Vivienne meant to say something.

Something dry, probably. Something about deadlines or overconfidence or the absurdity of being issued sleep like an instruction and almost taking it.

But the words never made it far enough to matter.

By the time he settled beside her, exhaustion had already started winning in earnest—slow, heavy, unavoidable. It moved through her with none of the violence the rest of the night had carried. Just weight. Warmth. The gradual surrender of muscles that had spent too many hours braced for impact.

She felt the shift of the mattress. The quiet adjustment of the blanket. The absence of pressure in the way he placed himself there.

Then his arm at her side.

Not demanding. Not trapping. Just present.

That was what undid the last of her resistance.

Vivienne’s body answered before her mind bothered to interfere. She moved the smallest amount closer, a nearly imperceptible drift that brought her more fully into the line of him—her back finding the steady heat of his chest, the space behind her knee easing toward his, one hand loosening where it had been fisted in the bedding. There was no strategy in it. No elegance. Just tired instinct and the dangerous fact that she liked this too much to pretend otherwise.

She was too exhausted to fight that truth tonight.

The apartment stayed quiet around them. Somewhere beyond the bedroom, the papers waited on the table with all the patience of old damage. Charles still existed. East House still existed. The switch, the records, the quarter, the lie of her life—all of it would still be there when she woke.

For the first time in hours, she let something remain unsolved.

Her breathing evened without asking her permission. The edge left her limbs one slow degree at a time. His warmth stayed at her back. The sound of the city, faint through the window, blurred into something distant and unimportant. At some point she thought—not in words, more in feeling than language—that this was a reckless place to feel safe.

Then even that thought was gone.

She slept.


---

When Vivienne woke, it was slowly.

Not with the jolt she knew from bad dreams or the hard, immediate clarity of mornings after too little rest and too much performance. This was different. Gradual. Soft at the edges. A return rather than an impact.

For a few seconds she didn’t open her eyes.

She simply registered.

Warmth first. Weight second. The quiet rise and fall of someone else breathing behind her.

Then the shape of it resolved.

Roman.

His arm was still around her—not tight, not possessive, simply settled there with the unconscious certainty of a body that had remained where it said it would. Sometime in the night she had turned more fully into him. Or he had shifted with her. Either way, she was no longer merely near him. She was held.

And, more humiliatingly, comfortable.

Vivienne opened her eyes to the dimness of the room and stayed still.

The light had changed. Later now. Not bright, but no longer the deep middle of the night either. The apartment had that muffled morning-after hush to it, as though the walls themselves were still deciding whether to wake properly. She could hear nothing from the living room. No papers rustling. No movement. No kettle, no glass, no footsteps. Just this room. This bed. This breath at her shoulder.

Her first instinct was not to move.

That was new enough to feel almost threatening.

Usually the moment of waking came with some immediate need to restore distance, order, composure. To reclaim the body as wholly her own again before anyone else’s expectations had a chance to get their hands on it. But there was no audience here. No staff outside the door. No Blackwell housekeeper preparing a tray, no man in the next room already deciding what version of the night would be permitted to survive into day.

Just him. Still asleep, if the depth and slowness of his breathing meant what she thought it did. Still exactly where she had left him.

Vivienne looked down at the arm resting across her and felt, with a quiet sort of clarity, how much easier it would be to keep lying there than to admit that she ought not enjoy this quite so much.

Her principles, she thought dully, were going to be insufferable about all of this later.

For now, they were outnumbered.

She shifted only enough to test the room and the shape of him around her. His hand tightened fractionally in reflex, not waking fully, just answering the movement on instinct before settling again. The reaction went through her with an altogether unreasonable warmth.

Her mouth moved at the corner.

Not quite a smile. Something close enough to count.

Of course he slept like this too, as if steadiness were a condition he carried even unconscious.

Vivienne let her head sink back into the pillow and stared ahead at the quiet room for another long moment. The memories of the night returned in fragments now—museum light, the annex, East House, the lower archive, the papers, the couch, the whiskey, his apartment, his hands, his voice low in the dark. None of it felt less real with sleep between it and now. If anything, the morning made it sharper.

She was in Queens. In his bed. With proof of her father’s crimes ten feet away in the other room. And Roman’s body still warm around hers like leaving had never occurred to him.

There were worse places to wake.

That thought was so deeply inconvenient that she closed her eyes again for one brief second and exhaled through her nose.

Then, still not moving away, she said into the quiet of the room, her voice low with sleep and edged by the last remains of habit:

“If you’re awake and pretending not to be, I should warn you that I’m in a very poor mood for smugness.”

A beat.

“And if you’re asleep, this is your final courtesy before I remember I have standards.”

Roman had been awake before she spoke.

Not fully—not in the sharp, operational way he carried himself when the world required it—but somewhere in that quiet middle ground where the body knows before the mind bothers to catch up. He’d felt her shift. Felt the subtle change in her breathing, the minute tension returning to muscles that had finally let go hours earlier.

He didn’t move when she stirred.

Didn’t tighten his hold. Didn’t loosen it either.

Just stayed.

Because she hadn’t pulled away.

That mattered.

When she spoke—low, edged even through sleep—the corner of his mouth moved faintly against her hair, though she couldn’t see it.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rough with sleep, not bothering to hide it. “I’m awake.”

