I woke up early.
Too early for a girl who had a very stressful school week and definitely too early for someone who had fallen asleep in the arms of a man like Malakai Blackwood.
For a few slow seconds, I didn't move.
The room was still dim, suspended in that strange hour just before morning fully commits to itself. The curtains were drawn enough to keep the first light weak and grey, letting only the thinnest silver wash spill through the edges. Everything in the room still looked half-dreamlike — the dark wood, the heavy shadows, the sheets twisted low around us, the slow shape of his body in the half-light.
His arm was still around me.
Heavy.
Warm.
Possessive even in sleep.
I could feel the weight of it laid across my waist like it had always belonged there, as if his body had made the decision hours ago and never thought to ask mine for permission. My back was still tucked against his chest, the heat of him pressed along my spine, his breathing slow and even behind me.
And the terrifying part was how natural it felt.
How right.
How dangerously easy it would be to stay exactly like this and let morning pass us by.
I lay there for another moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness, trying not to think too loudly, because thinking too loudly would break the spell. It would remind me where I was. Who I was. Who he was. And once that happened, I knew the softness of this moment would start turning sharp around the edges.
Still, some part of me wanted to see him.
Really see him.
So, very slowly, carefully, I tried to shift.
I moved inch by inch, easing myself around in his hold with the kind of caution usually reserved for disarming bombs or sneaking across old floors that complained under weight. I didn't want to wake him. I wasn't even sure why. Maybe because sleep made him softer in ways daylight never would. Maybe because I wanted one selfish second of looking at him before he became Malakai again — the cold one, the unreachable one, the man the world saw before it saw anything else.
Eventually, I managed it.
I turned.
And there he was.
Not face to face exactly — he was still larger than me even lying down, broader, heavier in presence, every line of him making the bed feel more like his than mine could ever feel like mine. But now I could see him properly.
His face was turned slightly toward me, lashes low against his skin, his mouth relaxed in sleep in a way that almost didn't seem fair. There was something cruel about how beautiful he looked unconscious. Like danger itself had decided to rest and become lovely just to confuse the people foolish enough to fall for it.
His hair was a little messy from sleep, the dark strands softer than usual, falling carelessly over his forehead. The sheet had slipped low enough that I could see the tattoos stretching over his shoulder and part of his chest, dark ink moving across him like a story I was still learning how to read. In the early dim light, his skin looked almost silvered, all shadows and sculpted planes and quiet strength.
He didn't look human enough to belong to ordinary people.
He looked carved.
Built.
Too precise to be real.
And for one humiliatingly honest second, all I could think was:
How is one man allowed to look like this and still be dangerous?
My eyes traced over him slowly, over the line of his throat, the ink curling over his collarbone, the faint rise and fall of his chest under the slow rhythm of sleep. He looked impossible in rest. Still too sharp, too deliberate, too much. Even asleep, he felt like someone the world should fear.
And still—
I liked this.
That truth hit me with enough force that I almost physically recoiled from it.
I liked waking up in his bed.
I liked being wrapped in his warmth.
I liked that he had said I was his in that low, terrible voice of his and instead of fear, all it had done was make something inside me go weak.
I liked him too much.
Far too much.
The thought made panic creep carefully into my chest.
Not the loud, frantic kind.
The quieter kind.
The kind that stands in the corner and waits while your heart makes its worst decision.
What kind of woman was I becoming?
A stupid one?
A foolish one?
A girl who let herself get carried away by a man who could ruin her without even trying?
Because that was the truth, wasn't it?
Men like Malakai Blackwood were not halfway things. They were not soft, harmless mistakes. They were the kind of men you either stayed away from or let devour whole parts of you.
And I was lying in his bed at five in the morning, staring at his mouth like I had forgotten every survival lesson pain had ever taught me.
Bridget would lose her mind.
That thought came suddenly enough to almost make me smile.
Bridget.
God.
