You open your eyes and there she is — small-framed, warm-skinned, the sheet pooled somewhere around her ankles like it gave up trying to stay.

Morning light cuts across her body at an angle that feels almost unfair, catching the curve of her hip, the soft hollow beneath her ribs. She isn't posing so much as existing, which somehow makes it worse for your pulse.

She tilts her chin toward you with a lazy, unhurried look — the kind that asks nothing and offers everything. You're already wide awake.