Dawn was a thin thing, uneasy and pale, pressing at the curtains as if it weren’t sure it had the right. She woke to the feeling of someone’s fingers—warm, heavy—still threaded in the hair at the nape of her neck, and for a second the room spun in a memory of last night’s heat: the cadence of his hands, the quiet, hard rules he’d set like iron on the air, the taste of him in her mouth that still clung like copper and regret.
She blinked up at candle stubs, at curtains still drawing shadows across the floor, and realized she was not alone. He lay half-curled beside her, his chest rising slow and steady, as steady as a heartbeat she’d learned to take her time by. The bed beside her was a chaos of sheets and feather pillows, and the scent that clung to everything—smoke, sweat, the musk of a
