Page 72 of Brotan

He kisses me again, deeper this time, his body pressing mine against the door with delicious weight. "Bed," he growls against my mouth. "Now."

There's something perfect about this moment—the fading sunlight through curtains we picked together, the mingled scents of leather and wildflowers that follow us everywhere, the distant call of whippoorwills beginning their evening chorus outside our windows, the knowledge that whatever comes next, we'll face it side by side.

As Crow lifts me again, heading toward the bedroom with single-minded intent, I wrap my arms around his neck and hold tight.

"You know," I whisper against his ear, "they say home isn't a place. It's a feeling."

He pauses at the bedroom threshold, looking down at me with an expression that still takes my breath away—fierce protection layered over something deeper, something neither of us names but both feel.

"Then you're my home," he says simply. "The only one I've ever needed."

My fingers trace the scars along his chest, mapping the history that brought him to me. "Remember that night in New York? When you told me, I didn't know what I was getting into?"

His hand covers mine, pressing it against his heart. "I was wrong."

"We both were," I whisper. "About a lot of things."

In this moment, surrounded by his strength yet knowing the gentleness that lies beneath, I understand a fundamental truth that's been building since the night I first stitched him up in that New York ambulance:

We were never meant to fix each other. We already fit perfectly together.

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