Grayson grinned, tapping out another text but finally lifting his head.

“I’ll be sure to let him know it was discourteous to not think of you first. I didn’t realize you planned to have a bonding experience with the school teacher.”

“You say that as if you would last ten minutes in a classroom with even three kids,” she grumbled.

“Teachers have the hardest jobs there are. But you said she’s human, right? That means there would be someone I would rank slightly higher than out of the gate, so yes, it’s really shitty of him to have done this.”

His laughter was a scraping vibration against her back as he pulled her to his chest, arms crossing over her.

“I love the devious way your mind thinks.”

She tipped her head back, trying to focus on hearing his heartbeat. It should be easy to do, considering his shirt is open. Seeing him this way was incongruous, and even now, months and months later, she still wasn’t sure she liked it. Her tightly buttoned-up boss didn’t seem to exist in Cambric Creek, and Vanessa wondered what magic the town possessed that stripped away his designer polish so quickly.

He was an early riser, regardless of whose bed he was in. He started his day at sunrise, even the morning after the turn, when they should have been snuggled under the blankets recovering. Instead, she grew used to waking up to an empty bed, the pillow sometimes still holding the depression of his head. When he slept in his own bed in his own house, he was already swimming laps in the icy pool before she even stirred beneath the heavy bedclothes. She had still been curled up that morning, watching a video on her tablet under the covers when he came back into the bedroom, still dripping wet, his hair plastered to his skull.

“Are you watching that fish thing again?”

“It’s not about fish,” she huffed, screwing her nose up at his dismissive tone. “It’s about Bora Bora.

Look how pretty . . .” He already knew how crystal clear the water was, for she shoved the travel video under his nose at every opportunity. “Couldn’t we go? You said yourself you’re overdue for a vacation.”

“I’m overdue for a vacation,” he agreed. “Are you planning on coming with me? Because if we’re gone for two weeks, you’ll need to bunk at your desk for the next three months to catch up.”

Rivulets of water ran down his neck, cutting through the dark hair on his chest, and she followed their journey down the plane of his solid stomach, biting her lip as she took in the sight of his cock, soft and full, bouncing against his thigh when he raised the towel to rub at his hair.

His hair had dried that way, sticking out in several odd angles from his head, and most concerningly, he didn’t seem to care. His casual shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, and he tapped the toe of his topsiders against the leg of the stanchion they stood beside, unselfconscious and uncaring and completely un-Grayson-like.

The coffee shop was a small, independent roaster catering to the multi-species clientele they served. He was right, she had been looking over the menu board for an interminable amount of time, but there were so many items on it her brain couldn’t quite puzzle out, leaving her uncertain if she ought to order something familiar, or take a leap and try something completely new, a decision she was no closer to reaching by the time they had reached the front of the line.

“I’ll have a large iced signature roast, max shots, with the bourbon cold foam,” Grayson looked at her over the top of his aviators, rolling his eyes when she shrugged helplessly. “And she’ll have a large honeycomb latte, hot, and a large iced peach blossom nectar sweet steam.”

“I’m never going to be able to drink all that!” she hissed once they had moved to the side of the counter where the drinks would be deposited once made.

Grayson shrugged again. “You didn’t know what you wanted, so I figured something familiar and something not. The honey latte is literally just a latte. They make it with a locally sourced honeycomb.

And the sweet steam is . . . actually, I don’t know what it is, but one of my neighbors is a moth person, and this is what she always orders. Try them both and see which one you like. Save one for later.

Throw it at traffic; I don’t care what you do, Nessa. Just calm the fuck down.”

She scrunched up her nose, scowling at him. It was the pissy little look he so often referred to, but at that moment, she didn’t care. She was spending the day with his family, the first time she had been invited to do so, a post-moon lunch at his parent’s house, and she was a nervous pee-er by nature.

Multiple beverages were not a good idea.

It seemed as though every conceivable species under the sun called Cambric Creek home, and they were all crowded into the coffee shop at that precise moment. Even though she was not human, she had never lived in a multi-species environment quite like this, she thought, watching an exhausted-looking cervitaur with a snowy-white pelt like a unicorn attempt to come through the doors sideways, behind a pack of fox-tailed young women who never looked up from their phones to realize the traffic jam they were causing.

“And this is like, normal for you, right?”

Grayson sighed, pocketing his phone and turning her, taking her hand.

“Vanessa. This is where I grew up; it’s where my family lives. This is normal because it’s home.

You need to take a deep breath, because you are already wearing me out, and we’re not there yet.”

“Well, now you’re just being mean,” she grumbled into his chest, flattening herself against him.

She’d not pegged him for a suburbanite, not in the beginning. He was too sophisticated and snobbish, and everything about him whispered luxury and privilege, but she had been wrong. Completely, erroneously wrong, for this other Grayson, who left the house with messy hair and his shirt only half-buttoned, who took up her hand in public and swung their arms carelessly, existed. She was able to press her nose against the bare skin the half-open shirt revealed, taking a slow, deep breath, inhaling him.

He kept his apartment in Bridgeton for heavy caseloads, when he was putting in long hours and early mornings, when he needed to be at the courthouse or in chambers or in boardrooms and meeting rooms and coffee shops, meeting nervous clients for the first time who didn’t want to come into the office. He used the apartment for hookups, she had no doubt, but unlike those nameless, faceless women she didn’t need to concern herself with, she could boast one more thing they could not. He spent every full moon with her, knotted only her, and she was the only one he’d actually taken home.

His house was at the rear of a snaking development, too big for a single man, with an expansive front yard and a sloping, cliff-like backyard, upon which he’d spent a small fortune putting in tiered decks and a vast swimming pool. Too big for him alone, but his brother had built a large house, and she had come to understand that anything Jackson did, Grayson did bigger.

All of his siblings lived in town, save for the one who lived overseas, minutes away from each other and their parents. All too soon after leaving the coffee shop, they were pulling into the long, circular driveway in front of an enormous Tudor-style colonial, several other cars already there. She was ready as she would ever be, Vanessa reminded herself. Here goes nothing.

“Grayson said you’re an attorney as well?”

His mother had a spray of freckles across her button nose, and coupled with her vivid green eyes, they gave her a youthful glow, one Vanessa was sure was enhanced by regular enzyme peels and brightening serums and other luxury aesthetic treatments. Her eyebrows were threaded to make them appear natural; her subtle makeup and the expertly applied golden highlights in the cinnamon hair that fell in a waterfall to the center of her back were the same. A whole lot of money and effort to look like no effort was made, and Vanessa knew from her own experience it was the most difficult, costly look to keep up.