Page 113 of The Tower

The weight of that trust was both exhilarating and terrifying.

A soft sound from the bedroom drew his attention back to the present. Sasha was stirring, reaching across the empty sheets. Her eyes finding him in the shadows.

“Grimm?” Her voice was thick with sleep, vulnerable in a way that made his chest tighten. “Are you okay?”

He moved back to the bed, setting his glass on the nightstand. “Just thinking,” he said, sliding in beside her.

She shifted closer, her body warm and soft against his. “About tomorrow?”

“Among other things.”

She propped herself up on one elbow, studying his face in the dim light. The glorious hair he loved so much fell like a curtain of light around her shoulders. He lifted a strand, then twined it idly through his fingers, relishing the soft, feathery feel of it.

“You’re worried.”

“Cautious,” he corrected. “There’s a lot at stake.”

She nodded, her eyes never leaving his. “For both of us.”

There was a question in her voice, one he wasn’t ready to answer. Not yet. Not when he was still grappling with his own conflicted feelings.

Instead, he reached for her, pulling her against him. She came willingly, settling into his arms as if she belonged there. As if this wasn’t just an arrangement, a transaction between enemies who had found a common cause.

As if they were something more.

“Sleep,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

She nodded against his chest, her breathing gradually slowing as she drifted back into slumber. He lay awake, holding her, his mind racing with all the ways this could end.

With victory. With defeat.

With her walking away. With her staying.

He wasn’t sure which possibility terrified him more.

Gently, he rubbed his thumb across her wrist. The silk had been his idea, a test of how far she’d trust him. He hadn’t expected her to surrender so completely, to give herself over to him with such absolute faith. He certainly hadn’t expected how much that surrender would affect him.

He needed her. Not just her body, not just her value as leverage against her father. Her.

The realization was unwelcome. Dangerous. A complication he couldn’t afford, not with so much at stake.

And yet, as she shifted in her sleep, murmuring his name and pressing closer, he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. Couldn’t deny the warmth that spread through him at the sound of his name on her lips, even in sleep.

He was in trouble. Deep, inescapable trouble.

Because for the first time in his life, he wanted something more than revenge. He wanted her. Not just for now, not just as a weapon against her father, but for … longer. Perhaps for always.

The thought should have sent him running. Instead, he found himself holding her tighter, as if he could physically keep her from slipping away.

Tomorrow would bring its own challenges. The hearing. Victor Reed. Desmond Bane. The battle they’d both been preparing for.

But tonight, she was his. Completely, unreservedly his. And for now, that was enough.

Or so he told himself as sleep finally claimed him, his arms still wrapped protectively around the woman who had somehow become essential to his existence.

The woman who might very well be his undoing.

Thirty-Five