No pretense.

No attempt to play dead under her warning.

His arm shifted slightly then—not withdrawing, just adjusting so his hand rested more comfortably along her side, thumb brushing once in an absent, unconscious line before stilling again.

At poor mood for smugness, a quiet breath left him—something just shy of a laugh.

“Shame,” he murmured. “I had a whole speech planned.”

Dry. Low. Easy in a way that didn’t push at her mood, just met it where it was.

He didn’t move away.

Didn’t rush the moment into something else.

Instead, he let his head sink a little deeper into the pillow behind him, his voice settling closer to her, quieter now.

“You don’t sound furious,” he added after a second.

Not a challenge.

Just an observation.

His eyes stayed closed for another beat before he opened them slowly, gaze unfocused at first as the room came back into shape around them. Morning light, thin through the window. The stillness of the apartment. Her, exactly where she’d been when he fell asleep.

That part registered more clearly than anything else.

“You stayed,” he said.

Again, no weight put on it.

No expectation attached.

Just the fact, said out loud because it existed.

His hand shifted once more, a little more deliberate this time, settling at her waist—not pulling her closer, not holding her there against resistance. Just there, steady.

“You still mad about it?” he asked, quieter now.

Honest.

Because he meant it.

If she was—he’d deal with that.

If she wasn’t—

He didn’t finish the thought.

Didn’t need to.

He let the silence sit again, not empty this time—just full of everything they hadn’t touched yet. The papers. Her father. The night before.

And the fact that she was still in his bed when she could have been anywhere else.

Roman didn’t push her to move.

Didn’t suggest getting up.

Didn’t reach for anything beyond what she’d already given.

He just stayed where she’d left him.

Warm. Awake. And very much paying attention.

Vivienne did not move.

Not from stubbornness. Not from shock. Simply because she had no wish, yet, to be anywhere else.

His voice, roughened by sleep and stripped of all its usual dry control, went through her with a frankly irritating amount of effect. There was something indecent about hearing a man sound like that first thing in the morning and realizing the response it drew from her was not caution but interest.

Her mouth curved faintly against the pillow.

“What a tragedy,” she murmured. “I would have enjoyed hearing the speech.”

The line landed soft with sleep and private amusement, the kind she would never have let into a room with witnesses. Morning light made different allowances, apparently.

When he observed that she did not sound furious, Vivienne let her eyes drift shut again for one second and considered the inventory.

No, not furious. Not yet.

There were enough things in the other room to remedy that if she gave them time. The papers. The names. The quarter. The architecture of her father’s lies waiting patiently on a table in Queens.

She opened her eyes again and said, “No. Though with sufficient exposure to the contents of your living room, I imagine I could produce a respectable rage by breakfast.”

That, too, was easier than telling him what she actually felt—tired, watchful, reluctant to break the shape of the moment, and more content in his bed than any part of her upbringing would consider tasteful.

Then came the quiet observation.

You stayed.

Vivienne answered it with the smallest possible delay.

“Yes.”

Nothing more.

Because anything beyond that would require her to start pulling apart the obvious: that she could have moved when she woke, should have moved if she were being properly disciplined about any of this, and yet had remained exactly where she was with no real intention of changing that. A single syllable was cleaner. Safer. Less revealing than the truth, even if the truth was already lying there with them in the bed.

After a beat, she rolled slowly onto her other side so she could face him properly.

The blanket shifted with her. Morning light, thin and pale through the window, had reached the bed by then, just enough to put his face in that unforgiving, quiet clarity which belonged only to mornings and interrogations. She took a moment to look at him without pretending otherwise.

He looked different like this.

Not softened. More unguarded, perhaps. Or maybe just more plainly himself without the sharpness of strategy and wakefulness holding every line in place. The sleep still lived faintly at the edges of him—in the roughness of his voice, the slower blink, the less deliberate set of his mouth—and she found the combination far too compelling for something so early and so inconvenient.

Vivienne let the silence stretch while she looked.

Then, when she answered his question, it came with the calm directness he had already earned from her.

“I have a great many things to be angry about,” she said. “You are not particularly high on the list.”

A tiny pause.

“You may consider your continued physical integrity secure.”

That was as close to reassurance as he was getting from her in this light.

She stayed where she was, one hand tucked beneath the pillow, the other resting loosely between them beneath the blanket. Her gaze moved once over him again, slower this time, less assessing than before. She was tired enough not to disguise that either.

A shower sounded appealing. So did coffee. Both, in different ways, promised the possibility of becoming recognizably herself again—less mussed, less warm, less dangerously inclined to find this domestic little pocket of time too easy to stay inside.

And yet she did not suggest either. Not immediately.

Because she was not ready to get up. Not ready to feel the room cool around them. Not ready to trade this version of herself for the one that would have to stand up, cross the hall, and reopen the files waiting to tell her what her life had been made of.

So she let the moment continue.

Her fingers shifted once, lightly grazing the sheet between them as if testing the last of sleep still left in the room.

“I would like a shower,” she said eventually, her tone thoughtful rather than urgent. “And coffee. In that order, ideally, so I can feel like a person again before we start dissecting my family’s crimes.”

A beat.

“But I suppose,” she added, her eyes holding his with that same faintly dangerous composure that even sleep had not fully undone, “you may have a few more minutes of this version first.”

