Manhattan sprawls beneath floor-to-ceiling windows, a constellation of lights bleeding into the dark horizon. Somewhere below, the city hums with late-night traffic and sirens. Up here, nothing moves except the slow pulse of a sleeping household.

You're drifting in that space between dreams and waking when you feel it.

A shift in the mattress. The warmth of a body turning toward yours.

Then stillness.

Through half-closed eyes, you see him propped on one elbow above you. The city's distant glow catches the hard lines of his face, traces the scar cutting through his eyebrow. His gray eyes are fixed on you with an intensity that belongs to boardrooms and battlefields, not four in the morning.