His gaze intensified, dropping briefly to my lips before returning to my eyes. The kitchen suddenly felt impossibly small, the air between us electric. I was acutely aware of his proximity, of the heat radiating from his body, of how little I would need to move to close the distance between us.
Time seemed to stretch and compress simultaneously. I couldn’t have said how long we stood there, caught in that moment ofpossibility, the dishes forgotten, the world narrowed to just us and the charged space between.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’m not sure how we ended up on my couch. One minute we were standing in my cramped kitchen, caught in that charged moment of possibility, and the next we had migrated to the living room. Maybe I’d suggested we get comfortable. Maybe Rion had simply needed to duck his head away from my low kitchen ceiling. The details were fuzzy, lost in the electric current still running between us.
What was crystal clear, however, was the weight of his presence beside me. My sofa, a secondhand find that had always seemed perfectly adequate for my small apartment, now appeared comically undersized with Rion perched on it. He sat with careful precision, as if afraid his bulk might crush the furniture—or me.
I tucked my legs beneath me, angling my body towards him. The remains of his biscuits sat on the coffee table between us, along with two steaming mugs of tea I’d made in a desperate bid to occupy my trembling hands.
“These are really good,” I said, reaching for another biscuit. “Is there anything you can’t bake?”
“Soufflés,” he answered seriously. “They collapse under my gaze.”
I choked on my tea, caught off guard by his deadpan humor. “Did you just make a joke?”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Occasionally.”
“I like it,” I said, then added more softly, “I like this side of you.”
His dark eyes met mine, intense and searching. “Which side is that?”
I considered the question, setting my mug down carefully. “The one that makes jokes about intimidating soufflés. The one that knows how to get wine stains out of rugs. The one that isn’t… hiding.”
The word hung between us, weighted with meaning. Rion’s massive hands rested on his knees, the tension in his fingers visible.
“Hiding is… habit,” he said finally, his deep voice quiet. “A survival mechanism.”
“I understand that,” I said, shifting slightly closer. “But you don’t have to hide with me.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and the vulnerability in his expression made my heart ache. For all his physical power—the impressive horns, the imposing height, the sheer strength in his frame—there was something profoundly tender in his gaze.
“No,” he agreed softly. “It seems I don’t.”
Silence settled between us, not uncomfortable but charged with unspoken thoughts. I sipped my tea, hyperaware of his everymovement—the rise and fall of his broad chest as he breathed, the slight shift of his weight on my creaking sofa, the way his eyes kept finding mine across the small space between us.
“Tell me about your favorite book,” I said, partly to break the tension and partly because I genuinely wanted to know.
He seemed to consider the question with the same seriousness he approached everything. “The Old Man and the Sea,” he said finally.
“Hemingway,” I nodded. “The book you have a grudging respect for.”
“It’s honest,” he explained. “About struggle. About dignity in defeat.”
“About being alone,” I added softly.
His eyes met mine again, something flickering in their depths. “Yes.”
“Have you always been alone?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, more direct than I’d intended.
Rion didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted to the window, where the night pressed against the glass. “Not always,” he said. “But for a long time.”
“And now?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
His eyes returned to mine, dark and intense. “Now I’m here. With you.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. This wasn’t just conversation anymore; we were navigating something deeper, more significant. I found myself wanting to reach out, to bridgethe physical gap between us the way we were bridging the conversational one.
