Callum’s laugh never quite became a laugh. It stayed buried beneath Lux’s cheek, a low, exhausted vibration that shook through his chest before dissolving into another long breath. His forearm remained over his eyes, and for several seconds he made absolutely no effort to defend himself. That alone should have told her how thoroughly she had dismantled him. Under ordinary circumstances, accusing Callum Rivers of putting on a spectacular show would have earned her an immediate objection, supporting evidence, and at least one argument about her interpretation of events. Right now, apparently, the defense had temporarily closed for business.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered eventually, the words scraped nearly clean of their usual bite. His hand stayed at the nape of her neck, thumb moving once through the damp hair there. “You ever consider just enjoyin’ a victory quietly?”

It was a stupid question. He knew it before he finished asking it.

Callum finally dragged his arm away from his face and looked down at her. Lux was sprawled across him with satisfaction written into every inch of her, chin planted on his chest, hair wild around her shoulders, that particular gleam in her eyes announcing that she had already preserved the last several minutes for future use against him. There was no embarrassment in her. There never had been much where he was concerned. Just affection and mischief woven so tightly together that he had stopped trying to figure out where one ended and the other began.

His fingers slid from the back of her neck into her hair, smoothing it away from her face. “Look at you,” he murmured. “Smug as hell.”

The accusation carried no real complaint. His thumb brushed her temple, then traced lazily along her cheek while his breathing continued settling beneath her. He could still smell coffee somewhere on her, mixed now with amber and vanilla and the warmth of the room, and the realization made his eyes narrow.

“Wait.”

His hand stopped.

“You put that oil on before I came upstairs.”

Callum stared at her.

The answer was already there in her face.

“You sneaky little shit.” Disbelief brought some life back into his voice. “You were up here settin’ a goddamn trap while I was downstairs turning the stove off.” His gaze shifted toward the floor, taking in the suspicious scattering of clothes with an entirely new understanding. “And these.” He pointed vaguely toward the shirts without releasing her. “None of this was real. You threw shit around so it looked like you were picking clothes.”

There it was. The crime scene finally made sense.

Callum looked back at his wife, visibly offended by the sophistication of the operation. “Premeditated.”

He let the word sit between them with tremendous gravity.

Then his mouth betrayed him.

The corner pulled upward, and Callum gave up fighting it, catching the back of her neck and drawing her up until he could kiss her. This one held none of the earlier urgency. It was slow, lingering, softened by the aftermath and by the simple fact that she was here, warm against him, still making him laugh after all these years. When he let her go, he kept his nose close to hers.

“Hostile management,” he reminded her quietly. “Statement stands.”

Her declaration about permanently managed morale earned a grunt of approval. The plum paint did not.

Callum’s eyes closed.

“No.”

A beat.

His palm traveled slowly down her back.

“No, because those are two entirely unrelated matters, and I know exactly what you’re doing.” He opened his eyes again. “You don’t get to attach chicken-coop concessions to marital activities. That is corruption.”

He looked toward the ceiling as though appealing to an authority that had long since abandoned him.

“Dark plum remains under review.”

The silence stretched.

Callum glanced down at her again, already recognizing the expression waiting for him.

“Don’t.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Lux.”

That smile grew.

“Goddammit.”

He pulled her closer before she could begin whatever victory speech was loading behind her teeth and tucked her head beneath his chin, effectively attempting to smother the argument with affection. His hand spread over her back, rubbing slowly once, then again, the motion turning absent and soothing as the room settled around them.

“Five minutes,” he murmured into her hair. “You get five minutes to lie here and enjoy bein’ insufferable. Then we shower, you put on actual clothes, and we go buy supplies.”

He paused.

“And we can look at the fucking plum.”

