The words don't make sense at first. I hear them, but they don't compute.
"You want me to—"
"I want you here. Not just at night, not just when I summon you. I want you in my space, my bed, my life. All the time."
My heart is pounding. This is insane. This is beyond insane.
"Gabriel, I can't just—"
"Why not?"
"Because—" I struggle for reasons, grasping at the fragments of my old life. "My apartment. My things. My—"
"Can be moved or replaced."
"My mother—"
"Doesn't need to know where you're living."
"Bea—"
"Can visit if you want her to."
He has an answer for everything. A solution for every objection. And the terrifying thing is, I'm running out of reasons to say no.
"This is crazy," I whisper.
"Yes."
"I barely know you."
"You know me better than anyone alive." His hand cups my face, tilting it toward him. "You've seen what I am. What I do. You've looked at the monster and you're still here. That's not nothing, Poppy. That's everything."
I stare at him in the dim light. His face is half in shadow, the angles sharp and dangerous. He looks like what he is—a predator, a killer, a man who takes what he wants without apology.
And yet.
And yet there's something else in his eyes. Something I've never seen before. Not vulnerability, exactly—Gabriel Ambrose is never vulnerable. But something adjacent to it. Something that looks almost like a need.
He needs me. This monster needs me.
The realization should send me running. Instead, it makes something shift in my chest, some final barrier crumbling.
"Okay," I hear myself say.
"Okay?"
"Okay. I'll stay."
He kisses me—not hard this time, not possessive, but something else. Something that feels like a seal on a bargain I don't fully understand.
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who I'm becoming.
But as I lie in his arms, in his bed, in his world, I realize I'm in deeper than I ever intended.
And I have no idea how to get out.
Or if I even want to.
