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I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re unbearable.”

“I have done worse things on worse couches.”

I glanced down at the cushions beneath us. Blood had soaked into the fabric in a wide, ugly stain, dark at the center and smeared at the edges where we had moved. My “good girls read smut” blanket lay half under us, half on the floor, ruined in ways I refused to process until well after sunrise.

“My couch is never coming back from this.”

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

“You’ll buy me therapy.”

“No therapist is prepared for either of us.”

I snorted, then hissed, because my entire lower body had joined the conversation with a list of complaints.

“Succubus,” he said again, like the word tasted good. “I am having an excellent night.”

“If I fry your brain and you go comatose for three weeks, I’m not paying your hospital bills.”

He huffed a laugh. “If you fry my brain,” he said, “half this city collapses and the old houses start eating each other by dawn.”

“Comforting,” I muttered.

He chuckled again, then went quiet, just breathing with me.

“Powerless coffee girl, my ass.”

I woke up pressed against a bare chest.

For a second my brain thought pillow. Then the pillow breathed, slow and heavy, and my whole body went hot and cold at the same time.

Oh. Right.

Assassin.

Mask.

Blood.

You climbed him on your tiny couch like a lunatic after he collapsed at your door half dead.

I squeezed my eyes shut and asked myself a whole lot of questions, mainly, What the fuck is wrong with you?

Mid-morning light slipped through my crooked curtains and spread across the living room in weak gray stripes. It hit the back of the couch first. The cushions had dried darker in places, but fresh stains still shone near his side. There were handprints on the armrest. A smear across the wall beside the door.

He was still asleep somehow. Massive, warm, completely taking up my sofa. How we both fit on my couch probably broke some law of physics. One of his arms was under my neck, the other draped across my waist like he was still guarding me, even unconsciously.

My curiosity curb stomped my shame, and slowly, I lifted my hand, trying to nudge the mask up just a little. Just enough to see something. A cheekbone. A piece of his nose. Anything.

His hand shot up and caught my wrist.

I yelped.

“If you keep trying to do that, we’re going to have a problem, Liv,” he said, voice wrecked with sleep and so deep I felt it touch me.

I snorted. “I’m pretty sure you’re already a problem.”

His grip loosened but didn’t let go. His thumb slid over the inside of my wrist once, like he was reassuring himself I was really there.