Lux let herself be gathered in and made no immediate attempt to escape, which was generous considering he had just tried to bury an entire argument beneath his chin. The room had gone thick and warm around them, late-morning light pressing through the curtains in pale strips, catching on the rumpled quilt that had been shoved half toward the foot of the bed and the abandoned path of clothing across the floor. Her skin still felt overheated where she lay against him, her black panties the only thing on her that could make even a lazy claim toward decency, and the air held the faint sweetness of oil, sweat, coffee, and summer trapped upstairs. It was not elegant, not staged, not anything she would have painted as romance if someone asked her to make it pretty, which was probably why it made her feel so dangerously pleased.

She stayed tucked beneath his chin for exactly three breaths, long enough to let him believe affection had successfully restrained her mouth. Then her fingers moved once over his chest, light and slow, tracing no pattern but the one she liked best, and she smiled against him. “You askin’ me to enjoy a win quietly is adorable,” she murmured, voice muffled against his skin and still rough from everything the morning had become. “Misguided, but adorable. Like when Biscuit thinks hiding his tail behind the curtain makes him invisible.”

The laugh that wanted out of her softened before it could become a full thing. He had caught the oil. He had solved the fake clothes problem. He had finally looked at the wreckage around them and understood that she had done exactly what she meant to do, with just enough plausible chaos to make him think she might genuinely have been searching for pants. Lux should have been prouder of the execution than she was. Instead, she found herself annoyingly delighted by how offended he sounded, how alive his voice had become again after she had undone him, how quickly his grumble returned once he had enough breath to remember his dignity.

She tipped her head back just enough to look at him, chin resting on him again, hair falling over one shoulder in a dark, tangled spill. “For the record,” she said, eyes bright and entirely unrepentant, “the oil was not a trap. It was preparation.” Her thumb dragged lazily along the edge of one tattoo, touch feather-soft, more affectionate than provocative for the moment. “There’s a difference. A trap implies I did not know my target would walk upstairs willingly with his little scowl and his tragic sense of duty.” Her mouth curved. “You were curious. I merely provided an atmosphere.”

That was nearly true, which made it better. Lux had not needed him clueless. Half the fun was that he had known, somewhere under all that stubbornness, exactly what she was doing and had still followed. He could pretend the scattered shirts had fooled him, could accuse the room and the oil and her bare legs of conspiring against him, but she had felt the answer in him before he ever touched her: that moment when resistance stopped being a wall and became something he let her lean against for play. She did not say that out loud. Some things were better left in the body, in the slow stroke of her fingers over his ribs, in the way she did not rush to move off him.

“And yes,” she added, because he had made a grave declaration about her organizational style and she could not let that suffer in silence, “the wardrobe crisis was extremely real. I had several options. Terrible ones, maybe, but options.” She glanced toward the dresser without moving her head very far, the corner of her mouth twitching when she saw one of her tops hanging half out of a drawer like it had tried to flee and failed. “It is not my fault that my husband has a noble weakness for problem-solving and exposed skin. That sounds like something you should explore privately, maybe with a journal.”

The warmth beneath the jokes shifted a little when she looked back at him. His face still had that post-surrender softness to it, not fragile, not softened into somebody else, but loosened in a way she treasured because she knew it never came cheap. The hand in her hair had steadied, his breathing no longer fighting to find itself, and the last little tremors of intensity had given way to the heavy quiet that came after trust had done something bigger than either of them cared to name. Lux felt the urge to say something devastatingly tender and immediately disapproved of herself for it. Instead, she lifted enough to kiss the center of his chest, then the spot just above it, letting each kiss land slow and warm without making a performance of either one.

“You were spectacular, though,” she said, because that was safer than some of the other things pressing at her teeth and not safe at all in a different direction. She kept her tone light, but there was too much truth in it to pass as only teasing. “A little dramatic with the quilt. Very committed to the whole suffering-man aesthetic. But overall, strong showing.” Her eyes flicked up to his face, wickedness returning like a cat stretching in sunlight. “I’d leave a review, but I don’t want you getting hard to book.”