Not a concession. Not quite.

More like an allowance granted under circumstances she had chosen not to examine too closely.

Her mouth shifted again, very slightly.

“Try to appreciate your luck,” she said. “I’m not usually inclined toward generosity before coffee.”

Then she stayed exactly where she was, looking at him in the quiet morning light as though she had not yet found a sufficiently compelling reason to leave—and, for the moment, was perfectly content not to try.

Roman didn’t look away when she turned toward him.

If anything, he settled into it—into the quiet scrutiny, the morning light, the fact that she was still here and not pretending otherwise. His gaze moved over her once, slower than it had any right to be this early, taking in the sleep-soft edges she hadn’t fully rebuilt yet.

At what a tragedy, his mouth tilted.

“Careful,” he murmured, voice still rough, still low. “I might actually give it next time.”

There was a thread of something easy in it—confidence without push, the kind that assumed there would be a next time without needing to argue the point.

When she admitted she wasn’t furious, his brow lifted slightly.

“Breakfast rage,” he said, considering it like a legitimate schedule item. “Good to know. I’ll pace myself.”

But the line didn’t carry distance. If anything, there was something almost… satisfied in it. Not smug—she’d warned him off that—but quietly pleased that she wasn’t pulling away, not yet.

At her simple yes, something in his expression shifted again.

He didn’t press it.

Didn’t ask why.

Just let it sit there between them, the truth of it uncomplicated and intact.

When she rolled to face him, his eyes tracked the movement without hesitation. No attempt to pretend he hadn’t noticed. No restraint in the way he looked at her now—like the version of her in his bed, hair undone, voice low with sleep and edges still intact, was something worth memorizing.

At you’re not high on the list, a quiet exhale left him—something that might have been a laugh if it had tried harder.

“High praise,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

A beat.

“Nice to know I’m losing to your father’s crimes and not poor decision-making.”

There was charm in it, but it didn’t dodge the weight behind what she’d said. He knew exactly what waited in the other room.

He just wasn’t reaching for it yet.

When she mentioned the shower and coffee, his gaze flicked toward the doorway for half a second, then back to her.

“Coffee I can do,” he said. “Shower’s yours whenever you decide to stop ignoring it.”

His tone shifted just slightly there—something warmer threading through the edge.

“No rush,” he added.

Because there wasn’t one.

Not here.

Not yet.

Then her final line—you may have a few more minutes of this version—landed, and this time he didn’t bother hiding the way his expression changed.

Not smug.

But close enough to count.

“Lucky me,” he said quietly.

His hand, still resting between them under the blanket, moved—slow, deliberate—just enough to brush lightly along her wrist before settling again.

At try to appreciate your luck, his eyes held hers, steady and unhurried.

“Oh, I am,” he said.

No irony.

No deflection.

Just the truth, said like it didn’t need dressing up.

A small pause followed, the kind that didn’t ask for anything but didn’t retreat either.

Then, softer—

“You don’t do anything halfway,” he added, gaze flicking once over her face again. “Even before coffee.”

That carried something else in it now—something a little more personal, a little less careful.

He shifted slightly on the pillow, closing just a fraction of the distance she hadn’t bothered to create.

“Which means,” he went on, low and easy, “I’m not in a hurry to lose this version of you either.”

No pressure.

No claim.

Just the admission, sitting there between them in the quiet morning light.

And Roman—very much awake now—looked like a man who was exactly where he wanted to be.

Vivienne watched the shift in his face when he let himself enjoy what she had given him.

Not smug. Not careless. Just pleased in a way that felt almost more dangerous because he did not try to disguise it behind wit.

His line about a next time should have drawn something sharper from her. A correction, perhaps. A reminder that men who got comfortable too quickly often found themselves very abruptly unwelcome.

Instead, the thought of there being a next time passed through her with alarming ease.

She did not let that show fully.

Only the faintest curve at one corner of her mouth betrayed her when she murmured, “Do be careful with assumptions. They’ve ruined better men than you.”

It was not a refusal. He would know that. Which was precisely why she said it that way.

At his acceptance of her not being high on the list, at the ease with which he met her there instead of pressing for more, something in her quieted further. He seemed to understand—without needing to be told—that not every tender thing had to be turned into a larger conversation before it could be allowed to exist. That, too, was becoming a problem. Or perhaps an answer. She had not decided which.

When he said he was not in a hurry to lose this version of her either, the words landed lower than they should have.

Vivienne held his gaze and let the silence after it deepen.

There was still a part of her, hard-trained and sharp-boned, that wanted to push back. To remind him that this softness was situational. Temporary. A pocket carved out of a disaster, not a permanent redrawing of the map. Charles still existed. The papers still waited in the other room. The safest version of both of them, once they stepped back into the day, would be cooler, harder, less honest.

She knew that.

But the urge to resist had lost its dominance now. Not entirely. It was still there, alive beneath the surface, a warning system she had no intention of dismantling simply because a man with clever hands and dangerous steadiness had made himself comfortable in her life. Yet for this moment—this strange, suspended morning in Queens—it no longer outranked want.

And she wanted this.

The quiet. His warmth. The look in his eyes when he stopped pretending this was casual. The dangerous little peace they had cut out for themselves while the rest of her life waited in ruins on a table beyond the bedroom door.

