He shifts closer, his nose brushing mine.
“We just keep going.”
That line lands in me like warmth.
Like future.
Like the first time I can actually imagine one.
I smile and lightly punch his shoulder.
He catches my wrist before I can pull away and kisses the inside of it.
“Violent this early?” he asks.
“Maybe.”
“Good. I was worried you’d gone soft on me.”
I snort.
“Never.”
His hand slides low over my waist under the sheet, slow and absent and completely catastrophic. Not pushing. Not asking. Just there. Warm. Familiar now in a way that makes my whole body melt all over again.
I inhale sharply.
His eyes flick to my mouth.
“Still okay?” he asks quietly.
The question undoes me every single time.
“Yes.”
His thumb strokes once at my side.
Then he glances toward the glass doors, toward the terrace beyond, and one side of his mouth lifts.
“What?”
He looks back at me.
“We never went in the hot tub.”
I stare at him for one beat.
Then it hits me too.
And I laugh.
A full, startled laugh that makes him grin harder.
“We spent all that time staring at it yesterday like it was some great forbidden thing?—”
“And then got distracted.”
“That is one word for it.”
