Not the sex. Not the vulnerability. The ease of it. How natural it feels to be here.
I find my underwear on the floor beside the bed. My jeans are in the hallway, which is a fun piece of evidence. My sweater is... somewhere.
I pull on my underwear and grab a t-shirt from his dresser because I'm not hunting for my sweater at six-thirty in the morning.
It's soft and too big and it smells like him, and I'm adding this to a growing collection of his clothes that I have no intention of returning.
I pad barefoot down the hallway.
The hardwood is cold under my feet.
The house is quiet in the early morning way.
This is softer.
Dawn light coming through the windows, the smell of coffee drifting from the kitchen, the low hum of a house that feels lived in and loved, even when the people who live in it are somewhere else.
He's in the kitchen. Of course he is.
He's standing at the counter with his back to me, pouring coffee into two mugs.
He's wearing jeans and no shirt and his back is—okay. His back is aproblem.
Not broad the way Garrett's is, or massive the way Maddox is. Just solid.
Compact muscle under skin that I had my hands on a few hours ago, and the memory of how it felt under my palms makes my breath catch in a way that's ridiculous for a grown woman who has seen plenty of shirtless men in a clinical setting.
This is not a clinical setting.
He hears me. I don't know how—I'm barefoot and I'm quiet—but he turns, and there's the almost-smile.
Except this morning it's more than almost.
This morning, it's real.
Small, private, and meant only for me.
A smile that lives in the corners of his eyes and the barely-there curve of his mouth, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on a man's face.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"Coffee's ready."
"You're a saint."
"Don't let the club hear you say that."
I take the mug he holds out.
Our fingers brush and this time neither of us pretends it didn't happen.
He holds the contact for a second.
I sit at the kitchen table and he sits across from me.
We drink coffee in the early morning light, and it's so domestic and so ordinary and so far from anything I've experienced in my entire adult life that I have to grip the mug with both hands to keep myself grounded.
