"Like this."
I closed the short distance between us and kissed him.
For a heartbeat, he froze. Then his arms came around me, and he kissed me back with an intensity that made my knees weak. This wasn't the desperate, champagne-fueled passion of last night. This was deliberate.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
"It meant something," he said, his voice rough. "Last night meant everything. I'm terrified of screwing this up, of being the guy you regret, but yeah, Nadia. It meant something."
"Good," I said. "Because I'm about to do something stupid."
"How stupid?"
"Stay-over stupid."
His eyes searched mine. "You sure?"
"No," I admitted. "But I won't let that stop me."
Daemon grinned, and it transformed him, made him look younger somehow. "Then welcome back to the Ceramic Cat Museum."
SEVEN
DAEMON
She was still there when I woke up.
I hadn't expected that. Nadia Becker had made an art form out of retreating. She'd tried leaving before sunrise the first time, and I'd spent the whole day wondering if Sofia's dinner invitation would be the last I saw of her.
But she was here. Face slack with sleep, hair a wreck, one hand curled against my ribs like she'd grabbed hold of something in the night and hadn't let go.
I stilled, watching her breathe, trying not to think too hard about the fact that I'd never done this before. Not the sleeping with someone part. The watching-them-sleep-and-not-wanting-to-wreck-it part.
Overhead, Sofia's clock struck six, and I heard her moving around. The kettle, the indistinct murmur of the radio she kept on all morning. Normal. Unremarkable.
Nothing about this was normal.
I was still working that out when Nadia's eyes opened.
She went still for a second, the way people do when they're placing themselves, remembering. Then she saw me looking, and something caught in her expression.
"Good morning," I said.
She pressed her lips together, not quite committing to it. "You were watching me sleep."
"Guilty."
"That's unsettling."
"Probably." I didn't look away. "Are you going to run again?"
Her expression sharpened into something more specific. "I didn't run."
"You called it a mistake."
"I was panicking."
"So that's a no. On the running."
