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I especially don't expect to feel. After a long time, longer than I can remember, I'm not waiting for the next assignment to start.

Juniper sits curled on the old couch with her knees tucked beneath her, a glass of wine warming untouched in her hand, firelight catching gold in her curls. She stopped talking a few minutes ago. Just watching me, the way she does when she thinks I don't notice — like she's trying to memorize something she's afraid won't last.

"You keep looking at me like I'm about to disappear," I say.

"You keep looking at me like you're surprised you're still here."

I don't have an answer for that. Not one that won't crack something open in my chest I've spent years keeping welded shut.

"I turned down the interview," I say instead.

She goes very still. "The promotion interview?"

"Helena offered to put in a word. Council's still moving forward with the position. I told her I wasn't interested."

"Brock—"

"I keep thinking about leaving," I say, the words coming out rougher than I mean them to. "About getting back in the truck and driving to the next town, the next assignment, the next file with someone else's complaints in it. And every time I think about it, all I can picture is this." I gesture at the room, at her, at the small worn-in space between us on the couch. "You. This town. A life that doesn't reset every eighteen months."

Her eyes are bright when she sets the wine glass down. "Say that again."

"I'm not leaving Maple Hollow." I reach for her hand, swallowing it easily in mine. "I'm not leaving you."

She crosses the couch before I finish the sentence, climbing into my lap with a desperation that knocks the breath out of me, her mouth finding mine like she's been waiting weeks to do exactly this — which she has, we both have, dancing around the bond every time it roars to life between us and calling it inconvenient timing.

There's no inconvenient timing left. Just her hands fisting in my shirt, her knees braced on either side of my hips, the soft sound she makes against my mouth when my palms slide up the curve of her waist.

"Tell me to stop," I say against her lips, even as my hands find the hem of her sweater, "and I will."

"Don't." She breathes the word like a prayer. "Don't stop. I've been done waiting for weeks."

That's all the permission my bear needs. The low growl that rolls out of my chest isn't entirely human, and from the way her breath hitches, she likes it exactly as much as I hoped she would. I pull the sweater over her head, and the firelight does something unfair to her skin, gilding every soft curve I've spent two months pretending not to notice.

"You're staring," she says, half laughing, half breathless.

"I've earned it." I bend to taste the curve of her throat, working lower across her collarbone while her fingers thread into my hair.

"Brock." Her voice cracks around a moan as my mouth finds her breast through thin lace.

"Strictly off the record." I unhook the clasp with more patience than I feel and groan at the sight of her, full and soft and shivering under my hands. "Council would frown on this kind of thoroughness."

She tugs my shirt over my head in answer, her palms flattening against my chest, dragging down and undoing years of discipline. When her fingers find my belt, my composure goes with it.

I stand with her still wrapped around me, carrying her the short distance to the bedroom like she weighs nothing, laying her back against the quilt with a reverence that has no connection with the urgency clawing through every nerve in my body. I strip the rest of her clothes slowly, deliberately, despite the way my hands shake with wanting to be faster, because some part of me — the part that's spent thirty-five years guarding against exactly this — needs her to feel chosen, not consumed.

"Brock." Her voice is thin, pleading, her hips already rising to meet the absence of me. "Please."

I settle between her thighs and press my mouth to the inside of her knee, working upward with deliberate, devastating slowness until she's gasping my name into the quiet of the cabin, her fingers twisted in the sheets, her whole body arching for me. When I finally taste her, the sound she makes nearly undoes every shred of control I have left.

"Brock—I need⁠—"

I increase the pace so she can’t speak, and don't stop. Can't stop, not with her thighs trembling against my shoulders and the bond between us pulling so tight, it feels like a living thing, like gravity, like the only true direction I've ever had.

I push my fingers in deeper as she breaks apart beneath me, crying out loud enough that I'm grateful for the cabin's isolation, her whole body shuddering through the aftershocks.

I give her exactly as long as it takes to kick off the last of my clothes before I'm back over her, settling my weight between her thighs, my amber eyes gone gold and unmistakably feral at the edges.

"Last chance," I rasp, even now, even with her wrapped around me and gasping my name. "Tell me to stop."