Neither of us moves for a very long time.
He falls asleep first, something I absolutely didn't expect from a man so violently controlled. One heavily scarred arm remains clamped securely around my waist, his deep breathing brushing my shoulder.
Like he trusts me. Like he feels safe.
I lie wide awake, staring at the ceiling, processing. The bar. The alley. The instinctive way he stepped between me and danger without a second thought, like it was reflex, like it cost him nothing. The frantic, desperate hours that followed in this bed.
The warmth of him at my back feels foreign. Good foreign. The kind of foreign that makes me nervous.
A shadow shifts outside my window.
My blood goes cold before my brain catches up.
I turn my head carefully. In the faint reflection of my dresser mirror, a car sits parked across the quiet street at the wrong angle, facing the wrong direction. Engine off. But the silhouette of someone in the driver's seat is unmistakable.
Sitting completely still. Facing my building.
The sedan from the bar?
I stare at it for a long moment and then—deliberately, consciously—talk myself down off the ledge.
It's a mountain town on a Friday night. Someone waiting for a friend to stumble out of the apartment above mine. An Uber driver killing time between rides. A person who had too much to drink and is making the responsible decision to sit it out before driving home.
I’m naked in bed with a man I met five hours ago. My judgment is not exactly operating at full capacity.
I curl tighter against Kade's heat and close my eyes.
The shadow doesn't move.
It's nothing, I tell myself. It's nothing, and tomorrow is tomorrow, and right now this warm, solid, dangerous man has his arm around my waist and that is enough.
I drift off before I can talk myself out of believing it.
But the unease follows me into sleep like a low note held just beneath the melody—present, patient, waiting for the moment I finally have to hear it.
FOUR
Kade
Consciousness arrives in layers.
The unfamiliar softness of a real mattress instead of my usual tactical cot. Jasmine and the scent of sex heavy in the air. The warm weight of a woman draped across my chest.
Wren. Her apartment.
Last night rushes back in vivid detail, and my body stirs despite the fact that we fucked ourselves into exhaustion just hours ago.
Her breath fans slowly and even against my skin. One leg thrown over mine, her hand splayed open over my heart—like she's claiming me even in sleep.
The thought should trip my standard exit reflex. I don't do morning afters. Don't do complications. Definitely don't do whatever this tightness in my chest is trying to become.
I should leave. Slip out while she's under, disappear into the pre-dawn dark the way I've disappeared from a hundred other situations. She deserves breakfast dates, stable men, and relationships that don't come with concealed carry permits and threat assessments running on a permanent loop.
I start to shift.
She makes a sound—half-protest, half-plea—and burrows closer.
I go still.
