Emma:
Morning comes softly.
Not with an alarm or a jolt, but with warmth and breath and the slow awareness of weight pressed behind me. I surface from sleep in pieces — the steady rise and fall of a chest at my back, the solid arm locked around my waist, the heat that has soaked so deeply into my skin it feels permanent.
For one hazy second, I think I dreamed him.
Then Kaden shifts.
His chin brushes the top of my head, his arm tightening instinctively, like he’s anchoring me even in sleep. My body reacts before my brain catches up — a small inhale, a barely-there lean back into him — and that’s when it all crashes in.
Last night.
The heat. The way he looked at me. The way he held me afterward like he’d break the world before letting go.
My chest tightens.
I don’t move right away.
