The door creaks open, and I freeze.
Zan.
He’s wearing different clothes now—loose shirt and pants—and looks tousled.Touchable.
And like the noise I’m making is keeping him awake.
“Sorry,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut.
Zan takes in the room—my deconstructed bed, the mess on the floor, and me; hunched, huddling, and shivering in the corner, drooping with weariness.
He doesn’t say anything as he crosses to me.
He just scoops me up right off the ground, cradled in his arms, and carries me out.
My brain fully stops working and I just stare at him as many feelings rush through me.
As he brings me tohisroom.
Still holding me, Zan sits on his bed and maneuvers my shocked and exhausted unresisting body until I’m facing him. Then he lies back so I’m lying across him, my cheek on his hard chest.
His arms loosely around me, holding me in my place.
His warmth seeping into my bones.
“Sleep, Yora,” he murmurs.
And wonder of wonders, I do.
Chapter 9
Iwakeupslowly,warm and comfortable, a gentle rise and fall beneath my cheek.
It takes me a moment to remember where I am.
I am literally on top of Zan.
I am usinghimas my bed.
What does it mean that I can sleep so easily with him and not otherwise?
I may be as inexperienced in the ways of relationships with people as Teren judged me, but I’m not stupid.
I have, to put it mildly, an inkling.
But I don’t want to trap Zan any more than he wants to trap me.
Warm hands run idly down my back, and I shiver.
“I can feel you going tense on me,” Zan murmurs. “I take it you’re awake.”
But he doesn’t make any move to extract himself from underneath me.
In fact, if the soothing motions of his hands—or at least, I think that’s what he intends them to be, but they’re beginning to warm me in a different and much more complicating way—is anything to go by, he’s not in a hurry to.
Still. “Thank you,” I say, inadequately. And also, “I’m sorry.”
His hands still for a moment. “For what?”
