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“You’re staring.”

“I’m memorizing.” He caught her wrist before she could pull her hand back, pressed a kiss to the inside of it, taking his time. “I intend to remember every part of this.”

“That’s an alarming amount of pressure to put on one evening.”

“Then I’ll need a great many more evenings to get it right.”

She laughed, short and startled, and he used the moment to peel her shirt over her head, patience finally running out the way it had been threatening to for two weeks. The rest of what she’d meant to say disappeared somewhere against his mouth, and she stopped narrating for the first time since he’d met her — no commentary, no deflection, nothing standing between them and exactly what they both wanted.

His hands mapped her like a structure he intended to memorize completely, thorough in a way that had nothing patient left in it by the time he reached her hips. She arched into every place his palms landed, fingers dragging down his spine hard enough to leave a mark, and the sound that pulled out of her when he finally settled his weight over her fully was low and unguarded, the kind of sound she’d have deflected with a joke an hour ago and had no interest in deflecting now.

Heat gathered low and insistent everywhere they touched, a pull that sharpened instead of easing the longer it went unanswered, and neither of them fought it. His control, the discipline of centuries, had exactly one gap in it, and she’d found it the day her photograph landed on his desk. He stopped pretending otherwise the moment her hands found the last of what stood between them.

“Norden.” His name in her mouth landed like a livewire straight to his spine, rougher than he’d ever heard her say anything.

“I know.” He found her eyes and held them, wanting her looking at him for this, wanting no part of it staged or hidden behind her usual armor. “Look at me.”

She did. She held his gaze through the first slow slide of him into her, breath catching hard, nails biting into his shoulders, and he watched every wall she’d spent a decade building come down in real time, watched her stop being the woman who managed everyone’s expectations of her and become, simply, wholly his for exactly as long as this lasted.

He didn’t move at first, letting her adjust, letting the moment stretch until she was the one who moved beneath him, impatient, done waiting. He took the invitation. The rhythm he set was deliberate and thorough, nothing rushed about it despite two weeks of wanting this exact thing, and she met every measure of it, gasping his name against his throat, her whole body answering a question he hadn’t needed to ask out loud.

“More.” It came out of her low and certain, no hesitation left in it anywhere. “I’m not made of glass, Norden. Stop being careful.”

He was careful for exactly one more second, purely out of principle, and then he wasn’t careful at all.

What followed had none of the argument’s edges left in it — only heat and motion and the devastating clarity of two people who’d spent weeks circling this and had nothing left standing between them and it. She said his name twice more before either of them slowed down, and he answered each one like it mattered, because it did, because nothing about this read as casual no matter how badly either of them might have once tried to convince themselves it could be.

When she finally broke first, back arching, her whole body drawing tight around him, the sound she made was unguarded and real and without performance, and he followed her within seconds, her name the only word that made it out of him before everything narrowed down to her.

Neither version of the argument survived contact with the other for very long.

For the first time in eight hundred years, his dragon went completely, blissfully still.

His phone lit up on the nightstand somewhere in the aftermath, screen glowing bright enough to be obnoxious about it. He ignored it. It lit up again.

Victor says you left the building with her and haven’t been seen since. I’m choosing to interpret this as excellent news. Do NOT make me come over there to confirm. I will absolutely do it. I have no shame left, you took the last of it centuries ago.

He turned the phone facedown without dignifying it with a response. Romily, propped on one elbow beside him, had clearly read every word of it upside down.

“Was that Darius.”

“It was.”

“Is he going to be insufferable about this.”

“Immeasurably. For centuries, at minimum.”

“Good.” She flopped back against the pillow, unbothered. “Someone should be having fun about this besides the two men who almost put me in a van.”

Her stomach picked the worst possible moment to remind them both that neither of them had eaten since noon.

She went still against him, mortified, and he caught the laugh building in her chest before it made it out of her mouth — the first real, unguarded laugh he’d heard from her all night, at her own expense.

“That’s not romantic.”

“It’s honest. I’ll take honest.” He pulled on enough clothing for basic decency, unfazed by the interruption. “Come on. I’ll feed you before you start gnawing on the furniture.”

“I wasn’t going to gnaw on the furniture.”