DAMIEN'S POV
Tuesday we slept until eight, no alarm. I woke naturally and lay still and the apartment was quiet and Elara was asleep beside me with her hair across her face and her arm flung across my chest with the relaxed weight of someone completely at rest.
I didn't move.
Eight became eight-fifteen became eight-thirty.
She woke slowly, the way she woke when there was nowhere to be. First a small movement, then stillness, then her eyes opening and finding me already awake.
"How long," she said.
"Forty minutes."
"You should have woken me."
"We established on Sunday that you don't need protection from being awake. You also don't need protection from sleep."
She considered this. "Fair."
She stretched, the full-body stretch she did in the mornings that she was entirely unselfconsc
