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“You were pretending to sleep?” The words are full of frost.

But I see right through it.

“Yep. And it doesn’t matter because you called my name, thought about moving, but eventually you settled in.” I kiss her temple. “Because you like it when I hold you.”

“Newsflash, hot shot, I was trying to be considerate because you were sleeping!” She yanks at my arm, but I don’t loosen my hold. “And yeah, I get that most women may fall down and worship at the altar of Ace Ambrose, sex god, but I don’t.”

I chuckle, nip at her earlobe. “There’s that fire again.” I flick out my tongue. “I like it, same as I like that you think I’m a sex god. Hot shot I could do without, though.”

“You call me princess!”

“Because you’re so fucking beautiful, you remind me of one.”

Her lungs inflate on a rush. “Ace.”

It’s a whisper now, and I realize I’ve slid beneath the ice, braved the flames, and, just like this morning, I’m close to the woman she is under all of that.

Something that’s somehow even more beautiful.

But…she’s terrified.

I feel it in the way that she goes stiff, how her eyes skitter away from mine, and because…she’s trembling.

Not in anger or annoyance but from fear.

And I know I’ve pushed her far enough.

So I smooth my hand lightly up and down her side, ask softly, “What were you going to ask this morning?”

“What?”

Her voice is uneven, as though she’s on a boat in the middle of the ocean, one that’s being thrown side to side by huge ass waves.

Definitely beneath the ice, the fire.

“This morning you were going to ask me something. You said ‘Are you—?’ And then cut yourself off.” I inhale the scent of her hair. “What were you going to ask?”

Stiff.

Looking away.

And trembling.

I just wait.

And eventually she says, “I don’t think you want me to finish that.”

“Why?”

“You got pissed when I asked you on the stairs the day we arrived.”

I think back to the apartment, the plane ride, the sass and stress and attraction mixing with annoyance at having to go home, yearning for shit to be different…and then all the fucked-up reality that’s my family.

But in one thousand times magnification because I’d been away for a while and forgot what it could be like and my mom was trying to make it good and my dad was doing his shit where he tries to put her in her place.

So, for the life of me, I can’t remember what Violet asked me, or why it pissed me off.

“I was pissed about a lot of shit that day,” I murmur.