The pool party had wound down in the way things do when enough people realize the beer is warm and the sun is gone. Anya had stayed in his towel until her fingers pruned, and then Dmitri had appeared beside her, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and said, "Come inside. You're shivering." She hadn't argued. Couldn't, really—her teeth were starting to chatter despite the humid evening air. He'd led her through the sliding glass door into a small apartment that smelled like takeout and laundry detergent, and pointed toward a hallway. "Bathroom's the second door. I'll find you something dry."

Now she stood in the doorway of his bedroom, wearing his shirt. It was an old band tee—she didn't recognize the logo, something Cyrillic and faded—and it hung past her thighs, the hem brushing the tops of her knees. The fabric was impossibly soft, worn thin from years of washing, and it smelled like him: fabric softener, something clean and woody, and underneath that, the warm salt of his skin. She'd taken off her bikini in the bathroom, wrung it out in the sink, and slipped the shirt over her head like armor. It was all she had on. No bra, no panties—her thong was still damp, so she'd left it in the sink. The shirt was long enough, she told herself. It covered everything. Barely.

His back was to her. He was bending over the bed, pulling back the rumpled comforter, adjusting a pillow with the kind of careful attention that made her chest ache. The overhead light caught the muscles shifting under his skin—broad shoulders, the curve of his spine, the way his waist tapered. Tattoos covered his arms and climbed his neck, dark ink that moved with him, stories she wanted to read. He had a towel slung low on his hips, and he was shirtless, still damp from the pool, and she couldn't breathe.

*He doesn't know*, she thought. *He has no idea I'm standing here like this.*

She should say something. Clear her throat. Let him know she was there. But her voice had lodged somewhere in her throat, tangled with the smell of his shirt and the sight of his back and the terrible, beautiful wanting that had been building for weeks. Months. Forever.

He turned.

The pillow forgotten, his hands still holding the edge of the comforter, he saw her. His eyes traveled down her body—down the shirt, past the hem, over her bare legs—and then snapped back up to her face. His jaw tightened. He let go of the comforter and ran a hand through his damp hair, pushing it back from his forehead.

"You look—" He stopped. The word hung between them, unfinished. His accent thickened, as it did when he was off-balance. "You look like you're borrowing my clothes."

It was such a Dmitri thing to say—understating the obvious, defusing the tension with something that wasn't quite a joke—that a laugh escaped her, high and nervous. "You said you'd find me something dry."

"I did." He gestured at the shirt, a flick of his wrist. "That's mine."

"I know." She felt heat creep up her neck, staining her cheeks. "It's… really soft."

He looked at her again, longer this time. His eyes lingered on the hem, on her bare thighs, and something shifted in his expression—a crack in the careful distance he kept. Then he blinked, and it was gone.

"You're still cold." It wasn't a question. He turned back to the bed and pulled the comforter down, revealing a fitted sheet that was rumpled from his nap earlier. "Come. Sit."

She didn't move. Her feet were glued to the threshold, her fingers gripping the doorframe like it was the only thing keeping her upright. "What about you?"

"I'll take the floor." He said it simply, like it was obvious, like he slept on the floor every night. He grabbed a pillow and tossed it onto the carpet, then reached for a folded blanket on his dresser. "I have an extra."

"No." The word came out before she could stop it, sharper than she'd intended. He looked up, surprised. She shook her head, stepped forward, and the hem of his shirt brushed her bare thighs, a whisper of fabric against skin. "No. You won't."

He straightened, the blanket still in his hands, his eyebrows lifting. "Anya—"

"It's your room. Your bed." She took another step, then another, until she was standing at the foot of the mattress. The carpet was soft under her bare feet. The room felt smaller up close, more intimate, filled with his presence. "I'm not going to make you sleep on the floor."

"You're not making me." He tossed the blanket back onto the dresser, a gesture of surrender. "I'm offering."

"And I'm saying no." She met his eyes, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them was thick, charged, full of things neither was saying. She could hear her own heartbeat, loud in her ears. "We can share."

The words hung there, naked, and she felt her face flood with heat again. *Share*. Like it was that simple. Like she hadn't just offered to share a bed with the boy who made her forget how to breathe.

Dmitri stared at her. His jaw worked, as if he were chewing on something he didn't want to swallow. Then he let out a breath—slow, controlled—and nodded. "Fine."

