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His hand stayed exactly where it had landed, warm and heavy against her hip, unmoving even as everything else between them built toward the moment neither of them had any interest in slowing down.

Warmth built low and urgent everywhere they touched, sharper this time, more total, a thing that had been waiting for this permission to finally, fully arrive. When she broke, it took him with her, both of them arriving at the same place at the same moment for the first time since any of this started — and at the exact instant she shattered around him, warmth bloomed under his palm where it still gripped her hip. No teeth. No bite. Only heat gathering and settling into skin like a brand finding its shape, permanent, deliberate, entirely his own doing.

She said his name. He said hers back, low, like a vow neither of them needed witnesses for.

He didn’t move away afterward, didn’t do the thing men sometimes did where proximity became optional the second it stopped being necessary. He stayed where he was, weight braced on his forearms, forehead resting against hers, breathing her in like a man committing this exact silence to memory alongside everything else.

She glanced down between them, curious about the lingering warmth still radiating from her hip, and went completely still.

The mark sat there in the shape of his hand — dark gold, warm to the touch, unmistakably permanent. She traced the edge of it with one finger, testing whether it might fade the way a flush fades, and it didn’t.

“That’s not coming off, is it?”

“No.” He didn’t so much as blink. “It isn’t meant to.”

“I’m going to have a dragon-shaped handprint on my hip for the rest of my life.”

“You’re going to have my handprint on your hip for the rest of your life. I’d encourage you to think of it as a serious upgrade from a tan line.”

“That’s an insane way to phrase that, and yet I find I don’t actually mind it.”

“Stay there.”

“I have no plans to move.”

“Good.” She traced the line of his shoulder, in no hurry, learning the shape of him the way he’d spent weeks cataloging her. “I’ve decided I like you a great deal better when you’re not simultaneously running an empire.”

“Noted. I’ll schedule fewer empires going forward.”

“Excellent policy. I fully endorse it, effective immediately.”

“I thought you’d approve.” He shifted his weight, tucking her more fully against him without breaking the contact between them, unwilling, apparently, to let even the necessary logistics of resettling put distance back between them so soon after finally closing it.

Afterward, she lay against his chest, quiet the way someone gets quiet after setting a heavy weight down and only now noticing how tired her arms had gotten carrying it.

“So.” Her fingers drifted along his collarbone, easy. “Does this mean you’re going to stop watching me without telling me?”

“No.”

“That’s not the answer I was hoping for, if I’m honest.”

“I know. I have no intention of changing it regardless, tonight or on any future occasion where the topic resurfaces.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, in no rush, his hand still resting where the mark had settled like he intended to keep a permanent claim on the spot. “You get the version of me that watches. You’ve had that version since the photograph. I don’t intend to trade it in for a different one.”

“Turns out I’m full of surprises too, including an apparently bottomless patience for being watched.”

“Fortunate, given the arrangement.”

“I’ve decided to allow it. You should feel appropriately honored, given how rarely I allow anything.”

“I do. Immensely so.” He caught her hand and pressed his mouth to her knuckles, slow. “I intend to spend a great many years earning the privilege properly, starting tomorrow. Tonight, I’m simply grateful you’re still speaking to me after watching me redecorate a building with my bare hands. Sorry, claws.”

She laughed — the first laugh in this penthouse tonight that didn’t have anything else sitting underneath it. His hand slid into her hair, easy, and his dragon, for the first time she could ever remember him mentioning it, was completely still.

“Is it always like that? After.”

“No,” he said plainly, no performance. “It’s never once been like that. I didn’t have a comparison worth making until approximately eleven minutes ago.”

“That’s either wildly romantic or a very efficient way of telling me you have no basis for comparison whatsoever.”