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A soft laugh escapes me. "Just a shower?"

He glances down at me, and the look in his eyes answers for him.

At the top of the stairs, he walks past my door without slowing. He tilts his head toward me as he turns down the hall, exactly the way Wells does, and the secret I've kept for seven years presses hard against my ribs.

I close my eyes and hold on to him tighter as he leads me into his room and straight into the shower. The water runs hot over both of us. His hands move over my skin slowly, washing away the sweat and the fire, and he kisses my shoulder, my neck, my mouth, until the steam fogs every inch of glass.

Afterward, he wraps me in a towel and dries my hair with more care than I expect from him.

Minutes later, we are underneath the blankets. The bed is cool beneath me. Ross switches off the lamp and settles in behind me, his arm sliding around my waist and drawing me back against his chest. The house is silent. Moonlight falls across the floor.

His lips brush the back of my neck.

"Stay with me tonight, Blaire," he whispers into the dark.

"Don't leave."

I don't answer. But I don't move either. His heartbeat slows against my back, his breathing deepens, and somewhere in the quiet, with his arm heavy around me, I let myself fall asleep.

Chapter Thirty-One

Blaire

Iwake slowly to pale morning light filtering through the curtains and the unfamiliar weight of Ross’s arm around my waist.

For a few seconds, I don’t move. His chest is warm against my back, his breathing even, and the room is quiet enough that I can hear the faint crackle of the fire that must have been tended sometime earlier. There is no panic waiting for me this time, no immediate urge to dress and put distance between us before either of us can acknowledge what happened.

That realization unsettles me more than regret would have.

Ross shifts behind me and presses a kiss against my shoulder.

“Morning,” he says, his voice rough with sleep.

“Morning,” I reply.

His arm tightens briefly before he releases me, and when I turn onto my back, he is already watching me.

“You stayed in my bed the whole night,” Ross says.

There is no triumph in the words, which makes them easier to hear.

“I did.”

He studies my face for another moment before reaching over to brush a strand of hair away from my cheek.

“I’m glad.”

I am too, but I don’t say it.

We eventually make our way downstairs after showering and dressing. Breakfast has been left ready in the kitchen rather than arranged formally in the dining room, and Ross pours coffee while I take a seat at the long wooden table near the windows.

The ease of it catches me off guard.

There is something almost absurdly normal about watching Ross Kensington stand at a kitchen counter in a dark sweater, pouring coffee and cutting into a loaf of bread while sunlight spills across the room.

He brings my cup over without asking how I take it.

Of course he remembers.