“Did I hurt you?”
Heat rushed into my face so fast it burned.
Of all the things he could have asked.
I liked rough sex. I wasn’t a stranger to it. But it didn’t belong in morning conversation—definitely not at seven a.m., definitely not while I lay curled against the person responsible, definitely not while his hand rested warm and steady on my stomach and his voice sounded like that.
I tried to duck my head, suddenly fascinated by the edge of the blanket.
“Hey,” he said gently.
His fingers found my chin. Tilted it back up. Not forceful.
“Don’t hide from me.”
I hesitated. Then I met his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I said.
He didn’t look away. Didn’t nod and move on. Just held my gaze, searching—reading me the way he always seemed to, looking past the words to whatever sat underneath them.
Then he leaned in.
The kiss caught me completely off guard.
Soft, so soft I didn’t know what to do with it at first. No urgency, no heat, no edge. A slow, careful press of his mouth against mine, unhurried and deliberate, like he offered me all the time in the world to pull away.
I didn’t.
Something in my chest pulled tight.
I’ve had plenty of rough mornings. Plenty of waking up next to someone and immediately calculating the fastest exit. Plenty of hands that grabbed and mouths that took and silences that meant nothing.
But never this.
Never someone who stayed. Never someone who held me in early light as if it belonged to the natural order of things. Like no other place in the world made sense.
Which, honestly, landed kind of pathetically for thirty.
He kissed me again. Deeper this time, still gentle but warmer, his hand moved across my stomach, tracing absent circles through the thin fabric of my shirt. His fingers drifted higher, grazing the underside of my breast with a touch so light it barely qualified as contact.
A shiver rolled through me, nothing like the night before—not that desperate, electric, world-collapsing intensity. This was slower, something that settled into my bones instead of burning through them, and worse, because it carried safetyin it.
I pulled back slightly, studied his face, the sleep-soft edges, the way he looked at me—steady, present,there—like I existed as the only thing in the room worth attention.
“You’re being weird again,” I murmured.
Callan let out a quiet laugh. His forehead dropped against mine, noses almost touching.
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”
His breathing changed against my throat—deeper, slower, like he drew me in with every inhale. His lips parted over my pulse point, not kissing yet, just hovering. The heat from his open mouth. The tremor of restraint in his exhale.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he murmured, the words vibrating through my skin.
It wasn’t too much.
His hand—the one still laced with mine—squeezed once before he let go and trailed his fingers down the inside of my arm, lower until his palm settled flat over my heart. He pressed there, gentle but deliberate, reading what pulsed underneath.