Vivienne’s fingers lifted and brushed lightly through the hair at his temple, smoothing a piece of it back with the kind of absent care she might have denied, later, if confronted with evidence. The gesture was almost unbearably intimate in its lack of spectacle.

“That sounds suspiciously like fondness,” she murmured.

A beat.

“You should monitor that. It could ruin your reputation.”

Her hand lingered just a second longer, then drifted down to rest lightly at the side of his neck. She remained exactly where she was, no longer making any effort to guard herself from the fact that being this close to him felt not merely pleasant, but right in a way she had no framework for and very little desire to interrogate too quickly.

It scared her, if she was being exact. Not because it felt wrong. Because it didn’t.

Vivienne tipped her head slightly against the pillow and studied him in the morning light—really studied him, without the architecture of a public room or a crisis to refract him through. He looked more dangerous like this, not less. More human too. That combination was proving particularly difficult to resist.

She let out a slow breath.

“There is,” she said quietly, “a version of me that would already be halfway across the room by now, pretending this had all been a charming lapse in taste.”

The line was not self-pitying. Merely accurate.

“She is not currently in charge.”

That, more than anything else, was the truth of the moment.

Vivienne shifted closer by the smallest amount—enough that the blanket pulled differently, enough that her leg brushed his more fully beneath it, enough to say I am still here without reducing it to language. Her gaze never left his.

The wise thing, she knew, would be to enjoy this for what it was and then restore the walls. To take the peace and leave before it started asking for more than either of them could safely afford. That was still the plan, in theory. It had to be. Charles Blackwell did not survive daughters like her by being easy to outmaneuver, and sentiment was rarely the weapon that won wars against men like him.

But theory had lost some ground overnight.

And he was lying here looking at her as though he had no intention of asking for anything she had not already chosen, which made choosing all the more dangerous.

Vivienne leaned in and kissed him again.

Not the heat of the night before. Not the sharp, chosen collision from the couch.

This was softer. Slower. No less certain.

A kiss given in full awareness of the hour, the room, the consequences waiting outside it. A kiss that knew exactly how little time they had left before the world intruded again and chose, selfishly and without apology, to spend some of it here.

When she drew back, she stayed close enough that her next words almost brushed his mouth.

“We should probably stop before I begin making truly irresponsible decisions,” she said.

The line carried no real urgency. Only recognition.

Her eyes stayed on his.

“And yet,” she added, very softly now, “I find I have almost no interest in being sensible for you at the moment.”

There was no grand confession in it. No surrender. Just truth, spoken low between two people who had already crossed too many lines together to pretend honesty was the dangerous part.

Vivienne let her forehead rest lightly against his for a moment, her lashes lowering, the last of her resistance ebbing into something calmer and more deliberate.

For now, she thought, this was enough.

More than enough, perhaps.

A stolen morning. A warm bed. A man she should likely trust less and wanted, quite desperately, not to.

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and gave him a look touched with the faintest, most intimate sort of irony.

“So enjoy your good fortune while it lasts,” she murmured. “Once we leave this bed, I reserve the right to become much colder and vastly more annoying.”

A pause.

“But not yet.”

Roman didn’t interrupt her.

He let her say it all—the warning wrapped in elegance, the admission she hadn’t meant to soften, the quiet, dangerous truth that she was still here because she wanted to be—and he didn’t rush to answer it like it needed fixing.

Because it didn’t.

His eyes tracked the movement of her hand in his hair, slower this time, not just noticing—feeling it. There was something disarming about the way she touched him when she wasn’t thinking about it. Less calculated. Less defended.

More real.

At fondness, his mouth shifted faintly.

“That would be a problem,” he murmured.

A beat.

“I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

The line was easy, but it didn’t hide the fact that he hadn’t moved her hand away. Hadn’t broken the contact. If anything, he leaned into it just slightly—barely there, but enough to answer her without words.

When she said she wasn’t leaving—that the version of her who would have already put distance between them wasn’t in charge—something in his expression sharpened, not in warning, but in recognition.

“Good,” he said quietly.

Not because it made things easier.

Because it made them honest.

Her shift closer didn’t go unnoticed. Nothing about her did, not anymore. The subtle pull of the blanket, the line of her leg against his—small things, but deliberate. Chosen.

He didn’t comment on it.

Didn’t need to.

His hand moved once, resting a little more securely at her side, matching her without overtaking it. Still her choice. Still her pace.

When she kissed him again, he didn’t hesitate.

But he didn’t take it over either.

He met her where she was—slow, deliberate, letting the moment stretch instead of driving it forward. It wasn’t urgency this time. It wasn’t need sharpened by adrenaline or proximity or stolen time.

It was something steadier.

Which, somehow, made it worse.

Or better.

He hadn’t decided which.

When she pulled back, close enough that her words brushed against him, he stayed right there. Didn’t chase the space. Didn’t close it.

Just listened.

At we should probably stop, something flickered low in his expression—something that understood exactly what she meant and didn’t argue it.

At I have almost no interest in being sensible for you, his gaze held hers a second longer.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“I noticed.”

There was no arrogance in it.

Just the truth, again.

When her forehead rested against his, he let his own tilt forward slightly, meeting it without pressing, without claiming the contact. Just there, grounded in it.

