“Your soul can make compromises.”
He smiled, but it didn’t last. “Maybe I’d call my dad and not walk into another room.”
I didn’t answer.
His thumb moved over mine, restless and uneven. “Not tell him everything right away. Just not feel like the whole sentence is a lie when I say I’m fine.”
I lifted his hand and kissed it.
For once, he didn’t dodge the tenderness.
Tiny slid off the couch with a dramatic thud, staggered three steps, then collapsed on the rug like we had exhausted him personally. The sudden absence of him between us felt deliberate.
Jace looked at him. “He planned that.”
“He’s given his approval.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
I stood and held out my hand.
Jace looked at it. Then at me.
The humor left him slowly, not vanishing, just making room for something steadier.
No command. No game. No correction.
An offer.
He put his hand in mine.
We went down the hall without turning on more lights. In my bedroom, everything felt familiar and altered. The bed. The closet. The quiet. The fact that he was here not for stolen minutes, not with adrenaline pushing us, but because we had chosen the room and the night and each other with open eyes.
Jace noticed it too. His gaze flicked once around the space before settling back on me.
I stopped near the bed. “We don’t have to do anything.”
“I know.” His answer came quickly, but it wasn’t careless. “I want to be here with you.”
I nodded.
Then I kissed him.
Slowly at first. His hands slid to my waist, fingers pressing into my shirt like he was grounding himself in the shape of me. I held his face and felt his breath leave him. The kiss broke twice because he smiled. Then because I did. There was no panic in it, no clock in the back of my head, no threat of footsteps outside a locked door.
That almost made it harder to bear.
He tugged at the hem of my shirt. “Take this off.”
I did.
He got rid of his own, dropping it somewhere near his feet. When our bare chests met, his breath caught against my mouth. I felt every inch of him respond, the tense line of him easing and tightening at the same time.
My hands moved down his back, over warm skin and hard muscle, slower than I’d ever let myself touch him before. No rush. No hiding the way I wanted to learn him when I already knew the sounds he made, the places that made him lose track of language, the way he fought stillness until pleasure gave him a reason to stay.
I kissed his jaw, his throat, the place beneath his ear that made his fingers dig into my shoulders.
He let out a quiet laugh.