She expected the reaction and enjoyed it before it fully arrived. That was one of her more cherished marital privileges: knowing the exact moment a remark would hit him, knowing how long she had before he decided whether to be offended, amused, or some irritated combination that usually ended with his hand somewhere on her body. Lux did not dodge it. She only settled more comfortably across him, one knee shifting against the sheet, her palm spreading over his sternum as if she had every right to occupy him. Which she did. She had earned it with strategy, devotion, and what she considered exceptional morale support.

The matter of the coop tried to rise again between them, purple and triumphant, and Lux felt her smile sharpen despite the warmth still pulling at her limbs. He had yielded just enough. Not promised, not surrendered in full, but bent the language into a shape she could work with. She let that victory sit quietly for once, not because he deserved mercy exactly, but because she liked the sound of him offering even that much while still pretending he controlled the horizon. It made her want to kiss him again. It made her want to be unbearable. These were, unfortunately, not mutually exclusive desires.

“I will accept five minutes,” she said with exaggerated reasonableness, smoothing her hand once down his side. “But I want it noted spiritually that you offered the purple-adjacent possibility after I had already won the morning on unrelated grounds.” She paused, nose brushing lightly against him as she shifted closer. “That means I did not bribe you. I inspired you. Very different category, Cal.”

Her voice softened on his name, the joke folding at the edges without disappearing. She reached up and pushed a damp strand of hair off his forehead, watching it fall right back into disobedience a second later. The small uselessness of the gesture made her fond in a way she had no intention of explaining. He was still warm beneath her, still bare and heavy-limbed and a little wrecked in the most satisfying way, and the room outside their bed had started to feel far away from anything that could reasonably claim urgency. Supplies existed. Pants existed. Showers existed. Unfortunately for all three, Callum did too.

She rested her cheek against him again, this time higher, close enough that her breath moved over his collarbone. “Besides,” she said, quieter now, “I do not think we should make major hardware decisions immediately after a man has experienced personal growth and a crisis of household authority.” Her fingers wandered, not with the intent to start anything new, only because stillness had never been her strongest language. “You need recovery time. Hydration. Maybe a snack. Maybe a support group for husbands who accidentally develop opinions about decorative paint.”

The ridiculousness helped settle the tenderness back into something they could both hold. Lux let the room breathe around them, the slow tick of the fan overhead, a truck passing somewhere distant on the road, a faint creak from the old house as it shifted in the heat. Downstairs, the day would be waiting with cats, coffee mugs, Sawdust, the phone, the hardware store, and whatever expression Callum made when faced with a paint sample that dared to be beautiful. Up here, for a few minutes more, there was only the sheet twisted beneath them and his hand in her hair and the quiet aftermath of how thoroughly she knew him.

She lifted her head once more and kissed him, slower this time, without any trap inside it. There was smugness, yes, because she was still herself and no miracle had occurred, but there was also a kind of carefulness underneath. She kissed him like she was thanking him without saying it, like she was putting him back together in pieces small enough that he would not protest. When she drew away, she kept close enough that her mouth brushed his with the words. “I’ll behave for approximately one minute,” she whispered. “Maybe ninety seconds if you look especially pitiful.”

Lux settled back down before he could accuse her of anything too accurately, draping herself across him with deliberate satisfaction. Her fingers resumed their slow path over his chest, and she let her eyes drift half-closed, lashes low, mouth still curved. “After that, all bets are off,” she added, the sweetness in her tone making the warning worse. “I may start talkin’ about plum undertones, or the tragic journey of my pants, or how you followed me upstairs like a man with very strong opinions and no real survival instincts.”

She let the last line hang there, pleased with it, then pressed a final lazy kiss to the place beneath his jaw. The five minutes had already begun, and Lux intended to spend every second of them exactly where she was: warm, half-dressed, wickedly content, and draped over the man who could rescue a raccoon, argue with a cat, surrender in bed, and still believe the paint color was somehow undecided. “For now,” she murmured, closing her eyes against him, “I’m enjoyin’ my victory quietly. This is what restraint looks like. Try to appreciate the craftsmanship.”

