Page 117 of Levi

Dante was so careful with me. That’s the word I keep coming back around to. Nobody ever told me it was allowed to be that way. That it could mean more than sex. And that’s when the good feeling in my chest rolls over and goes bad, because it’s almost morning. And if there’s one thing I know about Dante’s mornings, they don’t start late.

There’s no clock in my sightline and I don’t need one. I can feel the hour, after a life spent dreading specific ones, and it’s close to the one I’m scared of.

He gets up at five-thirty every day of his life, no alarm, no reason, just up, running full-speed. I learned it the first week. It’s near that now, and any minute the body at my back is going to wake.

And then it’s all over.

I go still. It’s the oldest thing I know how to do, playing dead, faking a sleep I’m not in. And it’s hard work to fake it. My heart’s racing fast enough I’d swear he can feel it through my back.

Every part of me wants up, wants my clothes, wants to be a problem that solves itself before he has to open his eyes and deal with it. But if I get up, it means he wakes. I can’t be looking at him when his eyes open and he remembers what he did last night with the trouble he was supposed to stay away from.

Because I know how this will go with Dante. He’s going to wake up and be polite. Not cruel. He would never be that. That was never the fear. He’ll wake up, be calm and handle me. Won’t meet my eyes. Might even politely make me one of those little cups of coffee. He’ll say he needs to be at a real estate event somewhere before he drives me back to the beach house with the radio up so neither of us has to talk, drops me at the gate, and that’ll be the end.

Under the bracing, down where I don’t let things up into the light, there’s the one thought I can’t let out. I want him to wake up and not take it back. I want him to keep me. Even if it’s only for a little bit longer.

But I don’t let myself finish that thought, because wanting it out loud is the surest road to losing it. I lie in the warmth of an arm that still hasn’t moved, and I refuse, with everything I’ve got left, to want the thing I want the most in this world.

His breath changes against my neck.

It’s small. A hitch, a deepening of the breath, the body at my back coming up out of its own sleep. His hand twitches where it’s gone open on my ribs. Five-thirty, near enough. On time. Just like I knew he’d be. The reckoning had a clock on it the whole night, and the clock’s run out.

Fuck.

What I wouldn’t give for this to last a little longer. I keep my eyes shut. I keep the breathing false and even. I lie dead still, my back to him, face to the window, the most undefended a body ever gets, braced to the soles of my feet for the first cool, polite word. The first inch of his arm pulling back. His kind voice that’s going to fold last night up neat.

I wait for the morning to take it all back.

Chapter 46: Dante

I’m awake at five-thirty. It’s already hot, the air thick even in here, and there’s a man asleep against my chest.

Except Levi isn’t asleep.

I know it immediately. A sleeping man is heavy and his breath goes where it wants. His breath is being kept steady. His shoulders are stiff. He has his back to me and his face to the window. He is wide awake and working hard at pretending not to be. From the tension in his back, he’s been at it a while.

He’s waiting on me to wake up. The easy version is to let him keep the cover. I shift, I yawn, I give him room to fake waking up, and we both skip whatever this is.

I don’t take the easy version. I don’t want him getting the wrong idea. Instead, I pull him back into me. My arm doesn’t go anywhere. I bring it tighter, get him in against my chest, close where I want him, and put my mouth to the back of his neck where it’s warm.

“Morning, cowboy. Can you stay for breakfast?”

His breathing stops all at once. I don’t know what button I hit. I asked him about making eggs. He’s gone rigid in my arm. I nuzzle him behind his ear, and feel the shiver that goes through him.

“Is that a yes?” I murmur into his ear. “Or do you need more persuasion?”

“Yeah.” It comes out rough. “Yeah. I can stay.”

“Are you hungry? I want to cook for you.”

“You bet. I’d like that.”

He reaches up tentatively and lightly touches my arm across his chest. He’s testing me to see if it’s still allowed this morning in the daylight.

“What I told you last night still stands,” I say. “You can touch me however you want here or in public. Understood?”

“Yeah.” His hand strokes my arm. “And you can do that too.”

“What?”