"Come to bed," she said.
I should've said the charming thing. The easy line that kept the wall intact. Instead I said, "Okay."
We dressed enough to walk. Two blocks through the Quarter at three in the morning, the streets finally quieting, her shoulderbumping mine, neither of us talking. A jazz band was packing up on the corner of Chartres, the trumpet player wiping down his horn under a streetlight while his drummer counted cash. The smell of beignet grease from the all-night stand on Decatur drifted across the block, mixing with the wet stone smell of the sidewalks after the hoses.
Jenna walked with her boots unlaced and my shirt hanging off one shoulder where she'd thrown it on crooked. Halfway home she reached over and took my hand. Didn't look at me. Just laced her fingers through mine and kept walking. I didn't pull away.
She unlocked the apartment and I followed her in and she didn't turn on the lights.
Her bedroom was small, the sheets were white, and she pulled me in.
We didn't go again. Too wrecked, too satisfied. She curled against me, her back to my chest, my arm over her waist. Her breathing slowed.
I lay in her bed two blocks from her bar and tried to put what had happened in the place I'd put every woman before her: temporary, enjoyable, done.
The place wasn't there. In its spot was Jenna. Her weight on me, her fingers curled around my wrist in her sleep, the smell of her hair on the pillow.
I was falling, and I didn't have an extraction plan, and I wasn't looking for one.
Somewhere in the Quarter a trumpet played, and I closed my eyes and didn't sleep.
Chapter Five
Jenna
I WOKE UP WITH A MANin my bed for the first time in two years, and my first coherent thought was that he ran warm.
His arm was across my waist. Heavy, relaxed, his chest pressed to my back and his breathing slow against my hair. My fingers were still loosely curled around his wrist where I'd fallen asleep holding on. I could feel his heartbeat between my shoulder blades, calm now, nothing close to the hammering under my palm last night.
I lay still. The apartment was quiet. Sunday morning quiet, which in the Quarter during Mardi Gras week meant the city had finally passed out and wouldn't stir until noon. Gray light through the curtains. Through the wall, the distant whine of a garbage truck making its daily attempt at Bourbon Street.
His fingers tightened on my hip. Not awake. Reflexive, pulling me closer, and the warmth that curled through my stomach wasn't complicated. I just wasn't going to name it yet.
I turned in his arms.
He looked different asleep. The jaw was the same, architectural, not optional, but the constant scan was off, the calculated ease dropped. His face was open, hair pushed flat on one side, a crease from my pillowcase running across his cheekbone.
I touched it.
His eyes opened. Gray, focused on me before they were fully open.
"Morning," I said.
"What time is it?"
"Early enough that you don't get to ask."
He shifted closer, his leg sliding between mine under the sheet. "You stole my shirt."
I looked down. His gray t-shirt, the one I'd pulled on somewhere between the front door and the bed. The collar had slipped off one shoulder and his eyes tracked it.
"Annexed," I said. "Legally distinct."
"On what authority?"
"Possession. Which in this apartment is the law."
His palm slid along my bare thigh, warm, unhurried, and the curl in my stomach pulled tighter. I could feel him half-hard against my hip and the casual confidence of it, no adjustment, no apology, was doing more for me than it should have at this hour.
