Page 120 of Silent Shadows

I don’t.

The second I relax, he does too.

His palm spreads across my back.

Warm. Steady. Quiet.

The laughter fades.

And suddenly I am very aware of him again.

Not in the hungry, desperate way from the woods. Not that wild spark that took over before either of us could stop it.

This is intimate.

This is his breathing under my ear. The clean smell of his bed. Pine and sweat and soap and something that is just Miles, warm and sleep-soft and unfairly addictive. This is the way his thumb moves once along my spine and then stops when it brushes the scratches that now decorate my back from our… hike.

I should say something sharp. Something funny. Something that gives me distance.

Instead, I touch the side of his face.

His expression changes so fast it steals the breath out of me.

Like no one touches him tenderly very often.

Like he was prepared for teasing, for banter, for heat. Not this. Definitely not this.

I trace my thumb along the hinge of his jaw, feeling the faint rasp of stubble there. “You’re going to make this complicated, aren’t you?”

His hand tightens slightly on my back.

“I think,” he says carefully, “it might already be complicated.”

My heart presses hard against my ribs.

Outside, the forest shifts around us.

Inside, the RV hums.

I lower my head back to his chest before he can see too much on my face.

“Go to sleep, Adler.”

His lips touch the top of my hair.

So lightly I could pretend it didn’t happen.

“Goodnight, Bennett.”

I sleep like shit. Not because of the bunk, although these bunks are an actual crime against adult spinal health. But because every time I drift off, I remember where I am.

Who I’m with. What we did. What we said.

What we are absolutely not allowed to become. At least not any time soon.

By five-thirty, gray light is leaking around the edges of the curtain, and Miles is already awake beneath me.

I know because his hand has stopped moving in those tiny unconscious patterns along my back.