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“Okay?” he whispered.

I nodded, breath shallow, adjusting to the stretch and the fullness. When the initial tightness eased, I dug my nails into his back and rolled my hips up to meet him.

That was all the permission he needed. He began to move—long, deep strokes that filled me completely. I met every one, thrusting up to take him deeper, nails scoring his shoulders as pleasure coiled tighter and tighter. He felt it building in me: the way my inner muscles fluttered around him, the way my breath fractured, the way my body reached hard for the release.

“I’ve got you,” he said against my mouth, and drove into me with purpose.

The climax hit in sharp, pulsing waves. I cried out and clung to him, shaking as it rolled through me again and again. He followed a few strokes later, burying his face in my neck as his own release pulsed deep inside the condom, his arms locked tight around me while the last tremors faded.

Afterward, he eased out carefully, disposed of the condom, and pulled the blanket over both of us. Snow clung to the window, and Pearl’s compressor hummed through the floor. I had heard it every night since I moved above the shop, but never with someone warm beside me.

I lay with my cheek on Griffin’s chest and listened to his breathing slow. His hand moved in lazy circles over my back. I had spent eight years making sure I could survive being left. For once, I let him hold me without planning for the empty side of the bed.

“Hi,” he murmured into my hair.

“You’re late.”

“I’ve been trying to get here since you crossed Main Street with an ornament you were considering throwing at my head.”

“I hadn’t decided.”

“You introduced yourself, and I was in trouble.”

I lifted my head. “You frowned at me.”

“I was trying not to stare.”

“At the ornament?”

“At you.”

I put my cheek back on his chest before he could see how well that worked. “That would have been useful information.”

“I was hoping I’d get another chance.”

“You did.”

His arm tightened around me. “I don’t want this to end in the morning.”

I lifted my head again. “That sounds dangerously close to a future.”

“I was hoping for one.”

“Morning first.”

He kissed my forehead. “Then morning.”

Sometime after three, he said, “If they pull the permits tomorrow, receivership is a matter of weeks. Not months.”

“I know.”

“And if they don’t, I still can’t borrow a dollar against six buildings, and the option matures on the fifteenth of January whether anybody in this town likes it or not.”

“I know that too.” I found his hand in the dark. “Do you want me to tell you it’s going to be fine?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Good. It might not be.”