The world outside the high windows of the manor was blue and soft, the first fingers of dawn beginning to brush against the heavy velvet curtains. Inside the room, the air was warm, smelling of cedarwood, salt, and the sweet, lingering scent of the clove-scented candles that had burned down to nothing on the nightstand.
I lay tucked into the curve of Alan’s body, my head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. His skin was hot against mine, a living anchor after the storm of the last forty-eight hours. The silence between us wasn't the jagged, suffocating pressure of the study or the icy void of the office; it was a heavy, saturated peace.
We had just finished a reconciliation that felt less like a punishment and more like a surrender. It hadn't been the brutal, territorial claim of two n