Her last warning—about becoming colder, sharper, more difficult once they left this bed—earned a quiet breath from him.

Not amusement.

Not concern.

Something more measured.

“I’m counting on it,” he said.

A beat.

“I like you difficult.”

That landed softer than it should have.

His thumb moved once, slow, along her side, a grounding touch more than anything else.

At but not yet, something in his expression eased—not relaxed, not softened fully—but steadier.

“Then not yet,” he agreed.

No push. No attempt to stretch the moment past what she’d allowed.

He stayed where he was, close but not closing in, watching her in the morning light like he was memorizing the version of her she hadn’t put back together yet.

“You’re right, though,” he added after a second, voice lower now. “We should stop before it turns into something we don’t walk away from clean.”

Honest.

Not cold.

His gaze flicked briefly to her mouth, then back to her eyes.

“But I’m not in a hurry to be sensible either.”

That one he didn’t dress up.

Didn’t soften.

Just left it there, between them.

And Roman stayed exactly where she’d left him—close, steady, and very clearly not ready to move just yet.

Vivienne let the words settle.

I like you difficult.

Of course he did.

A more sensible woman might have found that reassuring. Vivienne found it inconvenient, which was becoming an increasingly common theme where Roman was concerned. He did not seem to want the simpler version of her. He did not flinch from the sharper one. He did not ask her to become softer before he decided she was worth staying near.

That made the prospect of being difficult with him rather more complicated than she preferred.

Not impossible, surely. She was still Vivienne Blackwell. She had been raised on control, precision, and the elegant application of distance. She could be cold before breakfast if the situation required it.

But now there were memories in the way.

His couch. His hands. The low, ruined quiet after. The warmth of waking with him still around her like leaving had never occurred to either of them.

Those were not ideal conditions for detachment.

She would do her best.

The comment about walking away clean should have drawn a correction, but only because it was inaccurate.

They were well past clean.

Perhaps they had been since the sidewalk, when she had let him kiss her and then hated the world a little for rearranging itself afterward. Perhaps since Rook & Rye, if she was being less generous. Certainly since the night before, when she had chosen his apartment, his bed, his hands, his steady presence over any of the safer lies still available to her.

There would be no clean version of this now.

Only controlled damage.

Vivienne held his gaze for one more quiet second.

Then she kissed him again.

Not sharply this time. Not to prove a point or win back ground or turn tenderness into something easier to weaponize. She moved into it slowly at first, as if giving them both one final chance to remember restraint existed, and then abandoned the courtesy almost immediately.

Her hand slid against him, sure and deliberate, and she pressed closer until there was no useful distance left between them. The kiss deepened with the kind of certainty her mouth refused to make into language. She let her body say the things she was not prepared to put into words: that she wanted him, that she trusted him more than she should, that this bed had become dangerously difficult to leave, that whatever waited beyond the door could have another minute because this one belonged to them.

One last kiss.

One last indulgence before she put the sharper parts of herself back in place and locked all this want somewhere discreet enough to survive the day.

For now, she let herself have it.

His warmth. The quiet. The slow, deliberate ache of choosing him with no audience and no excuse.

When she finally drew back, she did it carefully. Not because she was uncertain, but because she knew the exact danger of lingering one second too long. Her eyes stayed on his, and for that brief moment, the look she gave him came perilously close to softness.

As close as she allowed herself, at least.

Then, piece by piece, Vivienne returned.

Not fully. Not with the brutality she might have managed the day before. But enough. Her expression cooled into something more familiar, the softness tucked away behind a composed, faintly amused curve of her mouth.

There she was.

Mostly.

“You should have coffee ready before I’m done,” she said, her voice still low from sleep but sharpened now into something more recognizable. “Preferably strong enough to compensate for your many character flaws.”

A beat.

Her smirk deepened.

“And do try not to stare too openly when I get up. I know restraint is difficult for you, but I’m told practice builds discipline.”

The warning was useless, and they both knew it.

Vivienne did not particularly care if he looked. If anything, the fact that he might was part of the point. She had never been a woman who confused being seen with being diminished, and after the night they had just had, false modesty would have been more ridiculous than nudity.

Still, the line pleased her.

So she gave it to him.

Then she moved.

Leaving his arms was immediately, quietly unpleasant, which she chose not to acknowledge even internally for more than half a second. She climbed out of the bed with the same innate poise she brought to marble staircases and gala exits, though the effect was somewhat altered by the absence of clothes, the mussed state of her hair, and the fact that she was walking barefoot across his bedroom like she had some right to be there.

She did not hurry.

Did not cover herself.

Did not give embarrassment even the dignity of consideration.

The room was unfamiliar, but not hostile. A dresser stood against one wall, practical and unremarkable. Vivienne crossed to it, opened the top drawer with the calm entitlement of a woman who had once been invited into the private archives of men who did not realize she knew how to read what they kept hidden.

She found a shirt quickly.

Clean. Dark. Soft enough. Large enough to do what she needed it to do.

She lifted it between two fingers, inspected it for one second as if it had submitted itself for judgment, then folded it over her arm.

“This will do,” she said, as though granting mercy.

Then, before leaving the room, she glanced back at him.

Just once.

Not long enough to invite another delay, but long enough to make clear that the exit was not indifference. That she was still thinking about the bed, the kiss, the warmth she had just stepped away from, and perhaps—most irritatingly of all—him.

