Chapter 5

"What do you think you are doing with those?"

Caius stood in the doorway of the master bathroom, drying his dark hair with a gray towel. He wore only a pair of loose black lounge pants, his broad chest and flat stomach bare under the dim amber bedroom lighting.

Elowen did not look up from the mattress. She shoved two heavy down pillows directly down the center line of the king sized bed, packing them tight against each other.

"I am building a border," she said, smoothing down the charcoal silk duvet on her side. "Your side is the left. My side is the right. Nobody crosses the middle."

"A pillow wall, Elowen? Truly?"

"Unless you have a second mattress hidden in the closet, yes, truly."

Caius tossed the small towel onto a nearby chair and walked over to the foot of the bed.

"This is not a middle school sleepover. You are a grown woman, and this is a seven foot wide custom mattress. There is plenty of space without turning the bed into a fortress."

"I do not care about the size of the mattress, Caius. I care about having boundaries." Elowen pulled back the duvet on the right side and climbed in, sitting with her legs crossed and her arms tightly folded over an oversized gray sleep shirt. "You kissed me on the registry steps today. You completely crossed the line."

Caius looked down at her, a slow, dangerous tilt touching the corner of his mouth.

"I saved you from getting trampled by twenty aggressive cameramen. And if I remember correctly, little baker, you did not pull away."

"I was in shock," she snapped, feeling the sudden, humiliating heat flood her cheeks. "The press got their picture. Your grandfather got his public proof. The circus is over for today, so stay on your side."

Caius held her gaze for three long seconds. The silence in the room felt heavy, loaded with the unspoken memory of how his mouth had felt on hers only hours ago.

"Fine," he murmured, his voice dropping into a quiet rumble. "Have it your way."

He walked around to the left side, clicked off the bedside lamp, and slipped under the heavy duvet.

The room plunged into near total darkness, illuminated only by the faint city glow cutting through the sheer floor to ceiling curtains.

Elowen lay down on her right side, her back turned firmly toward the center of the bed. She pulled the covers up to her collarbone, keeping her body rigid, every single muscle locked tight.

The silence between them was deafening.

She could hear the steady, slow cadence of Caius's breathing behind the wall of down pillows. Even with two feet of distance and a physical barrier between them, the heat radiating off his body seemed to fill the entire space under the sheets. It smelled like warm cedar, clean soap, and raw masculine power.

Ten minutes passed.

Then thirty.

Elowen squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to force her racing mind to shut down. Her thoughts spun from her ruined bakery to the massive diamond heavy on her left finger, and back to the way Caius’s hands had gripped her waist on the registry steps.

Beside her, Caius shifted.

The mattress dipped slightly under his heavy weight. The rustle of sheets sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet master suite.

"Go to sleep, Elowen," his deep voice cut through the dark, low and surprisingly raspy.

"I am trying," she whispered back, keeping her face buried in her pillow.

"You are breathing like you just ran a marathon."

"I am not used to sharing a room with a stranger."

"We are not strangers anymore. We have a marriage certificate in the study safe."

"That does not make us close, Caius."

"Keep telling yourself that."

Silence fell over the room again, thicker this time, heavy with an electric friction that refused to let either of them rest.

Hours seemed to drag by. Elowen watched the faint shadows shift across the ceiling, waiting for the exhaustion of the last seventy two hours to finally take over. Eventually, the steady sound of Caius’s deep, rhythmic breathing softened the sharp edges of her panic, and her heavy eyelids finally dragged shut.

She drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

A faint sliver of blue dawn was just beginning to creep through the glass when Elowen slowly began to wake.

The chill of the morning air had crept into the penthouse, but where she was lying felt completely, overwhelmingly warm. A heavy, solid weight rested across her ribs, pinning her securely in place.

Elowen went completely still.

Her eyes snapped open.

The wall of down pillows was completely gone, shoved haphazardly to the foot of the mattress.

She was no longer on the far right edge of the bed. She was pulled directly into the dead center.

Caius's thick, muscular arm was wrapped firmly around her waist, holding her locked tight against him. Her back was pressed flush against the broad, furnace heat of his bare chest, her head resting naturally in the hollow of his shoulder.

His slow, hot breath washed over the sensitive skin behind her ear with every deep inhale, and his large, heavy hand rested flat and possessive on her bare hip as though, even in sleep, he had decided she belonged exactly there.