"Will you still be here in the morning?" he asked, sounding anxious despite already drifting towards sleep.

"I'll wait for you to wake up, your highness," I replied.

"See that you do," Dain said, with an air of playful command, and together we fell asleep.

35. Morning, Sunshine

Chapter 35

Morning, Sunshine

The morning sun streaming through the window woke me up in a gentle sort of way. I came awake totally content, the way you do when you're on vacation with no expectations, knowing you could loll around in bed for days if it's what you wanted. Some of that feeling – probably all of that feeling – came from the weight of Dain curled up on me, warm and relaxed.

An unexpected soulmate bond benefit: our sleeping minds knew all about each other's sleep habits, and we never woke each other up by shifting around. We'd started out the night with both of us facedown, but neither of us were particularly quiet sleepers, and we were not like that anymore.

I'd managed to end up on my back, and Dain had chased me across the huge bed so that I was most of the way to the edge of it. He was on his side, sprawled up against me with his head resting on my chest. One heavy leg had been slung across mine, and an arm and wing-arm draped across me. In the morning light, I could see that he'd dressed in a pair of loose flannel pajama pants in charcoal gray plaid and a sleeveless black tank that clung to his body in a distracting fashion, a narrow slice of his lower back bare. Dain looked charmingly domestic, relaxed and cuddly and wearing the sort of pjs I could imagine on a human more than a fae.

I could have wriggled out of his embrace and gotten dressed or something, but why would I have wanted to? Dain was sleeping so peacefully, and I suspected he'd had little reason for happiness the past hundred days. So instead, I leaned my cheek against his horns and simply watched him as he breathed, the slow movement of his ribs somehow never losing its interest for me.

It would have been easier if we'd tripped over the line last night. Then I could feel like it was an accident—oops, got carried away, too late now. Plausible deniability made things so much easier. But we hadn't, and I couldn't skip out on making a decision. I knew Dain wanted me to stay. Hell, I wanted me to stay. Imagining my life without him was awful, and the past forty-odd days had given me a particularly brutal look into what it was like to know nothing of his life. Dain coming home had been like the sun rising after months of night.