“Me? You’re the one who put me on the bloody table!”

“And you’re the one who’s so sexy I forgot about, you know, physics and shit.” He ran a hand over her hair, down her spine, all the way to the swell of her arse. Which he then grabbed. “You okay?”

“Is this you checking for damage?”

He winked.

She sighed and pretended she wasn’t utterly thrilled by everything about this. But she was. She always was. Whenever they were together, whenever he touched her, all she could feel was happy.

Ick.

She looked over her shoulder at the drunken, three-legged table leaning against the floor. “Sorry about that. Should we—?”

“The only thing we should do right now,” he said firmly, “is go to bed.”

Dani hesitated, because—We. Bed. Hmm. For more sex, or for something . . . else? Clearly old habits died hard, because despite her best intentions, the idea of spending the night with someone she cared about for the first time in forever made her gut clench with nerves.

But that was silly. She was fearless. She was chasing joy. She shoved her apprehension into a box and tried not to notice that the lid wouldn’t quite lock.

Zaf must have caught her uncertainty, because he helped her to her feet with a solemn expression. “It’s very late, Danika. You can’t go home on your own.”

Laughter chased away the shadows in her chest. “Zaf, it’s barely seven o’clock.”

“You’re talking too much.” He scooped her up in his arms and carried her off to the bedroom.

And she let him.

It was dawn when Dani woke. For a moment, staring blearily across an expanse of deep blue pillow, she wasn’t quite sure where she was. Then, slowly, sensations trickled in: the weight of a heavy thigh slung over her waist. The slow dance of fingertips across the bare skin of her back.

“Zaf,” she whispered into the churchlike silence.

His voice was low and sleep-roughened. “Good morning, Danika.”

The way he said her name, lazy and tender, made her smile into the pillow—but beneath that pleasure, a hint of panic flared. Deciding to be brave and getting swept up in the moment was one thing—but she hadn’t woken up beside another person in years, and she’d never wanted another person in quite the same way she wanted Zaf. Maybe she was overthinking things slightly, but . . . but she wasn’t entirely sure what was supposed to happen next, and fuck, she didn’t want to get anything horribly wrong.

Really, darling? You’re twisting yourself in knots over how to say good morning? The voice in her head sounded oddly like Gigi, and as always, Gigi was right. Dani’s worries were ridiculous. This was why she hated relationship bullshit: it turned her into an uncertain, alien mess.

“Did you sleep okay?” Zaf asked, as if all this was normal—and the sweet familiarity of his voice almost made it so. Almost.

“Yes,” she said, because it was true. “Did you?” The answer seemed to matter more than it should, but then, everything mattered more than it should with Zaf.

“Yeah. I sleep pretty well ever since you gave me that charm. And I think you wore me out last night.”

The way that made her smile was sickening. Sickening! But she couldn’t quite stop.

Then Zaf asked softly, “Will you look at me?” His soothing, barely there touch on her back faded away.

“Of course I will!” Dani rolled over so fast that she got tangled in the sheets like a blushing duvet sausage. But it didn’t matter, because she thought she’d heard something like trepidation in his voice, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want anything bad or sad for him, not even if it meant maintaining her own comfort. Which seemed a disturbing and potentially dangerous outlook, but she’d worry about that some other time.

Fortunately, Zaf didn’t look upset by the time she faced him. In fact, he was clearly trying not to laugh. “Did you know you hog the sheets?”

“Shut up,” she muttered. God, he was even handsome first thing in the morning, which was both pleasing and extremely irritating. The shy dawn light suited him, making his brown skin glow. His bedhead was incredibly sexy, and the sleepy slowness of his eyes made her blood heat.

He ran a fingertip over the curve of her ear, his smile tiny and teasing. “So. We broke a couple rules.”

Don’t spend the night. Don’t catch feelings.

“Yes,” she murmured. “We did. But, in my defense, Inez Holly told me to.”

His fingertip’s journey stuttered to a stop, and he blinked. “What?”

“Er . . .” Hmm. That might have been a weird thing to say, mightn’t it? But then, she was weird, and she’d always been weird with Zaf, and he didn’t seem to mind, so she cleared her throat and continued. “Yesterday in the bathroom Inez Holly told me a key part of success is remembering to chase joy, so. Here we are.”

For a moment, Zaf looked so taken aback, she was worried she’d monumentally fucked up. Possibly by coming on way too strong. She’d been a little high on happiness yesterday, when she’d had her Zaf is joy moment, and now in the unforgiving morning light, it all seemed quite . . . embarrassing.

But then he gave her a slight, crooked smile, and the tension in her chest eased. “That’s—sweet,” he said. Then a teasing light entered his eyes, and he murmured, “Joy, huh?”

Dani blushed. “Whatever.” Definitely time to change the subject. Avoiding his gaze, she searched the room for another, safer topic and found one almost immediately.

“Oh my God,” she said, leaning over him to reach for the bedside table. “The infamous romance novels.”

Zaf snorted as she snatched up the book balanced next to his alarm clock. “I take it you didn’t notice the entire bookcase in my living room last night.”

“I didn’t make it to your living room last night,” she reminded him. “You fucked me on the table, you fucked me in the bed, you produced cheese on toast from somewhere—”

“The wonders of having a kitchen stocked with food instead of tea and plants,” he said dryly.

“And then we fell asleep.” She sat up and studied the glossy little book in her hands. A pair of scandalously attractive black people in old-timey clothes graced the cover, each looking slightly pained by the intensity of their undying love. “Tempest,” she murmured, running her fingers over the title font. “Are you reading this right now?”

“Almost done.”

“What’s it about?”

He lay back and gave her a lazy smile. “If you want to know, I’ll buy you a copy. No spoilers.”

“Except for the happy ending.”

He laughed. “That’s not a spoiler. That’s a safety net.”

Dani paused, the words catching at something in her mind. “A safety net. You know, you never did tell me—why do you read these books, Zaf? How did you start?”

His smile softened into something older, sadder. “Because after Dad and Zain died, I was clinically depressed for three years, and then my sister-in-law told me I was scaring her and threw a Harlequin Romance at my head. After she left, I wanted to find her and say sorry, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. So I picked up the book and started reading it. And . . .”

He trailed off, and Dani’s heart stuttered, threatened to shatter. “Zaf,” she whispered. There was an ache to his words, old, but no less powerful for it. She set the book aside and lay back, rolling over to hold him whether he’d asked for it or not. Because she knew this man, and the look in his eyes told her that he had more to share, but couldn’t do it without a little help. When she rested her head on his chest, he relaxed as if he’d been waiting for her.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice rough.

“You apologize unnecessarily,” she told him, and turned to meet his eyes. “I know you put a lot of stock in the fact that you’re ‘better’ now. That you handle things. That you cope. But coping takes a lot out of a person, too. And handling things doesn’t mean never struggling or slipping up. Life isn’t that black-and-white, not even close. So I want you to do or say or feel whatever the fuck you like, about everything, but especially about this. And I never want you to tell me you’re sorry for feeling things. Not ever again.”

With every word she spoke—or rather, every word that some higher power tugged unwillingly from her mouth—Zaf’s gaze softened, and the tension she felt thrumming through his body trickled away. He looked at her with something tender in his eyes, and Dani knew she should regret the emotional honesty she’d just spewed all over him—but she didn’t. Not if it made him smile like that. Not if it made him breathe a little easier. She didn’t.

Which was mildly terrifying.