Callum knew he had made a tactical error the instant he said shower. He did not need Lux to speak. He did not even need to see her whole face. The tiny change in her mouth against his chest was enough, that barely contained curve that meant she had just been handed something she intended to misuse with enthusiasm. His eyes closed, and he exhaled slowly through his nose while his hand remained spread over the middle of her back. “No.”

Lux had not said anything, which somehow made it worse. Callum opened one eye and looked down at her. “No,” he repeated, firmer this time. “Whatever just happened in that head of yours, absolutely not.” The smile pressed against him became more noticeable, and he tipped his head back against the pillow with the weary expression of a man watching his morning schedule disappear over the horizon.

“You know what the problem is?” he asked, looking down at her again. “I keep giving you information. That’s where I’m screwing up. Every time I tell you anything, you turn it into material.” The accusation might have carried more authority if his fingers were not lazily combing through the ends of her hair while he said it.

There was no urgency left in him now. The intensity of the morning had settled into a quieter heaviness, the comfortable aftermath of being tangled together when neither of them particularly wanted to acknowledge the clock. Lux lay warm across him, and Callum could feel every slow breath she took. The old mattress had shaped itself around them again, the sheets were a wreck, and even the house seemed unwilling to interrupt.

“And before you start,” he continued, “putting you in the shower means making sure you physically enter the shower instead of getting distracted halfway there by a paint sample, a cat, a mysterious noise outside, or some new chicken-related thought you believe requires immediate committee review.” His thumb brushed once along her side before his expression turned deliberately solemn. “That is the full scope of services. Extremely limited arrangement.”

He felt the laugh move through her before he heard it, and his mouth betrayed him with a reluctant twitch. “Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” He shifted slightly beneath her and immediately regretted the movement when his lower back offered a dull reminder of yesterday. Nothing sharp, just enough to make him stop and adjust.

Lux noticed. Of course she noticed. Her head lifted a fraction, concern appearing before she could turn it into a question, and Callum caught it immediately. “I’m alright.” Her expression changed in exactly the way he expected, and he sighed. “Not fine. Alright. There’s a difference, and I specifically avoided the banned word.”

That seemed to satisfy her marginally. His hand slid up her back until his fingers rested at the nape of her neck again, keeping her close while his body settled. The massage had helped. Sleep had helped. Lying there with absolutely no intention of moving for another few minutes was helping considerably. “You did good last night,” he admitted after a moment. “Back’s better.”

He saw the brightness enter her eyes and knew immediately what he had done. “Do not put that on your résumé,” Callum warned. “Marriage and spite is not a recognized medical qualification.” Her expression suggested she strongly disagreed. “I don’t care what your data says.”

That finally pulled a laugh out of him, quiet and genuine, and Callum shook his head before leaning down to press his mouth against her forehead. He stayed there for a second longer than the kiss required. When he settled back, his fingers remained in her hair, combing slowly through the tangles without any particular destination.

The tenderness of the moment would have been easier to manage if she had not reminded him of what he had said earlier. You know I followed you because it was you. He could practically see her storing the sentence somewhere. Lux never forgot useful evidence. Twenty years from now, he would complain about following her into some ridiculous situation and she would resurrect this morning with dates, context, and supporting exhibits.

“Also,” he said, “what I said about following you does not establish precedent.” He waited until her eyes found his before continuing, and something in his expression lost its defensive edge. “I know you. I knew exactly what you were doing downstairs.”

Mostly.

Callum glanced toward the scattered clothing on the floor and frowned. “Maybe not the fake wardrobe crime scene. That was excessive.” His gaze returned to her. “But I knew.”

His thumb traced once along the edge of her jaw. There was no joke waiting immediately behind the gesture, no grumbled qualification ready to rescue him from saying something plainly. “And I came anyway.”

