Page 37

I wake up in someone else’s shirt, in a bed I don’t remember crawling into, with muscles that feel like I ran a marathon in my dreams. And for the first time in what might be years—I slept.

Actually slept. No tossing, no turning, no staring at the ceiling for hours while my brain runs every worst-case scenario on loop. Just darkness, warmth, and nothing.

I take a second to realize what that means.

Good orgasms.

Really good ones.

I smile before I even open my eyes.

A soft rustle sounds somewhere nearby. I crack one eye open to see Ragnar pulling on his dress shirt by the door, already dressed from the waist down. His hair sticks straight up. It dried funny after our very creative shower session. He’s moving quietly, like he doesn’t want to wake me.

Too late.

“What time is it?” I mumble, voice hoarse.

He startles slightly, then smiles. “Early. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I sit up slowly, wincing a little at the ache in my thighs. Totally worth it. “You didn’t. I think I’m just in shock. I never sleep. Like—never.”

“Maybe you should let me exhaust you more often.”

I shoot him a sleepy look and tug at the hem of the shirt I’m swimming in. His undershirt. It smells like him—clean and sun and a little like soap and salt.

“You put me to bed?”

He nods, a little sheepish. “You fell asleep before we were out of the bathroom. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

That… does something to my chest I don’t have words for.

He grabs his keys and wallet off my desk. “I just need to run home and feed Howl.”

I blink. “Howl?”

“Kat’s dog.”

Oh. Right. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah. I had a friend check on him for dinner and bed last night, but if I don’t show up this morning, he’ll tantrum and eat every sock I own.”

I grin. “Sounds like a menace.”

“He is,” Ragnar says fondly.

I hesitate. “Can I come?”

He pauses at the door. Turns back.

“I just—” I wave a hand vaguely upward, toward the rest of the house.

“My parents are probably waiting with coffee and veiled judgment.” There’s no way they didn’t notice my hasty departure last night, even if they haven’t clocked the redheaded goalie that made me see God.

“I’d rather hang out with a sock-eating menace. ”

And if we only get this one time, I’m not ready for it to end.

He studies me for a second. Then smiles.

“Yeah. Come on.”

I don’t know what I expected from Ragnar’s house.

Probably something sleek and sterile like Vic’s—one of those open-concept, professionally decorated McMansions in a gated community where the HOA mails passive-aggressive letters if your front hedge isn’t trimmed into the right shape.

Instead, we pull up to a small blue house with a cushioned porch swing and a crooked welcome mat that says

HOPE YOU LIKE DOG HAIR

The neighborhood is quiet and a little quirky—porches cluttered with pumpkins and scarecrows, one house already strung up with purple Halloween lights, another with a ten-foot skeleton holding a giant coffee cup and wearing a pair of mouse ears.

It’s perfect.

“Wait,” I say as we walk up the steps. “Do you give out candy on Halloween?”

Ragnar glances back at me. “What?”

“Do kids come by? Trick-or-treating? You must get a ton of them here.”

He looks genuinely confused. “Uh… I guess? I’m usually not home.”

“What?! That’s a crime.”

He frowns. “Missing Halloween?”

“Yes!” I say, laughing. “It’s the best holiday. Costumes, sugar, light trespassing. What’s not to love?”

He unlocks the door and lets me in. “We didn’t really do Halloween in Iceland.”

I pause just inside the threshold. “Really?”

“It’s not a big thing there. Some of the bigger cities have started doing the costume-and-candy thing, but it’s only gotten popular in the last decade or so.”

“Wow. Okay. So, this is where I tell you the entire history of Halloween. Buckle up.”

Ragnar ushers me across the front threshold and closes the door behind us. He leans against it, arms crossed, visibly amused.

“So,” I begin, already pacing. “It started as Samhain, right? Ancient Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and the start of winter. Supposedly, the veil between worlds got thin. People wore masks to confuse spirits, and—Ragnar, are you laughing at me?”

He shakes his head, but his mouth twitches.

“I think you’re cute when you ramble.”

I flush and point a finger at him. “You’re lucky I like you.”

He wraps his hand around mine, pulling me into the heat of his body. We’re close. So close, but not quite touching.

“Do you?”

The question hangs in the air between us. I pretend to study a little ceramic hedgehog on his entryway table. I want one for my windowsill. “Maybe?”

He watches me for another beat, then heads into the kitchen. I follow.

“My sister always liked ?skudagur better.”

“Wait. What’s that?”

“Ash Wednesday. In Iceland, kids dress up and go around to shops singing for candy.”

“That’s adorable.”

“She says she’s too old for it now, but she still keeps the costume box under her bed.”