Only then did she leave the bedroom.

The bathroom was exactly as she had left it.

Small. Functional. Quiet.

And there, on the floor, was the dress.

Dark purple velvet pooled against the tile like a dead thing. Beautiful still, infuriatingly so. Charles’s chosen color. Charles’s symbolism. Charles’s daughter returned to form. A whole evening of obedience stitched into fabric and draped over her body until she had carried his mythology from the town car to the museum to the annex to the vault.

Now it lay discarded in Roman’s bathroom in Queens.

That was almost funny.

Almost.

Vivienne stood in the doorway for a moment and looked down at it.

No photographers now. No family procession. No careful maternal hand at her elbow. No father murmuring instructions beside her as if her face were public property.

Just velvet on tile.

A costume without a body.

Her expression did not change, but something in her chest tightened once and then released.

She stepped over it.

Not around it. Over.

The motion was small, but the satisfaction of it was not.

She set Roman’s shirt on the counter, then turned on the shower and let the water run until steam began to gather lightly against the mirror. In the blurred reflection, she caught only pieces of herself—hair undone, shoulders bare, eyes still sharper than the hour warranted.

She looked less like the woman Charles had sent into the museum.

Good.

Vivienne rested both hands lightly on the edge of the sink and let herself breathe.

A few minutes. That was all.

A shower. Coffee. Then the papers. Then the war.

The moment in the bed would have to be folded away somewhere private, alongside the other dangerous things she was not yet ready to name. It would not disappear. She knew that much. But it could wait. Like everything else she did not have time to feel properly.

Her gaze dropped once more to the dress on the floor.

Then she stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed.

Roman didn’t move right away.

He stayed where she’d left him—half propped against the pillows, the imprint of her still lingering in the sheets, the quiet of the room settling back in around the space she’d vacated like it wasn’t entirely convinced she was actually gone.

The last kiss sat with him longer than it should have.

Not because of heat. Not because of the way she’d leaned into him like she’d already made the decision and didn’t need to say it out loud.

Because of the restraint in it.

The choice.

That, more than anything she’d done all night, stuck.

He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his face once, then let his head fall back against the headboard with a faint, almost disbelieving huff of breath.

“Strong coffee,” he muttered to the empty room. “For my many character flaws.”

His mouth pulled at one corner.

Yeah. That tracked.

He listened to her move—bare feet on wood, the quiet shift of the drawer, the casual authority in the way she claimed space that wasn’t hers and made it look inevitable anyway. When she spoke again, dismissing the shirt with that same effortless judgment, his gaze flicked toward her just in time to catch the look she gave him before she left.

It wasn’t nothing.

And she knew it.

That was the problem with Vivienne Blackwell—she never gave anything she didn’t understand the weight of.

The bathroom door closed.

The apartment shifted.

Roman sat there another second, then swung his legs off the bed and stood. No rush. No scramble to follow. He’d learned that much already—push her, and she’d sharpen. Match her, and she stayed.

So he moved at his own pace.

By the time the shower turned on, he was halfway down the hall, grabbing his shirt from the floor and dragging it back over his shoulders without bothering to button it. The sound of water hitting tile filled the apartment, soft and steady, steam already starting to creep under the bathroom door.

Good.

She needed that.

Hell, so did he.

He stepped into the kitchen and went to work without thinking too much about it—coffee first, just like she’d ordered it. Strong. Dark. No ceremony. He didn’t bother with anything delicate. Grounds, water, heat. The smell started to build almost immediately, cutting through the leftover warmth of the night with something sharper, more grounding.

He leaned his hip against the counter while it brewed, running a hand through his hair, gaze drifting once toward the living room.

The papers were still there.

Untouched.

Exactly where they’d left them.

His expression shifted—subtle, but real. That weight hadn’t gone anywhere. It was just waiting. Like she said it would.

Like it always did.

He didn’t reach for them.

Not yet.

Instead, he grabbed a couple of mugs—mismatched, obviously—and set them on the counter. Opened the fridge, pulled out what he had, started moving through breakfast again with that same quiet efficiency. Nothing elaborate. Eggs, toast, something solid enough to put her back together before the day started asking things of her again.

Because it would.

He knew it.

She knew it.

That was coming whether they wanted it or not.

The water kept running.

Steam thickened.

Roman glanced once toward the bathroom door, then back to the stove, flipping the eggs with a practiced motion.

“Don’t drown in there,” he called out, voice carrying just enough to reach her through the water. “I’d hate to explain that one.”

A beat.

“And you’re getting black coffee. No milk. You don’t strike me as someone who compromises that early in the day.”

The corner of his mouth pulled again, faint and private.

He plated the food, set it on the counter, poured the coffee just as it finished—dark, strong, exactly the way she’d asked for it—and leaned back against the edge of the counter, arms folding loosely as he waited.

Not impatient.

Just there.

Listening to the water run, the apartment waking slowly around them, the quiet holding steady for one more stretch before the rest of the world came back for them.

And for a second—just a second—Roman let himself feel it.

The fact that she was here.

Still here.

That she hadn’t run.

That she’d stepped over that dress instead of picking it up.

His jaw tightened faintly, something quieter and more complicated settling in his chest before he pushed it down where it belonged.