She had joked. Teased. Pushed at the edges of this thing like it was funny and impossible and dramatic in the way only she could make things feel. But if she actually knew how far this had gone? If she knew I had spent the night here, wrapped up in him, kissed by him, claimed by him in words that still hadn't stopped echoing through my body—
Would she laugh?
Would she scream?
Would she hug me first or threaten him first?
And then, worse:
What if she was not joking anymore?
What if it became real enough to require names? Explanations? Choices?
What about my family?
No— not family.
That word didn't belong to them anymore.
What about father?
What about Alyssa?
If Alyssa found out something like this, she would twist it. Weaponize it. Turn it into rot and rumor and poison. She would drag it through every hallway and every mouth she could find just to make me feel dirty for wanting something that felt too good to be trusted.
And if Tina knew?
I didn't even want to think about that.
No.
I shut the thoughts down immediately.
One by one.
Pushed them out.
Because none of them belonged here, not in this room, not while the morning still hadn't fully happened and he was still sleeping with one arm around my waist like I was something worth holding onto.
I shifted just slightly, thinking maybe I should slip out now while I still could.
A stupid idea.
Because the second I moved with real intent, his arm tightened.
Not violently.
Just enough.
Just enough to stop me.
His brows didn't even furrow. His breathing only changed for half a second. He was still almost asleep, still caught somewhere in that quiet borderland between rest and waking.
But then his voice came.
Low. Rough. Half-buried in sleep.
"I told you not to leave the bed before me."
My breath caught.
I went completely still.
His eyes didn't open fully. Not really. He was barely awake, if at all, but the hold around my waist remained firm for another second before slowly loosening again. His breathing settled back into its previous rhythm, smooth and even, like his body had simply corrected a problem and then gone back to rest.
I stared at him.
At the unfair calm of his face.
At the way he could say something like that in half-sleep and somehow make my whole body warm all over again.
My lips parted soundlessly.
Then, because apparently I had learned nothing, I stayed.
Of course I stayed.
I wasn't sure if it was because of the words or the way he said them or the simple possessive instinct behind them that made my chest twist in that same dangerous way, but either way, I stayed exactly where I was.
And waited.
The room stayed quiet around us.
Somewhere outside, the world was slowly becoming morning. The sky behind the curtains brightened by degrees too small to measure at first. His breathing remained deep, steady, grounding in a way I hated that I already craved.
So I lay there beside him and looked.
And thought.
And tried, very badly, to understand what kind of woman I was supposed to be after this.
Was I supposed to be careful now?
Was I supposed to wake up and build my walls back immediately?
Was I supposed to pretend last night had been some beautiful, dangerous mistake and step away before whatever this was could become too real to survive?
Or was I already too late?
The answer sat in the soft heaviness of his arm, in the memory of his mouth on mine, in the low certainty of It makes you mine.
I already knew.
That was the worst of it.
I already knew there was no going back to the version of me that had not been touched by him.
Not physically.
Not emotionally.
Not in any way that mattered.
He had already changed something.
And I was lying here in the half-dark admitting, finally, to myself what I had been avoiding for days.
I felt safe with him.
Not with the house.
Not with the luxury.
Not with the locked gates and expensive silence and the illusion of protection money could buy.
With him.
With his hand on me.
With his voice in the dark.
With his body waking just enough to make sure I had not left.
That realization should have terrified me more than it did.
Instead, it settled into me gently.
Like truth always does when it stops asking to be denied.
I looked at him one more time.
At the lashes.
At the tattoos.
At the brutal beauty of him even in sleep.
At the man who could put blood on his hands by night and hold me like I was breakable by dawn.
And somewhere deep inside myself, under all the fear and caution and old damage that still lived there, something softened completely.
I did not know what would happen next.
I did not know what this would cost.
I did not know how long peace ever lasted for girls like me.
But lying beside him in that dim room, with his warmth still wrapped around me and morning too frightened to fully enter yet, I knew one thing with a certainty so quiet it almost felt holy:
For the first time in my life, I was not afraid of the person beside me.
I was safe.
And maybe that was the most dangerous part of all.