"I believe you."
"They lasted about four hours."
My brows raised a fraction, amused. “That long, huh?”
"Shut up." But there was no heat in it. Her voice was fraying at the edges, the control she'd been white-knuckling all day finally starting to slip. "I spent the entire day trying not to think about you. And every single section of the breeding proposal that needs your data felt like a trap."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It was." She looked at me, and the fight went out of her eyes. Just—left. Like a candle guttering out. "I'm so tired, Jack. I'm tired of pretending I don't want this. I'm tired of making rules I'm going to break. I'm tired of lying in bed at midnight being furious at you for doing exactly what I asked you to do."
I stood up slowly, giving her room, giving her time.
"I've only got one rule," I said.
"Just one?"
"I won't pretend this is less than it is." I climbed the last step, putting us level, close enough that I could see the faint shadows under her eyes. "Whatever it is—and I don't need you to nameit—I won't act like it doesn't matter. That's the only thing I'm asking."
She swallowed. "That's a lot to ask,” she whispered.
"I know."
She studied me for a long moment. I let her look. Let her see whatever she needed to see—the want, the patience, the fact that I was standing on her porch yet again because I couldn't make myself stay away any more than she could make herself keep the door closed.
"You know what Ivy said to me?" Maggie said quietly. "On the phone, the other night. Before any of this."
"What?"
"She said there's a difference between careful and closed." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "And she wasn't sure I knew which one I was anymore."
"What do you think?"
"I think I've been closed for a very long time." She swallowed. "And I think you're the first person who's made me want to find out what it feels like to open."
The words landed somewhere deep in my chest—deeper than want, deeper than attraction. Somewhere in the territory of things that couldn't be taken back.
"Then open the door, Maggie."
She reached for the front of my shirt, gathered the fabric in her fist, and pulled me across the threshold.
The cabin was dim. Just the desk lamp, throwing warm amber light across the room. Her laptop was closed this time. The quilt on the couch was rumpled. A mug of tea sat on the side table, half-finished and long cold.
The door closed behind us, and Maggie didn't let go of my shirt.
She stood there with her fist in the fabric, her face tilted up to mine, and I watched the last wall come down. Not dramatically.Not all at once. Just a quiet dissolution—the tension in her jaw releasing, her shoulders dropping, her eyes going soft in a way that made my throat tight.
"I don't want to fight it tonight," she said. "I'm done fighting it."
"Then don't."
She kissed me first.
That mattered. The other times, I'd kissed her.. This time, she rose up on her bare toes and put her mouth on mine, and the kiss was different from anything that had come before—not desperate, not urgent, not the collision of two people who'd been resisting too long. It was deliberate. Chosen. A woman deciding, with her eyes open and her mind clear, that she wanted this.
Wanted me.
I let her lead. Let her set the pace of the kiss, let her hands slide up my chest, let her fingers find the top button of my shirt, and work it open. Then the second. Then the third. Taking her time. Learning the act of undressing me the way I'd learned the act of undressing her—slowly, deliberately, like the unwrapping was part of the gift.
