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My throat tightens. “It wasn’t a real gift. I didn’t have anything.”

“You did,” he counters, still smiling like I’ve given him the world. “You gave meyou.”

And gods help me, I want to cry. I don’t, because I’m not that girl, but Ifeelit—deep and thick in my chest, the way his words burrow under my skin and plant themselves there like they’re meant to stay.

“I don’t know what you see in me,” I whisper.

He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses my knuckles, slow and unhurried. “Then you’ll just have to keep watching me until you figure it out.”

And when I look at him—I realize he’s not just pleased. He’smoved. Like I touched something inside him that doesn’t get touched often. Like maybe, just maybe, Iamenough.

He lowers our joined hands between us, thumb brushing mine. “Come here,” he says softly, not a command, not even a request—just the promise of safety, of something solid in a world still crumbling.

So I go.

His arms wrap around me with the same deliberate ease he does everything—with weight, with presence, with thisdevastating certainty like heknowswhat I need before I do. And maybe he does, the bastard. Because the moment I step into him, I forget how to breathe.

I’ve hugged the others—Elias with his weird, jittery limbs and mouth that won’t shut up, Silas like he’s going to pick me up and swing me in a circle while whispering the dumbest thing he can think of—but Orin?

Orin hugs like worship. Like gravity. Like he’s been waiting a thousand years for permission to hold me like this. Skin to skin. Breath to breath. The entire length of him pressed against me, and yes—he’s still naked, and yes—I’m absolutely shameless, because when a man looks like him and touches like this, youcop a feelor you’re a damn coward.

So I do. I slide my palms across his back, fingers skating lower, nails grazing over muscle that shouldn’t be this hard while he smells like sunlight and old magic and something almost edible. His chest is against mine, and I swear I feel his heart skip.

“You’re not going to pretend to be shy now, are you?” he murmurs above my ear, his mouth barely brushing the shell of it.

I squeeze his ass in response. A full, greedy, unapologetic handful. “You’re naked,” I whisper, even though he knows that damn well.

“I noticed.” His voice is dry, amused, andlow. The kind of low that vibrates through my chest. “And yet here you are. Arms around me. Eyes roaming. Hands very muchnotin appropriate places.”

I don’t let go. I have no shame left. “You complaining?”

He leans back, just enough to look down at me, and the grin he gives me could melt the fucking world. “If I start complaining,” he says, “you’ll know. I’ll be unconscious.”

“Noted.”

I don’t move. Neither does he. And maybe that’s the most dangerous part—how easy it feels to justexistin his space. Nopressure. No expectation. Just heat curling through the air, thick and hungry and laced with a kind of patience that only makes it worse.

He tilts his head, watching me. “Do you want me to cover up?”

“No.” It comes out too fast.

His grin deepens, smug and slow. “Didn’t think so.”

I roll my eyes, but my hands stay exactly where they are, my body greedy for the contact, for the momentary pause in a world that’s trying too damn hard to break me. And he lets me have it. Lets me hold him. Lets me steal just a little more of him before the others come looking.

“I like when you touch me,” he says, voice rougher now, quieter. “I like it more when youwantto.”

“I always want to.”

He nods like I’ve confirmed something he already knew. His hand slips up, brushing my hair back, his fingers tracing down the curve of my spine with the kind of reverence that turns my bones to ash.

“I’ll never take without permission, Luna,” he says, serious now, that heat simmering to something deeper, steadier. “But Iwilltake everything youoffer. So be careful what you give me.”

I meet his gaze. “What if I want to give you everything?”

His eyes go molten. “Then you’d better be ready for how much I’ll worship it.”

And gods help me, I might actually melt right here. But before I can say something reckless—or do something worse—he kisses my forehead, soft and maddening and so full of promise that my knees actually buckle.