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But she, by God, would make it work.

When she got into the bed, she could still feel the heat of his body, like he’d left a brand behind when he’d moved. It made something inside of her seem to tremble, deeply. Dangerously.

He rolled off the bed and went into the bathroom, and Kitty lay there on her side of her bed with the sheet pulled up to her neck like it was some kind of armor. She stared up at the eaves above her, trying to get her heart and breath under control.

But they weren’t paying any attention to her. They were doing what they liked.

When Finn came out of the bathroom, he moved over toward the closet and opened it up. Kitty saw immediately that he had moved some of her things to one side so he could fit his own things in there. Just as she’d invited him to do.

But the intimacy of that made her whole body seem to… seize. Because it struck her as unbearably intimate to have their clothes in one closet. Touching.

Then he started stripping off the T-shirt and jeans that he was wearing, and she realized that there were far more intimate things. And she wasn’t sure what she was going to do, when she felt something like a sob or a scream or something in the back of her throat, as he stripped down into nothing more than a pair of boxer briefs and then ambled straight back to bed.

Kitty thought maybe she bit her tongue in half. She felt as if he’d set her on fire, and Finn didn’t even look at her. He crawled into the bed, drew the light sheet that was all she ever needed in summer over him—but not up to his neck—and then smiled at her.

From about one foot away.

“Good night, Kitty,” he said, in the most mild voice imaginable.

And then, even more shocking, he turned on his side facing away from her and apparently… went immediately to sleep.

While Kitty lay there, wide-awake, on alert, and electrified, for hours.

Eventually, she fell asleep. But her dreams were a mess of jangled flames, delirious heat, and whispers in her ear she was afraid to listen to too closely. She woke up to find sunlight streaming into the attic bedroom and she felt as if it was beaming straight through her, burning her alive.

It took her long moments to realize that was because she seemed to be lying stretched out on top of a very hot stove.

And it took her longer than that to understand that her entire body was tangled up tight with his.

With Finn Patrick.

Her husband.

She couldn’t even really tell where her body was versus his, and had to really focus to work it out. His thigh was between hers. She had one hand tucked between them and her face was nestled into his chest while he lay on his side and held her close.

Kitty could feel his palm on the small of her back, and gradually concluded that had to be because her shirt had risen up as she slept.

This was all a disaster, of course. But it felt…

It felt so good that Kitty didn’t understand how she was supposed to go on with her life, not knowing that anything could feel this delicious. Because she wasn’t sure that anything should.

And then, when she opened up her eyes, he was right there.

Finn was maybe an inch away from her, right there on the pillow. The pillow they were apparently sharing, somehow. His face was right there, and she’d been dreaming about him all night, and there was no dream that could possibly prepare her for Finn Patrick this close.

Calling him beautiful was an understatement. Particularly with all this light all over him, bathing him, calling attention to the blue of his eyes and the serious set to his mouth.

He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t laughing. Finn was looking at her with an intensity that seemed to call everything inside of her to attention.

Kitty thought that what she needed to do was roll away from him. Put distance between them at once and establish some rules. Maybe throw some pillows down the center of the bed, to make sure this never happened again. She thought that she needed to make some kind of speech to that effect, to make it clear what was happening, and more importantly, what wasn’t happening.

She thought that really, she should have considered the one bed thing earlier. It was obvious that she’d made a terrible mistake and now it would be difficult to untangle all of this. Starting with their bodies.

Instead, what she did was quiver, down deep in her belly, the way it seemed she always did when he was near.

But he was much, much, nearer now.

So Kitty… stopped thinking altogether, leaned forward, and kissed him.