I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, but I force myself to feel every sensation. I love the comfort of the weight of his leg over mine, and the way his fingers find my wrist instinctively. There is a softness in his touch that no military training could ever teach — a kind of gentleness, even as his thumb sweeps idly back and forth over my wrist.
I lie awake, cheek pressed to the pillow, and listen to the sounds of our breathing. For a moment, I imagine what it would be like to wake up like this every morning. The thought is dangerous, seductive. It tempts me toward a future I don’t dare want. I should be cataloging the next moves, building the escape plan for when the alarms restart and the men in suits and wolves’ clothing come to collect what’s left of me. But the only thing I want is to stay right here, letting Hawk’s body heat seep into my bones until I forget what cold ever felt like.
He shifts behind me, drawing me closer, and his lips brush the back of my neck. “Sleep, Kat,” he murmurs. As if he’s granting me permission. I nearly laugh at how easily the directive slides into my nervous system, overriding years of conditioning, of being the one who never sleeps first, never lets down her guard. But tonight I do.
When I wake, Hawk is watching me, propped on one elbow, his hand clutching my hip beneath the sheets. For a wild second, I think maybe I’m still dreaming. I reach for his wrist and drag his hand to my cheek, just to feel the weight and warmth. He lets me.
“You okay?” he asks. His voice is low and close, as if he’s afraid of startling me.
I nod, then realize that’s a lie. I’m not okay. I don’t even know what that would look like. But I’m here, and that’s more than I expected.
He smiles, the lines around his eyes softening. “We should order breakfast. You need to eat.”
The thought of food makes my stomach growl just at the suggestion. I laugh, surprising myself, and nod again. He rolls out of bed, bare and unselfconscious, and stalks to the phone. I watch the way his body moves — economical, precise, but with an ease that doesn’t fit my old narratives of men as weapons. He orders room service with minimal fuss, then returns to the bed, crawling in from the foot so that he can pull my feet into his lap and rub them with exaggerated seriousness.
“I think you broke my hip,” I say, mostly to see if he’ll tease me.
He grins, his thumb digging into the arch of my foot. “You’re tough. I’m surprised the tub didn’t crack before you did.”
I roll my eyes, biting back a smile. I want to tell him thank you, or sorry, or something, but I don’t know which words will come out if I start. So I let him pull the covers over us and lean into the warmth of his body instead.
Breakfast arrives on a silver cart, complete with mimosas and strawberries dipped in chocolate.
Hawk pours two glasses, hands me a glass, and we eat sitting cross-legged on the bed, naked except for the sheet,watching each other like it’s a contest to see who can survive being seen the longest. I try to eat slowly, but I’m starving. The eggs taste like nothing and everything all at once. I keep expecting for something bad to happen, like the locks on the door clicks open and the world of espionage crashes back in. But nothing happens. I’m smart enough to know it’s simply post traumatic stress.
I take a deep breath and let myself relax, watching as Hawk dips a strawberry in chocolate and holds it up to my lips. I take it, bite down, and let the syrupy sweetness roll across my tongue. He wipes a smear of chocolate from my chin with his thumb, then licks it off his finger. The sight is so sensual.
“You’re not what I expected,” I say, as he lifts a glass of juice to his mouth. He laughs, and the sound is warm, not mocking.
“Neither are you.” We eat in silence for a while. When the food is gone, he stacks the empty plates with the precision of a man who cannot leave a mess behind, then stretches out on the bed beside me. His hand falls to my thigh.
I want to ask him a hundred questions about his family, his real name, the scars on his arm. I want to know if he’s ever killed someone in duty. Instead, I close my eyes and let myself feel the intimacy of a morning spent with nothing to do but be alive. It’s almost unbearable, the normalcy of it. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust myself not to ruin it.
Hawk must sense my unraveling, because he rolls onto his side and props his head in his hand, watching me. “What’s on your mind?”
I pick at a stray crumb on the sheet. “Do you ever think about what comes after?”
He shrugs. “I used to. Not so much anymore. I take the win and move on.”
I nod, but the words clang against something inside me.
“I don’t know if I can just move on.”
He is silent for a moment, then leans in and presses his mouth to my shoulder.
“You don’t have to,” he says. “You can stay with me as long as you want. Or not at all. That’s your call.”
The idea of being the one to choose is still foreign to me, but I turn it over in my mind. I wonder if I could really make a life with him. I want to believe it’s possible. I want to believe that I could wake up every morning to the smell of coffee and the sound of his voice, that I could let someone hold me without wondering what price I’ll have to pay for it later.
I want to believe in the future, in the possibility of something better than waking up to the weight of a man who doesn’t want to own me, just keep me alive and warm. The thought stings at first, then soothes. I let it in, just a little.
The day slides by in a kind of suspended animation. Midmorning, Hawk showers while I sprawl across the bed. When he returns, damp and towel-wrapped, he drops beside me, hair still wet, and puts his head on my stomach. I thread my fingers through the short spikes, amused that he lets me.
We watch television for a while, the volume low. Hawk’s choices skew toward cooking shows, survival documentaries, anything with a clear structure and a predictable end. I watch him more than the screen, trying to catalog each new facet. The way he cradles his mug with both hands, like it’s too hot to handle one-handed. The way he rolls his eyes at the commercials, but laughs anyway when the chef on TV drops an entire roast on the floor and just keeps talking.
By noon, the outside world is in full busy mode. Sirens in the distance, the rumble of traffic through the cracked-open window. I feel the tingle of old adrenaline in my gut, but nothing comes for us. Instead, Hawk disappears for a few minutes and returns with a newspaper and a handful of wrapped chocolatesfrom the front desk. He tosses one at me, then sits reading the paper and intermittently quizzing me on the horoscopes.
“Virgo,” he says, grinning, “Today you will be presented with an unexpected opportunity for transformation. That’s literally you.”
