“Remind me to put your smart mouth to some good use.”
She raises her head. “Alexa, add reminder to give Jason?—”
I clamp a hand over her mouth. “With my luck, that reminder will play when Meemaw is here.”
She turns to the side. “Wouldn’t that serve her right for trying to set me up with all her friends grandsons?”
My wolf growls at the thought. Fuck that shit.
“Violet, I’m going to have to ask you to stop talking about other men while I’m inside you.”
Gripping her hips, I pound into her, and she meets me with every thrust, her fingers gripping the sheets. Her moans pull something low and feral from my chest, and my wolf rises in quiet approval.
For a long, perfect moment, I don’t move. I lie on my side, propped on my elbow, staring at her.
Violet sleeps curled toward me, one hand tucked under her cheek, her hair spilled across the pillow in soft, dark waves. The moonlight slipping through the cracked curtain brushes over her like an old lover, softening every edge, kissing the gentle curve of her mouth, the slope of her nose, the faint scar near her temple she probably doesn’t know I’ve noticed.
God. She’s beautiful. Not in that fragile, delicate way people talk about beauty. In the real way, the earned way. In the way that says she fought through hell and still came out on top.
She breathes in slow, steady streams, that tiny little sound she makes on the exhale catching in the back of her throat, and something in my chest gives one hard, painful twist. I shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be in her bed, watching the rise and fall of her chest like it’s the first peaceful thing I’ve seen in years. I shouldn’t be memorizing how her lashes rest against her cheek, or how the moonlight finds the streak of healing skin near her eye and makes it glow instead of fade. But I can’t look away.
Because there’s something about seeing her like this—unguarded, safe, trusting the world enough to fall asleep with me inches away—that hits me deeper than anything has a right to.
She shifts slightly, her fingers brushing the sheet between us like she’s reaching for something even in sleep. Maybe warmth. Maybe reassurance. Maybe me.
My throat tightens.
If I had a heart left that wasn’t already battered and frayed, she’d have just wrapped her hand around it without even knowing.
And the worst part? I don’t want to take it back. Not even a little.
She looks so peaceful, when last night had rearranged my bones, my instincts, my entire damn existence. My wolf stretches inside me, smug and sated and unbearably tender.Ours,he whispers.
I swallow hard, trying not to agree with him.
Her breathing evens out, each exhale brushing my chest. Her hand is inches from my ribs, close enough that I feel the ghost of it. She trusted me with her body, with her vulnerability, with her sounds, her pleasure, her truth.
And I? I turned into something I’ve never been allowed to be. Something gentle. Something wanted.
She’d shifted under me like she was made for my hands. She’d said my name like it meant something. She’d touched me like she could see me, not with her eyes, but with everything else.
My gaze drops to her mouth.
God, the way she kissed me. Slow at first, like she was mapping my mouth with intention, like every brush of her lips was a question she was afraid I’d answer wrong. Then deeper. Hotter. More desperate when she realized I wanted her just as much, maybe more. I can still taste her on my tongue. Still feel the imprint of her thighs tightening around my hips. Still hear that tiny, breathless sound she made when?—
I stop myself. Barely. My hand curls against the sheets, knuckles tight enough to crack.
Because if I let myself think about it—about her, about the way she opened for me like I wasn’t dangerous—I will never leave this bed.
A burn settles low in my spine, sharp and wanting, but beneath it, beneath the pleasure and hunger and awe, something colder surfaces.
Guilt. It creeps up like an old wound, one I keep pretending isn’t there. Because she kissed me with her whole heart. And I kissed her back with a half-truth in my mouth. I’m not the man she thinks I am.
I’m not even a man, not really. And every second I lie here beside her, memorizing the shape of her breath, I’m pulling her deeper into something she never consented to.
I force myself to breathe. To blink. To tear my gaze away from the peaceful slope of her shoulders. But God, it’s the hardest thing I’ve done in years.