Because yeah.

This was going to get messy.

He already knew that.

But when the bathroom door opened again—

He’d be right where she left him.

Roman let the quiet stretch just a little longer.

Long enough to finish what he was doing. Long enough to give her the space she’d taken without immediately following it like he didn’t trust her to come back.

But the sound of the shower—steady, warm, constant—kept pulling at his attention.

Not in a distracted way.

In a deliberate one.

He poured the coffee, set everything in place, then stood there for a second with his hands braced lightly against the counter, thinking it through in that same calm, measured way he did everything else.

She hadn’t shut him out.

She’d stepped away.

There was a difference.

His mouth tipped faintly at one corner.

Yeah.

He could work with that.

Roman pushed off the counter and moved down the hall, unhurried. No hesitation, no second-guessing, just that same quiet certainty in his stride. By the time he reached the bathroom door, steam had already started to curl out from the edges.

He knocked once.

Not loud. Just enough.

Then opened it.

The room was hazy with heat, mirror half-fogged, water running in a steady curtain behind the shower curtain. He stepped inside like he belonged there—which, at this point, he did—and shut the door behind him.

There was a brief pause.

Just enough to make the moment intentional.

Then Roman reached for the hem of his shirt, dragged it off over his head, and let it drop somewhere near the sink without looking. No rush, no show of it—just the same efficient, unbothered movements she’d already seen from him everywhere else.

He stepped closer to the shower, hand coming up to push the curtain back just enough to look in.

His eyes found her immediately.

They always did.

There was a flicker there—appreciation, sure, but steadier than that. More grounded. Like he was taking her in, not just looking at her.

Then, because he knew exactly who he was dealing with, and exactly how far to push without tipping her back into that sharp-edged defense—

He tilted his head slightly, one brow lifting, voice low and just rough enough to carry through the steam.

“Tell me to get out,” he said, calm as anything, a thread of something cocky tucked under it, “and I’ll consider it.”

A beat.

His gaze didn’t move.

“But if you don’t…”

The corner of his mouth pulled, just barely.

“I’m getting in.”

No pressure. No reach.

Just the offer.

And the very clear intention behind it.

Vivienne stayed under the water longer than she intended.

At first, it was practical.

Steam. Heat. Pressure against the back of her neck. The kind of clean, steady sensation that gave her body something simple to understand after a night full of locked rooms, altered records, old bloodlines, and Roman’s hands teaching her an entirely separate category of complication.

Then it became something else.

She closed her eyes and let the water run over her hair, down her shoulders, along the places where the night still lived in her skin. For a few minutes, she did nothing. No strategy. No ordering facts into usable shapes. No rehearsing what Charles would do when he realized the extent of what they had taken from him. No deciding how to speak to Eleanor, or Camille, or Genevieve, or Adrian, or anyone else whose entire life might now require reclassification.

Just water.

The past twenty-four hours moved through her anyway, because of course they did.

Roman on a sidewalk. Charles at the museum. Eleanor giving her time. Margot’s nervous face. The annex. The vault. East House opening its buried mouth. Her name where it did not belong. Her life, copied, corrected, and filed away by men who had apparently believed paper could make theft permanent.

And then Queens.

Roman’s apartment. His couch. His bed. His body warm behind hers when she woke.

That last part was precisely why she stayed under the water a little longer.

It was easier, under the shower, to pretend she was preparing herself. Easier to imagine that when she stepped out she would put him back at a safe and respectable distance. Not gone. Not dismissed. That would have been impossible now, and she had never been fond of lying to herself when the lie lacked elegance. But contained. Managed. Repositioned somewhere less dangerous than the soft center of the morning.

She reached blindly for the shampoo and was immediately punished for optimism.

Two-in-one.

Vivienne opened one eye and looked at the bottle with quiet, intimate betrayal.

“Of course,” she muttered under the rush of water.

There was no audience for the offense, which was almost a shame. It deserved one.

She used it anyway, because she had survived worse indignities in the last twelve hours, though few so personally insulting to her standards. It smelled clean enough. Functional. Entirely without ambition. Her expensive shampoo and conditioner were miles away in an apartment that, at the moment, felt less like home and more like a museum exhibit curated by a hostile version of herself.

The true travesty came next.

Bar soap.

And a washcloth.

Vivienne stared at them for half a second with the grave stillness of a woman confronting institutional decline at a domestic scale.

There were limits to what a person could endure.

Apparently, she was discovering them in Queens.

Still, she made do. Carefully. Thoroughly. With as much dignity as one could maintain while using a square of cloth that had never once aspired to luxury. She was not as clean as she preferred to be. Not by her standards. But she felt better. More human. More alert. Less like her body still belonged to the night before in fragments.

By the time she rinsed the last of the soap away, she had begun assembling herself again.

Not completely.

That would take longer than one shower and criminally inadequate hair care.

But enough.

She would get out. Put on the shirt she had taken. Drink the coffee he had made. Sit at the table. Open the papers. Keep her voice level. Keep Roman at enough distance that whatever softness had slipped through in the bed could be treated as a private anomaly rather than a developing pattern.

Reasonable.

Survivable.

Then came the knock.

Vivienne opened her eyes.

She did not answer.

The door opened a second later.