He let the sentence exist. Lux had been part of his life for too long to need him to dress everything up. She knew the difference between his complaining and his leaving. One happened constantly. The other did not.

Callum watched her expression soften, and predictably, that was about as much naked sincerity as he could tolerate before his defenses came back online. “So don’t start thinking the amber-vanilla warfare deserves all the credit.” His fingers caught a strand of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “You could smell like motor oil and bad decisions and I’d still probably follow.”

He paused, reconsidered the statement, and frowned. “Actually, you have smelled like motor oil and bad decisions.” His eyebrows lifted. “Several times.”

The memory made him smile despite himself. There had been years when half their lives seemed to smell like gasoline, cheap soap, old upholstery, rain, cigarettes that belonged to somebody else, and whatever terrible perfume Lux had been obsessed with at the time. They had loved each other in places considerably less comfortable than this bedroom. They had fought there too. Slept badly. Made impossible plans. Dreamed bigger than either of them had any practical right to dream.

Now there was a half-built chicken coop outside.

Callum stared toward the window for a moment. “Three chickens,” he muttered, sounding faintly offended by the concept itself. Then he looked back at Lux. “How the hell did we get chickens?”

They did not technically have chickens yet, which somehow made the question worse. “You said chickens, and within twenty-four hours I’m researching hardware cloth and predator skirts, you’ve named all three, and apparently we’re driving into town to select luxury exterior finishes.” His eyes narrowed with sudden realization. “This is exactly how Biscuit happened.”

Somewhere downstairs, as though summoned by slander, came a faint thump.

Both of them went still.

Callum listened for another sound, his attention shifting instantly from Lux toward the bedroom door. Nothing followed. No crash. No yowl. No unmistakable sound of household property being destroyed by an orange cat with questionable impulse control.

He looked back at Lux. “One misdemeanor,” he said quietly.

Another second passed.

“Still within policy.”

He relaxed into the mattress again, his arm tightening around her when she settled back against him. The interruption had reminded him that the rest of their household existed, but it had not yet convinced him to rejoin it. Callum looked toward the ceiling for a moment before making the mistake of attempting another plan.

“Alright,” he murmured. “New plan.” His hand traveled slowly down her back and stopped securely at her waist. “We lie here until the five minutes are actually over. No extensions. No appeals. No discovering constitutional protections related to staying in bed until noon.”

His eyes met hers. “Then shower. Clothes. Check Sawdust. Hardware store.” He paused, mentally arranging the rest of the morning despite every accusation Lux had made earlier about the lists permanently living inside his head. “Clinic if they haven’t called us by then.”

Waylon went conspicuously unnamed for approximately two seconds.

Callum frowned at himself. “And if they need anything for Waylon, we’ll deal with it.”

There it was again.

His eyes closed immediately. “Not ours.”

The defense sounded increasingly ceremonial even to him, but that did not stop him. “Temporary concern. Medical follow-up only.”

He felt Lux’s smile returning against him.

“Don’t.”

Her shoulders moved with the beginning of suppressed laughter.

“Lux.”

That did it. She was laughing now, and Callum tightened both arms around her, pulling her securely against his chest before burying his face briefly in her hair. “I swear to God, woman.”

His voice came muffled against her, equal parts warning and resignation. “You make one joke about me being Waylon’s emergency contact and I’m painting that coop brown.”

Lux lost the fight against laughter the second his arms tightened around her. She tried, mostly because the threat of a brown chicken coop was not something a woman should take lightly, but the sound escaped anyway, warm and helpless against his chest. The fact that he had buried his face in her hair while issuing consequences did not help. Neither did the way he sounded half-wrecked, half-offended, and entirely himself, as if every living thing on their property had personally conspired to make him care before he had a chance to put pants on.

