I told myself I would regret this in the morning, but I closed my eyes anyway.
If this was a mistake, it was a very comfortable one.
I woke up already alert,my heart thudding like it had missed a memo. There was no slow drift into consciousness, no pleasant fog, just a hard, immediate sense that something was off. Then I remembered exactly where I was. Dark room. Liam’s arm heavy across my back. My body still warm and loose and deeply uninterested in panicking.
Traitorous.
I shifted carefully, testing. My ankle answered with a sharp reminder that it had not signed up for any of this. I bit my lip.
Okay. Fine. Crisis acknowledged.
I could not spend the night with this man. At least not thewholenight.
I turned just enough to wake him. “Hey.”
He came awake fast, already focused. He looked at me, then at the clock, then back at me. He didn’t speak right away. That alone was irritating.
“I need to go back to my suite,” I said. “Can you walk with me?”
He nodded and pushed himself upright, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He glanced at my ankle. “Can you walk?”
“Yes,” I said. “Mostly.”
He pulled on jeans, then got a shirt out of a drawer and pulled it over his head.
I sat up, regretting it immediately. The room tilted. My ankle sent another complaint, and I swore under my breath.
“Still want to walk?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said again.
He didn’t argue.
When I stood, my ankle buckled, and I grabbed the bed to steady myself. “Okay. So. It’s worse.”
He moved in without touching me, but he was so close, he might as well have been touching me. “We’ll go slow.”
“I hate that phrase,” I said.
He snorted. “I believe you.”
I froze. I looked down, around the room, back at him.
“My clothes,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“They’re by the hot tub,” I said. “I forgot them.”
“We’ll get them on the way.”
He tossed me a plain gray T-shirt. It was soft from too many washes, the collar a little stretched out. It smelled clean and familiar in a way I didn’t expect.
We stepped out into the hall, the quiet closing in around us. With the low lights and the hush in the air, the place felt asleep.
“So. Great ambiance. Very mysterious,” I said, trying to force some levity.
He glanced at me. “You’re limping.”