Not quickly. Not carelessly. There was no jolt of alarm in her, which said more than she intended to examine. She had known the door was unlocked. She could have turned the lock before stepping into the shower. Could have made the boundary explicit. Could have trusted that even if Roman knew how to get through almost any door, he would not force this one.

He would not.

That was the irritating part.

She had left it unlocked anyway.

Not an invitation, perhaps.

But certainly not a refusal.

Steam shifted as he entered. The room grew smaller at once, not from lack of space but from awareness. She heard the door close. Heard the slight change in the air as he moved. She remained where she was, water falling over her shoulders, her hands braced lightly against the tile, waiting.

When the curtain moved and he appeared at the edge of it, Vivienne turned her head and met his gaze.

The offer landed exactly where he had meant it to.

Not because it was subtle. It wasn’t. Roman was many things, but coy rarely numbered among them.

It landed because he still gave her the choice.

Even here. Even after last night. Even after waking tangled together with the kind of intimacy that made denial feel increasingly theatrical.

Tell him to get out, and he would consider it.

She hated how much she believed that.

Hated, too, how much less interested she was in telling him to leave than she ought to have been.

Vivienne let the water run for another beat, eyes steady on his through the steam. Then she gave him the sort of look that could have dismissed a junior board member, ended a donor conversation, or ruined an overconfident man’s morning.

With Roman, it only sharpened the space between them.

“Consider it?” she repeated, voice cool despite the heat curling around them. “How generous. I see your respect for authority continues to be decorative.”

Her gaze moved once over him—not rushed, not shy, not pretending indifference she did not feel—then returned to his face.

She was going to let him in.

They both knew that now.

Unfortunately for him, knowledge did not mean ease.

“If you are expecting gratitude for bringing yourself into my shower uninvited,” she said, “I would advise you to adjust your expectations downward.”

A small pause.

Her mouth curved faintly.

“And if you touch my hair before I have recovered from the violence of that two-in-one, I may actually become unpleasant.”

The warning was absurd. It was also, in its way, intimate.

Vivienne shifted back half a step beneath the spray, enough to make room without making the invitation look too gracious. The water sheeted over her shoulder as she turned, steam catching at her skin, the tile slick beneath her feet. She lifted one hand to push wet hair back from her face, watching him all the while.

“I did not lock the door,” she said at last.

The admission was quiet. Precise. More revealing than she would have preferred if she allowed herself to think about it too closely.

A beat.

“That should not be mistaken for permission to become smug.”

Then she drew the curtain back a little farther herself, just enough to remove the last pretense.

“Come in, then,” she said, with the composure of someone granting access to a private wing rather than a shower in a fourth-floor apartment in Queens.

Her eyes stayed on his.

“But do try to remember, Roman—”

A faint, dangerous softness touched the line of her mouth.

“I am still deciding how civilized I intend to be this morning.”

Roman didn’t move right away.

He watched her.

Steam curled between them, softening edges but not obscuring anything that mattered. She stood there like she always did—composed even under heat, control threaded through every line of her body, even now when the morning and the water and the night before should have left her less guarded than that.

And still—

She hadn’t locked the door.

That landed.

Not loudly. Not in a way he’d ever call out. But it settled somewhere low and certain all the same.

His gaze held hers as she spoke, took the edge of her tone, the warning, the faint curve of her mouth that never quite let him forget she was choosing every second of this. Even now. Especially now.

“Decorative respect,” he echoed lightly, one brow lifting as he stepped closer, unhurried, like the outcome had already been decided the second she shifted back to make room.

“Seems to be working out for me.”

There was a flicker of something quieter under it—amusement, sure, but steadier than that. Something that matched her pace instead of trying to outrun it.

He reached for the curtain where she’d drawn it back further, hand brushing the edge before stepping through into the heat with her.

The temperature hit him immediately—warm, close, the kind of space that forced proximity without apology. Water caught against his shoulders, ran down his chest in clean lines, grounding in a way the rest of the night hadn’t bothered to be.

Roman adjusted once, instinctively, shifting just enough so the spray hit him without crowding her, even though there wasn’t much room to begin with.

He didn’t touch her.

Not yet.

Instead, he dragged a hand back through his hair, pushing it out of his face, then looked at her again—really looked this time, no pretense left in it.

“Expectations adjusted,” he said, voice lower now under the sound of the water. “No gratitude required.”

A beat.

His gaze flicked briefly to her hair when she mentioned it, then back to her face, the corner of his mouth pulling faintly.

“But I’ll stay away from the crime scene,” he added, just enough dry humor threaded through it to acknowledge the warning without undercutting it.

He shifted slightly closer—not enough to crowd, just enough that the space between them changed. Warmer. Narrower. Intentional.

“You didn’t lock the door,” he said after a moment, quieter now, not pushing, not turning it into anything heavier than it needed to be.

Just stating it.

Then, because he knew her—because he’d learned enough in one night to understand exactly how far he could go without breaking the balance—

His hand came up slowly, deliberately, stopping just short of her arm. Close enough for heat, not yet contact.

“Still deciding how civilized you are,” he murmured, that same faint edge of something cocky threading back in, softer now, less about control and more about rhythm.

His eyes held hers.

“I’ll take my chances.”

And then—finally—his fingers brushed her arm.

Light.

Testing.

Waiting to see if she’d let him stay there.