He moved past her, close enough that she caught the clean scent of his skin, and grabbed the other pillow off the bed. "I'll sleep on top of the covers."

"You don't have to—"

"I do." He cut her off, not sharply, but firmly. "You're in my shirt. In my bed. The least I can do is—" He stopped, shook his head. "I'll sleep on top."

Something in her chest loosened. Relief, maybe, or gratitude. He was giving her an out, a way to keep this from being too much. But underneath that was a small, stubborn disappointment that she crushed before it could bloom.

"Okay," she said, and her voice came out softer than she'd meant. "Okay."

He pulled back the covers on one side of the bed—the side closer to the door, she noticed, as if he were positioning himself between her and the exit—and gestured for her to get in. She climbed onto the mattress, the sheets cool against her bare legs, and pulled the comforter up to her chin. The pillow smelled like him, too. She buried her face in it for a second, inhaling, before she remembered herself and pulled back.

Dmitri walked around to the other side of the bed. He sat down on the edge, his back to her, and she watched the muscles in his shoulders tense as he reached for the lamp on the nightstand. The room went dark, except for a sliver of light from the hallway that slipped under the door.

She heard him lie down. Felt the mattress shift under his weight. He was on his back, she could tell from the sound of his breathing, and he was close—too close, and not close enough.

Silence stretched between them. The ceiling fan whirred overhead, pushing warm air around the room. Somewhere outside, a car passed, headlights sweeping across the wall before fading.

"Dmitri?" she whispered.

"Yeah?" His voice was low, rough, close in the dark.

"Thank you." She didn't know what she was thanking him for—the shirt, the bed, the way he'd looked at her like she was something precious. All of it. None of it.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then she felt his hand find hers under the covers, his fingers brushing against her knuckles, light and questioning.

"Anya." His thumb traced a slow circle on the back of her hand. "I don't know what this is."

Her heart stuttered. She turned her hand over, palm up, and his fingers laced through hers. "What do you mean?"

"This." He squeezed her hand, once, gently. "You. In my bed. In my clothes. I don't—" He stopped, and she heard him swallow. "I don't understand why I want you to stay."

The words hit her like a wave, warm and overwhelming. She turned her head on the pillow, trying to see his face in the dark. She could barely make out the outline of his jaw, the shadow of his profile.

"I want to stay," she said.

"I know." His thumb kept moving, slow and steady, tracing patterns on her skin. "That's what scares me."

She wanted to ask why. She wanted to tell him that she was scared too, that being close to him felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, willing herself to jump. But she didn't. She just held his hand, let her breathing slow to match his, and let the dark hold them both.

After a long while, his hand went slack in hers. She listened to his breathing even out, deepen, until she knew he was asleep. She didn't pull away. She stayed, her fingers still tangled with his, his shirt soft against her skin, and for the first time in weeks, the stutter in her chest went quiet.

She didn't mean to fall asleep. She'd told herself she wouldn't—that she'd stay awake, memorizing the weight of his hand in hers, the sound of his breathing, the way the moonlight painted stripes across the ceiling. But the warmth of his room, the softness of his pillow, the exhaustion of a day spent wanting and waiting and pretending—it pulled her under like a tide, gentle and inevitable.

The last thing she remembered was his thumb stilling against her knuckles. Then nothing. Just darkness, warm and safe, wrapped in the smell of him.

---

She surfaced slowly, drifting up from a dream she couldn't quite hold onto. The room was lighter now—pale gray light bleeding through the blinds, soft and muted. Morning. She felt it in the quality of the air, the stillness, the absence of traffic outside.

She was warm. Unusually warm. A solid weight pressed against her back, a line of heat running down her spine, her shoulders, her thighs. She blinked, disoriented, and felt the slow, deep rhythm of breathing behind her. Someone was there.

Dmitri.

The knowledge hit her like a wave, and she went perfectly still.

At some point during the night, the careful distance he'd built had collapsed. He was under the covers. His chest was pressed against her back—bare skin through the thin cotton of his shirt, warm and solid and real. She could feel the tuft of hair on his sternum, the hard plane of his stomach, the way his arm lay draped across her waist like it belonged there.

But that wasn't what made her breath catch.