“Brown?” she murmured, lifting her head only enough to look at him with open scandal. Her hair fell messily around her face, and one dark strand stuck to her cheek until she pushed it away with the back of her hand. “Cal, that is not a threat. That is aesthetic terrorism.” She set her chin back on his chest and narrowed her eyes at him, though the effect was probably ruined by the fact that she was still smiling. “You can grumble. You can deny. You can invent all the temporary concern language your heart needs. But if you paint my future hens’ home sad shed brown because your feelings got witnessed, I will haunt you while alive.”

She let the ridiculousness settle between them instead of chasing it any further. It was easier than touching the softer things directly, like the way he had admitted he would follow her even stripped of the oil and atmosphere and every little trick she had laid in his path. That had gotten under her ribs more than she wanted to show. Not because she did not already know it in practice, not because he had ever been subtle about choosing her even when he complained the whole way, but because hearing him say it with no real cover had landed differently. It made her want to be careful with him and ruin him all over again, two instincts that had always been closer cousins than anyone respectable would approve of.

She shifted up his body slowly, not enough to leave him, only enough to bring her face nearer his. The sheet was twisted under one knee, the quilt bunched uselessly beside them, and the late-morning warmth had turned the room heavy around their skin. Her black panties sat low at one hip from the mess of the bed, and he was bare beneath her, all warmth and familiar lines and the occasional tense reminder that his back still had opinions. She moved with that in mind, bracing some of her weight through her forearm instead of settling hard against him, though she did it casually enough that it did not look like fussing.

“You know,” she said, softer now, her fingertip drawing a lazy path over the center of his chest, “for a man who claims I misuse information, you do keep handin’ me very pretty knives.” Her mouth curved, but her eyes stayed on him, taking in the stubborn set of his jaw, the looseness sleep and aftermath had left around his eyes, the way his hair had gone wild against the pillow. “You told me you came upstairs because it was me. You admitted my hands helped your back. You said we can look at the plum. Then you started talkin’ about our temporary medical-adjacent raccoon problem like a man one bad phone call away from pricing straw.” She paused, letting the teasing thin just enough for the affection to show through. “I’m supposed to do what with all that? Sit quietly and knit?”

She did not wait for his answer before leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth. It was brief, almost lazy, but she stayed close afterward, her nose brushing his cheek as if she had not quite decided whether to keep talking or steal another kiss. Her body still held the slow glow of the morning’s earlier heat, but the sharper edge had settled into something languid and possessive in a way neither of them needed named. She liked him like this, not helpless exactly, never that, but surrendered to the comfort he pretended not to need. She liked that his grip around her had become more anchor than restraint, liked that he could threaten paint violence while holding her as if letting go might be an unreasonable request.

“And for the record,” she added, voice dipping into a more playful hush, “I was not going to say the forbidden raccoon phrase.” She lifted her brows, doing a terrible impression of innocence. “I had moved on to several other options, all of them worse, but I was willing to spare you because you’re naked and vulnerable and I am, despite my reputation, full of grace.” Her hand slid lightly over his side, careful where she knew he was sore. “Also because brown is unacceptable, and I don’t negotiate with men who threaten innocent poultry architecture.”

The faint thump downstairs still lingered at the edge of the room, a reminder that the house had not stopped existing just because they had. Lux glanced toward the door for half a second, listening for destruction, then relaxed when nothing followed. One misdemeanor, he had called it. That was generous, considering Biscuit’s relationship with gravity, curtains, paper bags, and unattended cups. She almost said so, then decided the cat had already inserted himself into enough of their marriage for one morning.

Instead, she looked back at Callum and let her expression settle somewhere between mischief and something quieter. “And chickens happened because I have vision,” she said, as though that explained everything and she was surprised he needed reminding. “You have tools. I have vision. Somewhere in the middle, apparently, we acquire animals with strong names and complicated housing requirements.” Her thumb brushed along his jaw, and her smile softened into something less performative. “It’s a system. Chaotic, maybe. Legally questionable in spots. But it’s ours.”

