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She crawled her way down his body, as if she was worshiping him. As if he was a man worth that kind of attention.

He knew he wasn’t, but the way she crawled all over him, her mouth and the brush of her hair, and her clever little fingers working magic everywhere she went, almost convinced him otherwise.

And when he finally rolled her beneath him, and found his way inside her, they both stared at each other. Because it was...

Noah didn’t have words for what it was.

Some kind of homecoming, maybe. Some kind of necessity he hadn’t understood he’d been doing without for the whole of his life.

Later, they stood in her shower and washed each other. Raemy got her hands in his hair, shampooing it, and washing it clean, her fingers kneading into his scalp until he thought he might actually start purring like some kind of cat.

And he knew he needed to leave. He needed to set boundaries, parameters. There were rules he followed and he was breaking every one of them with her.

But she was naked. And she was so pretty. Her skin was rosy from the hot water and she hadn’t bothered to put anything on after she dried off. She pulled a bar of chocolate out of one of her bags and opened up the foil with great precision, then offered him a square as if it was gold.

“Do you even eat chocolate?” she asked.

“Of course I eat chocolate.”

“Just, you know.” She waved her hand at him, taking in his torso, which was bare above the towel that he had wrapped around his hips. “That looks like a lot of work, what with all the early-morning beach running and all that masochism. I figured you were all about the macros and the gains.”

Noah did not dignify that with an answer. He liked to stay in shape. Yes, he had been known to consider a macro as part of a nutritionally sound eating system that he did not intend to defend to anyone. Especially not Raemy.

Raemy, the naked woman who was sitting there in the middle of the bed they’d torn apart, cross-legged. Her hair was wet and already waving all around her, and the sight of those wet curls over her breasts just about did him in.

Fuck my macros, he thought, with something like reverence.

He took the chocolate. He crawled onto the bed and sprawled out beside her. And when she leaned down to kiss him, after they’d eaten the whole bar, she tasted like sugar.

Like chocolate, and like his.

And somehow, he didn’t leave until morning.

He skipped his run. He skipped his weights. When he got back to the house, he felt like he’d been hit by a truck—a Raemy-shaped, head trip sort of truck, because actually he felt physically fantastic—and that was before he walked in to find Tank and Crusoe in the kitchen.

Drinking their coffee and clearly waiting there like disappointed parents facing a kid who’d missed curfew.

Or anyway, that was what Noah imagined this must be like, because he had never missed a curfew in his life.

“Creeping in at this hour of the morning,” Tank said, and actually tutted. Like a big, scarred mama bear.

It was one of the most disconcerting things Noah had ever seen in his life.

“We waited up all night,” Crusoe said, shaking his head. “What could you have been up to all this time?”

“You can both go fuck yourselves,” Noah retorted.

He grabbed a mug, filled it with coffee, and took it up to his room with him. He drank it black, because that was the color that his soul should have been—though today he was pretty sure it was shot through with entirely too much sunshine and rainbows and those smiles Raemy gave him when he was deep inside of her.

Noah took another shower, but all he could think about was the one he’d taken with her and⁠—

He couldn’t believe it, but there he was, taking care of himself in the shower at 6:15 a.m. Like the teenage boy two grizzled combat veterans had just accused him of being.

Noah should probably feel a little less like smiling for no reason, he thought as he handled the diner’s usual morning rush. It was going to put the regulars off their food and terrify all the men who didn’t think he knew how.

But it was okay, he told himself. She was going to leave.

Maybe she was already on her way out of town. Maybe this was all part and parcel of whatever exorcism she was performing here. Maybe this was just something she needed to do, no harm, no foul, and no big deal.