blanket and returned to find him crouched on the floor, measuring the available real estate as if he planned on negotiating with it.
“You sure you’re going to fit down there?”she asked, instantly regretting the phrasing.
One brow rose.“Why?You offering alternatives?”
She choked.Actually choked.“No!I mean—I was just—the floor—Kayne, oh, my God.”
His grin unfurled slowly and sinfully.“Relax,cher.I’m teasing.”
Relax?Ha!She wasn’t even remotely settled.Her molecules weren’t mollified.Relaxation was a myth.
He accepted the blanket, brushing her fingers in the process, accidentally, devastatingly.Her pulse spiked so fast she was surprised she didn’t pass out like a Victorian heroine hovering near a fainting couch.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“Sure,” she croaked, even though the air between them felt dense enough to swim through.
He smoothed the blanket out, moving with that efficient, quiet competence that made her insides do unforgivable things.
