He nodded once, accepting the honesty. Then he extracted himself with a grace that shouldn’t have been possible, given how we’d worn each other out hours before.
His muscles flexed as he crossed the bedroom and pulled on his trousers. Even that simple motion made my mouth go dry.
He paused at the door. “Twenty minutes. Breakfast. Both of you.”
Then he was gone.
Oliver stirred beside me, and his arm curled around my waist in an unconscious echo of what Kiernan had done moments before. “What time is it?”
“Early.” I turned to face him. He looked sleep-soft and vulnerable, with his sandy hair falling across his forehead—God, he was beautiful. And now, he was mine. They both were.
I had no idea what came next.
“He wants us downstairs in twenty minutes,” I said.
“Of course he does.” Oliver sat up with a wince, likely as sore as me from our escapades. “Did he seem…?”
“I don’t know what he seemed.” I pushed myself upright, hyperaware of my nakedness in a way I hadn’t been while we were still under the sheet. “He’s impossible to read.”
“He’s not.” Oliver didn’t look away. “He’s intentionally difficult.”
We dressed in silence, pulling on clothes—mine from my closet, his from the pile on the floor.
Kiernan was already seated when we arrived, dressed in charcoal trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Tea sat on the sideboard next to dishes ofbacon and eggs. He didn’t look up from the tablet in his grip when we entered.
“Sit.”
I obeyed instinctively. So did Oliver.
The command had been simple, but my body had responded before my mind could intervene. I’d done the same thing last night—followed his orders as if obedience was an instinct rather than a choice. The memory of kneeling in my fantasy rose unbidden, and heat crept up my neck.
Millie appeared with fresh toast and disappeared again without a word.
The silence stretched. Oliver poured himself a cup of tea, and I reached for a piece of toast, not that I had an appetite.
Kiernan set his tablet down.
“That’s not how I do things.”
His tone was flat and controlled, and the warmth from earlier this morning had vanished. Oliver tensed beside me.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Last night,” Kiernan continued, “was not how this works.”
I braced myself. This was it, then. He was going to tell us it had been a mistake, that whatever had sparked between the three of us during those desperate, hungry hours was an aberration, never to be repeated.
The words didn’t come.
Instead, Kiernan studied us both with a weight that made me fidget. “What happened between us wasn’t planned. It wasn’t negotiated. It wasn’t safe.”
“Safe? But we used protection.” Oliver’s tone was low.
Kiernan’s attention shifted to him. “That’s not what I was referring to. Neither of you knows what you’re dealing with.”
“Then, explain it,” I snapped as much as said. Was my irritation because I’d gotten so little sleep or because I sensed Kiernan withdrawing.
He held my stare without blinking. Then his mouth curved—not a smile, but close.
