Sleep did not come easily.
Holly lay awake long after the packhouse had settled into its quiet rhythm, staring at the darkened ceiling as moonlight filtered in through the narrow window. Shadows shifted with the movement of branches outside, stretching and contracting like something alive. Every creak of the old timbered structure made her heart stutter, even though she knew—logically—that she was safe here.
Safer than she had been in weeks.
And yet.
Her body refused to relax.
Her thoughts kept circling back to the same moment, the same sensation—warmth and grounding and something else she didn’t yet have a name for.
Rowan’s lips against hers.
It hadn’t been rushed. It hadn’t been desperate. There had been no hunger behind it, no claiming pressure or overwhelming heat. Just… certain
