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“Is the bond already real on my end — before any claiming?”

“I don’t know how much of what you’ve felt is the bond and how much is you. I cannot sort that out for you.”

“So, it might be.”

“It might be.”

She absorbed this. “Question two. If I chose the claiming at some point and then decided it was wrong — undoable?”

“No.”

“That’s final.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not softening that.”

“You wanted the accurate answer.”

“I did.” Her eyes went to the fire, then back to him. No social distance, no management. “I’m not choosing the claiming tonight. That needs more time and a conversation with Fiora that will require its own wine budget. But —” she met his eyes “— I’m here because the beach was this morning, and I’ve thought about almost nothing else since, and I decided that was data, so I should stop pretending otherwise.”

“You decided it was data.”

“I did.”

“And came to tell me.”

“Yes.”

“At nine thirty in the evening.”

“The data was compelling.” Her voice didn’t waver. “Are you going to keep summarizing this back to me, or are we going to do something about it?” His wolf was done being patient. “Tor.”

“Still here.”

“Good. Because —” she reached for his hand across the rug, turned it over in hers the way she’d done at the cliff with his wound, deliberate and present, and studied it with the focused attention she brought to new information. “— you’re warm.”

“Shifter biology.”

“Mm.” Her eyes lifted to him from under her lashes. “I’m going to remember that.”

“You do that.”

“In the orange category.”

“Mirelle.”

“Still here.” She pulled him toward her.

Mirelle

She had forgotten this. Not sex. She hadn’t forgotten sex; she’d stopped expecting to be this present in it, this arrived. He went slowly, deliberately, as if he’d decided he had all the time there was and would not be hurried out of a single moment of it. His hands came to her face first. Both hands tilted her up toward him, and she felt their warmth, their size, and the way he held her as if she were the only thing in the room. Every time she tried to rush, an old habit of wanting things quickly as armor, he waited. Stayed put, patient and certain, until the urgency stopped being a habit and became the real thing. This was different, considerably more inconvenient. And, it turned out, what she’d been missing. “You’ve stopped thinking,” he murmured against her hair.

“You can tell?”

“Your magic goes calm. The ambient settles.”

“You’re monitoring my output.”