“Admiring what?”
“You.” I turned in his arms, facing him in the gray pre-dawn light. His hair was mussed, and there were pillow creases on his cheek. He looked rumpled and half awake and utterly beautiful. I felt my chest tighten with the familiar ache of loving him too much for words to hold.
“Now you’re staring,” he said.
“I told you, I’m admiring.”
“Same thing.”
“Not even close.” I traced the line of his jaw with my fingertips, feeling the rasp of stubble and the warmth of his skin. “Staring is passive. Admiring is active. It involves intention.”
“It’s five in the morning. I’m not equipped for semantics.”
“Then don’t talk.”
I kissed him, slow and gentle, the kind of kiss that was more greeting than demand.He responded in kind, his hand sliding up my back, pulling me closer.
We had time.
The Baroness was asleep on our sofa, the city was still dark beyond our windows, and for this brief stolen hour, the world could not touch us.
I had learned, in the years since we’d found each other, to treasure these moments. They weren’t grand gestures or dramatic declarations—Will wasn’t built for those, and neither was I, really—but small intimacies.
The way he murmured my name like a prayer.
The way his hands knew every inch of my body, every scar and sensitive place, mapping me with a thoroughness that still undid me after all this time.
The way he looked at me afterward, gray-blue eyes soft and unguarded, as if I were something precious.
We made love slowly, mindful of our guest in the next room. There was no urgency to it—just the familiar rhythm of bodies that knew each other completely, the give and take, the building heat. When I finally came apart in his arms, I buried my face against his neck to muffle the sound. I felt him shudder against me moments later, his fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise.
We lay tangled together in the aftermath, catching our breath, my head on his chest and his hand stroking lazy patterns across my back.
“I love you,” I said.
Will was quiet for a moment, then his hand stilled on my back, and I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head.
“I know,” he said. “I love you, too.”
It wasn’t eloquent. Will never really was, not about things that mattered, but I heard what he meant beneath the simple words:
I’m here. I’m yours. Whatever comes, we face it together.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift, just for a little while longer, in the warmth of his arms and the temporary peace of the morning.
The Baroness was already awake when we emerged from the bedroom.
She sat at our kitchen table wearing Will’s threadbare robe. Its navy blue fabric, fraying at the cuffs, looked somehow elegant on her, despite its shabbiness. A cup of tea steamed before her. Our spice cabinet stood open, its contents rearranged into what I assumed was some arcane system of Swiss organization.
“Good morning, my darlings,” she said without looking up from a document she was reading. “I made tea. Your kettle is a relic from the past and should be replaced immediately, but I managed.There is also toast, though your bread is stale. William, you will go to the bakery for fresh croissants, yes? Thomas, you will sit down and stop hovering in the doorway like a nervous undergraduate.”
“Good morning to you, too, Baroness,” I said, sliding into the chair across from her. “Sleep well?”
“I slept adequately. Your sofa has a spring that requires attention, and now so does my back, but I have endured worse.” She looked up. Whatever rest she’d managed, it hadn’t been enough. “I trust you both slept soundly?”
There was the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
I felt heat rise to my cheeks. “The walls in this flat are not that thin.”
