“I’ve got you. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
I want it. I hate that I want it.
But I’m tired and a voice in the back of my head reassures me that it’s safe enough here for me to sleep.
These linens promise me a night of uninterrupted slumber.
My eyes close.
Sleep pulls at me faster than I expect.
Somewhere between awake and gone, I feel his fingers in my hair again.
Slow. Careful. Intentional.
Like he’s memorizing me.
Like he’s learning exactly how I fit.
And in the dark, wrapped in his warmth, two things settle into me at the same time.
I do feel safe.
And I feel like if I tried to leave, he wouldn’t let me.
CHAPTER 14
IVY
Iwake up already tense.
Even tangled in luxurious sheets, there’s an immediate, creeping unease that slides through me the second my eyes open. For a brief, disorienting moment, I forget how I got here at all.
The room is too quiet.
No traffic. No voices. No distant clatter from neighbors or the street below. Just a thick, unnatural silence that presses in on me from all sides.
I realize I’m scanning for the sound of the espresso machine, which I don’t find.
Then I feel it.
Warmth.
Close.
Soren.
He’s beside me—not touching, not quite—but near enough that the heat of him settles against my skin in a way that feels deliberate. Measured.
I don’t move. I just lie thereand look at him.
He’s on his back, one arm thrown above his head, chest rising in slow, even breaths. The tattoos curling out from beneath his shirt shift with the movement—dark lines stretching and contracting, controlled even in rest, like everything else about him.
He looks untouched, like nothing ever happens to him.
Only things he allows.
The thought lingers longer than it should.