He opens a door next to the fridge and hauls out the biggest bag of dog food I’ve ever seen. Pouring three measured scoops into a metal bowl. I wonder where this dog is. Shouldn’t he have flattened us at the door? I ask Ragnar, and he shrugs.

“Probably pouting,” he says, and shuts the pantry door.

I follow him through the house. It’s small—three bedrooms, I think—and full of warmth. Wood floors, mismatched furniture, a stack of cookbooks with no apparent order. There’s a wool blanket draped over the back of the couch and a dog toy shaped like a moose on the floor.

Howl comes barreling in the moment Ragnar opens his bedroom door. Big, white, gangly. Full of enthusiasm and absolutely no sense of personal space.

“Oh my God,” I say, kneeling down as he throws himself at me. “You didn’t tell me he was a celestial being.”

Ragnar snorts. “He’s a menace.”

“Howl, be honest,” I coo. “Do you flirt with all the girls your dad brings home?”

Ragnar raises an eyebrow. “You could just ask me, you know.”

I glance up from where I’m buried in fluffy fur. “Fine. Do you bring a lot of girls here?”

“No,” he says simply. “I don’t bring them here. Howl’s not a fan of strangers.”

I look down at the dog practically melting in my lap. “Could’ve fooled me.”

I try not to think too hard about how he didn’t say he doesn’t bring them anywhere.

I have no right to be jealous. Not when I’m the one who said no, no, no, and then about-faced to only one-night.

Did I expect this man to be celibate? It’s not like he’s brought anyone home since we kissed. Well, anyone but me.

“I should take Howl for a walk,” Ragnar says from the kitchen, filling a water bottle. “Want to come?”

It’s the kind of question that sounds casual. No pressure. Like we didn’t have the best sex of my life last night. Like I didn’t wake up in my bed in his t-shirt after he carried me there.

I should say no. I’m wearing shorts I scrounged from my overnight bag and a T-shirt with a faded festival logo across the chest. I didn’t brush my hair.

My glasses are probably smudged. And it’s chilly out.

Real Quarry Creek-in-the-morning chilly.

The kind that makes you wish for flannel and coffee and a long hug.

But I nod anyway. “Yeah. Sure.”

Because I’m weak. Because I like the way he looks at me and waits for me to respond. Because I want just a little more time before I have to shut the door on the night before.

I’m trying to play it cool, like my legs aren’t goose bumped and my brain isn’t still short-circuiting from waking up tangled in sheets that smelled like him.

Like I’m totally fine standing in the front entryway of his home with sleep-creased cheeks, zero caffeine, and a heartbeat that hasn’t calmed down since last night.

Howl’s circling us in happy, tail-thumping figure eights, the leash already clipped to his collar, excited for his walk. I crouch to pet him, but when I stand again, Ragnar’s gaze drops to my feet.

“Your shoe’s untied.”

“Oh,” I say, and bend down, but he’s already lowering himself to his knees right in front of me, and just like that, my brain short-circuits again.

His hands are sure and steady as he picks up the laces of my sneaker, looping and tightening them with a kind of reverent focus that makes my mouth go dry.

His head is down, red hair falling forward slightly, the muscles in his forearms flexing beneath his sleeves.

Like this is just something he does. Like it’s normal.

It’s not.

It’s intimate. Devastating.

And God help me, I like it.

Too much.

My thoughts get slippery and indecent before I can stop them. Because he’s been on his knees in front of me before—not only for footwear—and now my pulse is thudding against my ribs like a warning bell, because who gets turned on watching a man tie a shoe?

Me, apparently. I do.

I’m a sick puppy. Certified. Put me in obedience school and pray for my soul.

Howl noses between us like he knows exactly where my head’s at and disapproves. He huffs, then circles Ragnar once and bumps against my hip like he’s trying to herd me into something. Saving me from myself.

“Thanks,” I say, voice too breathy, too soft.

Ragnar glances up and my stomach flips. His eyes—clear and bright and unfair—lock onto mine, and for a second I forget what day it is. What season. What I said about this being just one night.

He finishes the bow, pats my knee, and rises in one fluid motion.

“You’re going to freeze,” he says simply, eyes skimming my bare legs.

I roll my shoulders like I don’t feel the chill creeping up my spine.

“I’m good.”

He doesn’t argue. Just disappears down the hall toward his bedroom, leaving me alone with his very judgmental dog and the echoes of every wildly inappropriate thought I’ve ever had about this man.

Howl noses my hand, then sits like a little sentry at my feet.

“Well,” I whisper. “Looks like your human’s determined to ruin me.”

Howl lets out a quiet woof. I take that as tacit agreement.