My throat clogged up, and I allowed myself a few more seconds to cling to him. Go to bed before you do something stupid like blurt out that you’re in love with him! Go!

What I really wanted to do was ask Greid to come and sleep in my bed with me. The squirmy feeling in my gut held me back from voicing it, though. Irrational fear made me worry that it would be too obvious—that I’d be exposing things I wasn’t ready to expose.

Realising I hadn’t answered him out loud, I pressed a kiss to his chest and forced myself to step back. “All good. Just ready for bed.”

“I’m gonna go find a frame for that.” He nodded at the napkin, then seemed to remember the bag of snacks he’d picked up, which instantly diverted his attention. “Wanna take any snacks up with you?”

“I’m good, thanks.” My mouth twitched as I watched him rummage through the plastic bag and pull out some chips. And some jerky. And a purple cake-looking thing that I’d seen him eat before, but had no idea what it actually was.

“I swear I must’ve lost a few pounds this week,” he said as he unwrapped the cake thing. Stuffing it into his mouth, he added in a muffled voice, “I definitely missed some meals.”

He definitely had not. I’d seen the evidence every morning in the kitchen.

I reached out and lovingly patted the slight curve of his stomach. “You don’t need to lose anything. You’re perfect.”

He grunted. “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking I should probably like, I don’t know, eat healthier or whatever. It’ll get my mom off my back. And I’m not exactly young anymore.”

Greid was forty-two, which was still pretty young for a demiurgus. But he did sometimes eat like a toddler who’d been left unsupervised in the snack aisle of a grocery store.

“Well, maybe you could cut back on sugar…” I perked up. “I want to learn to cook more, so that works. Hey, why don’t we learn together?”

Greid swallowed his mouthful and cast me a wary glance. “You should get some sleep,” he said instead of answering.

I laughed, reaching up to wipe a crumb off his mouth before going up on my tiptoes for a kiss. He ducked his head eagerly, and his mouth tasted like sweet liquorice from the purple cake.

The maelstrom of emotions teeming just under the surface got even more tangled as lust rose from the taste of him and the feel of his ridged tongue in my mouth. I tried not to get carried away as we kissed, tongues gliding together, the brush of his sharp teeth making my belly jolt with arousal. I was tired, and I had another double shift tomorrow. I had to be a responsible adult and go to sleep. We couldn’t stay up all night fucking.

Could we?

God, I wanted Greid to touch me. Make me come. I wanted his big naked body between my legs or underneath me. I wanted to play with his enormous cock myself this time, not just watch him do it. I wanted to see him lose his mind and know that I was the one who’d got him there, who made him feel so good, who could give him the things he wanted.

I wanted to give him everything.

It took great effort to end the kiss, but I managed it. See? I am in control of myself!

I snorted a laugh as I stepped back. “You practically have to bend in half to kiss me.”

“I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “I think you’re the perfect height. But, um… yeah. Sorry.”

My brows twitched. “Sorry for what? For being tall?”

“I don’t know.” He shot me a mock glare, but his ears fluttered with embarrassment. “It just came out. Shut up. Go to bed, berry.”

He was such a dork. A perfect dork. Who I was in love with.

“Goodnight, Greid.” I finally started heading for the stairs. “See you in the morning.”

“With coffee?” he asked eagerly, his mouth already full of whatever snack he’d picked next.

I glanced back as I began ascending the stairs, blowing out the candles on the way. “I wouldn’t dream of entering your lair so early in the day without coffee.”

“You can enter my lair any time you want,” he called after me, making me snort as I trudged up the spiral staircase, my legs suddenly feeling like they had fifty-pound weights attached to each one.

I was yawning as I entered my bedroom and stripped off, but I wanted to take a shower before getting into bed. The bar always got hot and humid when it was packed, and I’d spilled some beer down my pant leg at some point during my shift. I could still smell it, like the cloying blend of booze and stranger sweat and many, many perfumes and aftershaves had soaked into my skin.

I tried to keep my mind blank as I showered, but I couldn’t. I’d thought time alone would help me process my feelings and work out what I was going to do and whether I was brave enough to tell him, but now that he wasn’t here, I just missed him.

The shower chased away some of my exhaustion, and I was feeling a little wired as I dried off and put on my pyjamas. Could I go see if he was still up? Not to tell him—no way, not yet—but just… to see if he wanted to hang out for a while before going to sleep.

Or maybe to see if he wanted to make me come.

Silently easing open my bedroom door, I peered into the hallway. I’d blown out all the candles up here already, but usually I could see the faint glow of any still lit downstairs. It was pitch black, meaning Greid had gone to bed.

Sighing, I shut my door and trudged over to my bed, sliding under the sheets. They were cold at first, making me shiver and shift my legs restlessly as I turned off my bedside lamp and lay back.

My mind raced as I stared up at the dark ceiling, insecurities and ugly thoughts rising to the surface, as they were so wont to do in the dead of night, when everything felt so much more overwhelming.

What if it’s weird to fall in love with someone so quickly?

What if there’s a universally agreed upon timeline for these things that I don’t know about because I never had a life before this? Like, you date for a certain number of months, then confess your undying love for someone?

What if I’m not actually in love with him but I have no idea what it feels like because I’ve never had a true romantic relationship before, and I’ve barely had any other kinds of relationships either?

What if he doesn’t feel that way about me?

I squirmed in bed, shifting onto my belly then immediately back around to continue blinking up at the ceiling. Sometimes I felt embarrassingly juvenile. Like I was experiencing all these things for the first time in my thirties that other people went through years earlier, and it was painfully obvious to those around me how small my world had been before.

Was I overthinking it? Probably. But I wasn’t usually a big overthinker—not like Greid, who overthought everything.

My chest got all tight again just thinking about him. I squirmed, thighs rubbing together and clit pulsing at the fresh memory of Greid’s tongue in my mouth. God, I just wanted to be close to him. Maybe I wasn’t brave enough to tell him how I felt, but I could show him in other ways.

And fuck, I really wanted him to make me come. I’d been waiting days now.

My hands crept up to my chest. Through the thin cotton of my pyjama top, I smoothed my thumbs over my nipples, shivering at the memory of his hot mouth on them. God, he’d been so sweet and eager. Needy. All he’d done was suck my nipples, but the memory of it felt like he’d been practically worshipping me.

How would he act with his mouth on my cunt?

Pulse rabbiting in my throat, I reached over and grabbed my phone from the nightstand. Wincing at the bright light from the screen, I licked my lips and opened my messages with Greid.

What was I going to do? I had no idea. Did I have any kind of plan? No. But I needed to at least speak to him, even though it’d been barely a half hour since we’d parted downstairs.