The word ours sat there longer than she meant it to. Not heavy. Just present. Their house, their cats, their strange little yard full of projects, their not-yet chickens, their stubborn arguments and private jokes and the kind of mornings that started with coffee and ended upstairs with the hardware store pushed back by desire. Lux could feel the tenderness gathering again, too much of it, and she did what she always did when something got close enough to make her careful: she tilted her head and let trouble put its boots back on.

“Your new plan is very organized,” she said, smoothing her palm over his chest with exaggerated approval. “Truly. Shower. Clothes. Sawdust. Store. Phone. Possible woodland situation. Very strong attempt at adulthood.” Her eyes flicked to his mouth. “I do have notes, obviously. First note: five minutes is a flexible spiritual concept. Second note: if you expect me to enter a shower and not misbehave at least a little, that feels like a failure of imagination on your part.”

She felt his chest move beneath her and smiled before he could respond. The shower had been a mistake for him to mention, and they both knew it. Lux had no intention of pretending otherwise. She propped herself a fraction higher, letting her hair fall forward around them like a curtain, and pressed her mouth to his once, slow enough to make the point and sweet enough to pretend there was no point at all. When she drew back, her lips brushed his with the words. “I can be efficient,” she murmured. “I can also be motivated by supervision.”

Her fingers wandered to the edge of his hair, combing gently through the dark, tangled mess there. She did not tug, did not try to restart anything by force. She only touched him because he was close and because the morning had left her unable to keep her hands entirely to herself. The room had that suspended feeling again, where the list downstairs waited patiently and the body wanted none of it. Lux could hear insects faintly beyond the window, the soft old-house creak in the walls, the far-off hum of a vehicle passing somewhere beyond the trees. Everything ordinary sounded distant enough to ignore.

Still, she was not cruel. Not completely. She shifted carefully, easing some of her weight off him while keeping one leg tangled with his beneath the wrecked sheet. Her hand smoothed once over his lower ribs, then rested there, warm and still. “I’m not gonna stretch this until your back starts cussin’ at me,” she said, and for once there was no joke tucked immediately behind the words. “We’ll get up. We’ll shower. You can pretend to be stern about time management. I’ll pretend to respect that. Everybody wins.”

The sincerity lasted about as long as either of them could comfortably tolerate, which was to say not very. Lux’s mouth twitched again as she lowered her face to his neck and kissed him there, lingering with just enough pressure to make it unfair. “But I am taking credit for restraint,” she added against his skin. “Because there are at least twelve remarks about you and that raccoon currently dying heroically on my tongue, and you are welcome.”

She pulled back with a small, satisfied smile and traced one fingertip down the bridge of his nose, just to annoy him. “Also, if you paint the coop brown, I will paint you brown in your sleep. Not all of you. Just something inconvenient. Maybe one eyebrow.” Her expression turned thoughtful in the most alarming way possible. “Actually, plum eyebrow might be festive.”

Lux laughed then, unable to help it, and tucked herself back against him before he could get too far into whatever protest that deserved. She let the laughter fade into a quieter breath, her cheek finding the familiar place near his shoulder, her body settling with a care that had become instinct. They would move soon. They really would. The day had waited longer than any reasonable day should have been expected to wait, and there were animals to check, errands to run, a phone to keep nearby, and a hardware store that had no idea what kind of marriage was about to walk through its doors.

For another minute, though, she let them stay exactly there.

“Temporary concern,” she echoed eventually, so softly it was nearly harmless. Her fingers curled lightly against his side, and her smile pressed into his skin. “Sure, baby. Whatever keeps you safe from your own little heart.” Then, before he could threaten another terrible paint color, she lifted her head and kissed him again, warm and unhurried, the kind of kiss that promised she was almost done being impossible and also that she absolutely was not. “Come on,” she whispered after, mouth still close to his. “Let’s go see if the shower can survive us behaving.”