Her black hair is matted in the back, with the front sticking straight up in a greasy wave over her forehead, and she is unabashedly naked. As she wakes up, she makes no effort to hide her body under blankets. I can see her tattooed arms, her dark armpit hair, her soft stomach and her strong thighs, her muscular legs stretched out beside Paul Hollywood, who climbed up onto the bed at some point in the night.

I bury my smile into my pillow. “Long is subjective.”

“Creep. I brought home a creepy stalker.” She hits me with an extra pillow. “Did you sleep at all?”

I shake my head. It felt like if I closed my eyes, I would wake up to find the snow had melted, that the magic between us had dissolved, too. “Not too much sleep,” I say.

She rolls onto her side to face me in bed. “How are you feeling?”

And I know what she’s really asking me. Do you regret this? Would you take this back? I’d only ever felt this way with one other person, and it had taken months for me to feel safe and comfortable with my college girlfriend. We were friends for almost two years before we even kissed, yet here I am, naked with this person I’ve known for a day. And I’ve never felt more certain of anything than I am of whatever this is.

“I’m feeling really good,” I tell her.

It’s her turn to hide her smile against her pillow. Under the blankets, she slides her hands toward me, her fingers hovering half an inch above my bare stomach, ghosting over my skin in some kind of tantalizing whisper. It feels almost better than when she touched me there last night—when she touched me everywhere, claiming every uncharted corner of me as her own.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“Starving.”

She leans over and bites softly on my shoulder before smoothing the mark with a kiss. “I’ll shower, and then I’ll make you biscuits and gravy.”

“That’s not exactly what I had in mind….”

“Well, you haven’t tried my homemade biscuits yet.”

“I would very much like to try your biscuits.”

Jack laughs, groggy and throaty, shouting, “Creep!” even louder. I reach for her. She comes willingly, rolls on top of me, settling herself between my legs, kissing my throat, my earlobe, my mouth. Sweet, unhurried kisses, like we have nothing but time, like the snow outside will never melt, and we’ll live in this little bubble forever.

“Okay. Okay.” She exhales against my collarbone a few minutes later. “I really do need to shower.”

I wrap my legs around her torso to anchor her to me. I have no intention of ever letting her go, not even for homemade biscuits. “I’m afraid if you get up, you won’t come back,” I confess into her shoulder.