Page 60 of Noctis

I nearly… nearly smiled at that. I hid it by going back into the bedroom and stripping the sheets off the bed. I’d rather sleep on a bare mattress than in sheets that smelled of Tyler. Luckily, his alterations to the house hadn’t reached the airing cupboard, where I found a set of clean sheets.

Caligo watched me while I made the bed. I thought about asking for help, then decided that he’d done enough for one night. However he’d gone about it—and I had to accept some of the blame for failing to set clearer boundaries—he’d saved me months of stress.

“So this is home,” he eventually said.

“It’s my home, yeah.” I felt bad as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I sneaked a glance at him, but couldn’t tell whether I’d offended him. “It’s late and I’m tired. We can talk about everything else tomorrow.”

“Everything else?”

“Practical stuff. Obviously, I owe you.”

He tilted his head as though the idea merited serious consideration. “No, you don’t.”

“So if I said you couldn’t stay here, you’d be fine with that?”

“How would you stop me?”

Now, that was an excellent question. I pondered it while I tucked in the last corner of the sheet, the question hanging between us for too long to answer. Besides, there was only one, and we both knew it. Caligo could appear wherever he wanted. Therefore, there was no way to stop him from entering the house other than asking him not to, and I had no idea how effective that would be. He’d known Laura was scared, and he still hadn’t left her alone.

“Do you sleep?” I eventually asked.

“No.”

“Never?”

“I have no need of it.”

“Right.” I stripped off my clothes, Caligo’s eyes following every movement. I quickly climbed into bed before my cock could react to the way he was looking at me. “Well, I do unfortunately, and I’m shattered. So I have to sleep.”

“I’ll watch over you and keep you safe.”

I switched the lamp off, plumped the pillow, then rested my head on it and closed my eyes. “You’re going to have a very boring time if you plan on watching me sleep for hours.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Can I ask a favor?” I said into the darkness.

“Anything.”

Well, that was a loaded word. It made me regret not having something more substantial to wish for. “Can you stay out of my bed tonight?”

“Why?”

“Just… because.”

“You liked what I did to you.”

It would have been a lie to say I hadn’t. “Yeah, but… I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything. You… this situation… what Tyler did, and everything that happened tonight… It’s been a lot. I just need some space.”

“You want me to go away?”

Did I? He’d done that at the rehab facility for reasons he’d never disclosed, and I’d spent the entire time wondering where he was and why he’d gone. I suspected it had been to avoid the whole goodbye conversation because he’d known it wasn’t going to be a goodbye at all. “No. I don’t want you to go away. I just want to sleep tonight without any surprises.”

“Okay.”

I cracked one eye open, but couldn’t see him. The problem with accepting his agreement at face value was that he’d also agreed not to kill Tyler. Technically, he hadn’t. He had, however, found a gray area somewhere between not touching him and not killing him—a gray area that would no doubt have people asking questions about where Tyler’s injuries had come from. Caligo’s interpretation of my instructions had made the situation a lot more complicated than it needed to be. I didn’t want him finding a similar gray area in the definition of sex. “Promise me you won’t touch me.”

“I won’t touch you.”