His hand had wandered higher in the night. It was resting against her ribs, his palm curved over the side of her breast. Not groping, not squeezing—just there, heavy and possessive and intimate. As if his body had found its way to her while his mind slept, following some instinct he didn't know he had.

Her heart threw itself against her ribs. Oh God. Oh God, oh God—

She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think past the electric awareness of his skin against hers, his fingers curled around the swell of her chest, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Every nerve in her body was awake, screaming, don't move, don't wake him, let this last—

And then his fingers twitched.

A soft, unconscious pressure. His thumb brushed across the curve of her breast, a whisper of a touch through the old band tee. Her nipple tightened, responding before her brain could catch up, and a jolt of heat shot straight through her, pooling low in her stomach.

She bit her lip. Hard.

He shifted behind her, a deep, sleepy sound rumbling in his chest. His hand moved again, adjusting, settling—his fingers finding the shape of her more fully, cupping her breast with the casual intimacy of someone who had done it a thousand times. In his sleep, he didn't hesitate. There was no awkwardness, no second-guessing. His body just knew where to go.

She was going to die. Right here. In his bed. In his shirt. With his hand on her chest and his breath in her hair and the terrible, beautiful truth that he had no idea what he was doing to her.

He doesn't know, she thought, her fingers gripping the edge of the pillow. He's asleep. He doesn't know it's me. He thinks I'm—

But no. That couldn't be right. Who else would he dream about?

His thumb moved again, a slow, grazing circle across her nipple through the fabric, and a tiny sound escaped her throat—a half-moan, half-whimper that she couldn't suppress. The sound was so loud in the quiet room that she froze, certain it would wake him.

He stirred. His breathing changed, the rhythm stuttering for a moment before evening out again. His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer, her back flush against his chest. She felt him—all of him—the hard length of his body, the way his hips had settled against hers, the unmistakable evidence of his body's response to her closeness.

Her face burned. Her thighs pressed together, a reflexive answer to a question she didn't know how to ask.

She should move. She should slide out from under his arm, pretend she was still asleep, preserve the fiction that this hadn't happened. But her body wouldn't obey. It wanted to stay. It wanted to press back against him, to feel his hand move again, to know what it felt like when he touched her on purpose.

So she stayed. Still. Waiting. Her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.

Minutes passed. Or seconds. She couldn't tell. The light in the room grew a shade brighter. A bird started singing somewhere outside, a bright, oblivious sound. And slowly, she felt him surface—the shift from deep sleep to something lighter, the way his breathing changed, the subtle tension that entered his body as consciousness crept in.

He went still.

The exact moment he became aware of their position, she felt it. His arm, draped across her waist, grew rigid. His breath caught—a sharp, sudden intake that told her everything. He knew. He was awake. And he was realizing, with mounting horror, what his body had done while he slept.

She felt his hand flinch. His fingers, still curved around her breast, twitched as if to pull away—but he didn't. Not yet. Maybe he was frozen, like her. Maybe he was trying to process. Maybe he was waiting for her to be asleep so he could extract himself without having to explain.

She decided, in that split second, to be brave.

She let her breath even out. Let her body go soft and heavy against him, the way it did in sleep. She played dead, waited, felt his heartbeat hammering against her spine as fast as her own.

"Anya."

His voice was a wreck—low, rough, barely a whisper. He said her name like it was a question he was terrified to ask.

She didn't answer. Let him think she was still asleep. Let him have a moment to decide what to do.

She felt him pull his hand away—slowly, carefully, as if he were disarming a bomb. His palm lifted from her chest, and the absence of his touch was so acute it was almost painful. He shifted behind her, the mattress creaking, and she felt the cold air rush in where his body had been.

"Fuck," he breathed. Soft. To himself.

She couldn't pretend anymore. She stirred, a soft noise in her throat, and rolled over to face him.

His face was right there. Inches away. His hazel eyes were wide, wild, caught between panic and something darker. His hair was disheveled, falling across his forehead, and his jaw was tight, clenched against whatever he was feeling. He was propped up on one elbow, the sheet bunched around his waist, his bare chest heaving slightly.

She saw the tattoos she'd only glimpsed before—the dark ink across his ribs, the script running down his sternum, the way they moved with his breathing. She saw the eyebrow piercing catching the morning light. She saw the vulnerability in his eyes, the fear, the desperate need to explain.

