“He’s all talk. He cried at Mika’s birthday party. He’s a marshmallow in a suit.”
“He drafted a cease and desist.”
“That’s his love language.” She was quiet for a moment. Her finger stilled on his chest. “Zeir.”
“Hmm.”
“I need to tell you something and I need you to not make it weird.”
He waited.
“I’ve been scared of this. Not the sex. Not the bite.” She paused. “The after. The part where you’re lying next to someone and there’s nothing left to perform. No banter. No armor. Just... you. In the dark. With someone who can see everything.”
Her voice was steady but her fingers trembled against him.
“I haven’t let anyone see everything since Harlan. And he took what he saw and used it. He watched me create and he stole the creation and he made me think I was too weird and too dark and too much for anyone to want the real version.”
She exhaled. Shaky.
“And you’re lying here looking at me like I’m the real version and that’s what you wanted. And I don’t know what to do withthat except tell you it terrifies me and also it’s the reason I’m not leaving.”
He pulled her closer. Her face pressed into the hollow of his throat. His palm spread wide between her shoulder blades—wide, warm, covering as much of her as he could reach.
“I drew in a locked drawer for eight years.” His voice was quiet. “I hid the best part of myself because I was told it made me less. Less alpha. Less capable. Less worthy of the position I’d inherited.” His thumb traced her spine. “You walked into my office with ink under your fingernails and told me my published work lacked depth. And I thought: she sees it. The thing I’d been hiding. She found the absence without even knowing the drawer existed.”
She made a sound against his throat. Small. Wet.
“You’re not too much. You’re not too dark. You’re not too weird.” He kissed the top of her head. “You’re the only person who looked at what I hide and called it insufficient.”
She laughed. A wet, messy, hiccupping laugh that shook her whole body and vibrated against his chest. She pulled back. Her eyes were red. Her nose was running. She was smiling.
“That’s the most romantic thing and I have snot on my face.”
“I’ll get you a tissue.”
“Don’t you dare move.” She wiped her nose on his chest. “That’s also yours now.”
“Noted.”
She kissed him. Slow. Salt from her tears and sweetness from her lips and the quiet tenderness of two people who had spent years behind walls discovering what it felt like without them. When she pulled back, she pressed her forehead to his.
“Question.”
“Hmm?”
“Does the location awareness work through walls? Because Keanu is going to have questions and I’d rather you not show up at his office with your wolfy GPS activated.”
“I make no promises.”
“Zeir.”
“Let him try.”
“You two are going to be a nightmare.”
“We’ll be fine.”
She settled deeper against him. Her leg thrown over his. Her arm across his chest. The mark on her shoulder dark on her skin. He pulled the sheet over them both—a gesture that was mundane and domestic and exactly the kind of ordinary he’d never expected to have.