"Good morning," she said. Her voice came out soft, sleepy, unguarded.

He stared at her. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"I didn't—" He stopped. Ran a hand over his face. His voice was wrecked. "I don't know when I—I was asleep. I didn't mean to—"

"Dmitri." She said his name gently, and he stopped. She reached out, her fingers brushing his wrist—the first time she had touched him on purpose since they'd woken up. "I know."

He looked at her hand on his skin like he didn't understand what it was. Then his eyes found hers, searching.

"I touched you." His voice was flat, accusing. Pointing at himself. "In your sleep. I—"

"You were asleep too."

"That doesn't—" He shook his head. "That's not—"

"I didn't mind."

The words hung in the air, naked, and she felt her face flood with heat. But she didn't take them back. She held his gaze, let him see that she meant it.

Something shifted in his expression. The panic receded, replaced by something she couldn't read. He looked at her for a long moment, and she saw the exact moment he processed what she'd said.

"You didn't mind." He repeated the words slowly, testing them.

She shook her head. Her voice was barely a whisper. "No."

He swallowed. She watched his throat move, watched the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand was gripping the sheet like it was the only thing keeping him grounded.

"Anya, I—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I don't know what to do with that."

She could have backed down. Could have laughed it off, made a joke, given him an out. But she was tired of pretending. Tired of the careful distance, the friendly touches, the lies she told herself about what this was.

"Maybe you don't have to do anything," she said. "Maybe you just have to let it be true."

He stared at her. His eyes dropped to her lips, lingered for a breathless second, then snapped back up to her face.

"You're in my shirt," he said. It wasn't what she expected. It was almost a deflection. But his voice was thick, rough, and he said it like it meant something.

"I know."

"You slept in my bed."

"I know."

"And I—" He stopped. Couldn't finish.

She reached out again, her fingers brushing his cheek. He went still, frozen under her touch. His skin was warm, rough with morning stubble, and she felt the slight tremor that ran through him at the contact.

"I know," she said again. Softer. "And I'm still here."

He closed his eyes. Let out a breath that seemed to carry the weight of everything he'd been holding back. When he opened them again, something had changed—a crack in the careful distance, a glimpse of the hunger he'd been hiding.

"You should know," he said, his voice low, accent thickening, "that I don't—I'm not good at this. At saying what I feel. At knowing what I want."

She smiled, small and trembling. "Me neither."

He looked at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, his hand came up—the same hand that had found her in the dark—and brushed a strand of hair from her face. His fingers lingered at her temple, tracing the curve of her cheekbone, featherlight.

"I dreamed about you," he said. "Last night. Before I—before I woke up."

Her breath caught. "What did you dream?"

He shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "I don't think I should tell you."

"Dmitri."

"It's too early." He let his hand fall, but he didn't pull away. He stayed close, his face still inches from hers, the morning light catching the gold in his eyes. "And I haven't had coffee yet."

A laugh escaped her, high and surprised. "You're using coffee as an excuse?"

"I'm using it as a delay." His voice was rough, but there was warmth in it now—a teasing edge that made her chest ache. "I need time to figure out how to tell you without scaring you off."

She looked at him, at this impossible boy who had stumbled into her life and turned it inside out. The boy who thought her stuttering was interesting. Who gave her his towel and his shirt and his bed. Who touched her in his sleep like his body knew her before his mind caught up.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said.

He held her gaze. The air between them was thick, charged, full of things neither was saying. She watched his eyes drop to her lips again, and this time, he didn't look away.

"Anya."

"Yes?"

He leaned in. A fraction of an inch. A whisper of movement that made her heart stop.

And then he stopped. His forehead touched hers, a gentle pressure, his breath warm on her lips.

"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. Quiet. Raw. "But I don't want you to leave."

She closed her eyes. Let herself feel the closeness of him—his breath, his warmth, the solid weight of his presence.

"I'm not going anywhere," she repeated.

He let out a shaky breath. His hand found hers under the sheet, fingers lacing together, and for a long moment, neither of them spoke. The bird sang outside. The light grew brighter. And Anya stayed exactly where she was, wrapped in his shirt and his heat and the beautiful, terrifying truth that something between them had shifted forever.