Felicity was thinking about thread counts. Laying on her back, she scissored her legs lightly between the bedsheets, wriggling her toes. What was the mark of quality in a good set of sheets? 800 count? 1,200? 1,200 sounded like a lot. Maybe that was it.
These sheets were soft enough, but they were not black satin. In her mind's eye—and who was she kidding, she'd definitely imagined this before—his sheets were always black satin, silky and cool as water on her skin. It seemed like a billionaire sort of thing to own, black satin sheets. But these sheets were a crisp, silvery grey, utilitarian and impersonal, much like the rest of this bedroom, done up with a neatness bordering on spartan. She thought of her own sheets, cheerily striped in red and yellow, soft and faded with washing. Did he choose these with care, as she had her own, Googling "Egyptian cotton vs. Pima cotton" on her phone in the middle of the bedding aisle in Bed, Bath, & Beyond? She doubted it.
She picked at a seam with her fingernail. Her mind drifted to the weave of the fabric, bound together, warp and weft. She caught herself, her mouth kicking up at the corner. Thread count. Of course. This is what her brain always did, confronted with a problem. It started from the bottom up. It began with something small and held it up for inspection, like a jewel to a shaft of sunlight, twisting it this way and that, examining it from all angles. Something momentous and overwhelming broken down to its smallest parts, so it could be rebuilt into a solution.
Problem: the Vigilante, coincidentally her boss, bleeding in the backseat of her car; solution: consider first the damage to the upholstery and the bounds of her lease.
Problem: Oliver Queen, CEO, strong-arming her out of IT and into a position as his assistant; solution: set down the rules for the delivery of coffee.
And now this. Certainly this was not an earthquake, gunshots over the comms, a mob boss' annoyingly well-encrypted cell phone, the heart-stopping sight of the Arrow, wounded, stumbling into the Foundry, jaw clenched tight against the pain, bleeding all over the stainless steel. Those had definitely been capital-P Problems. Even so, here she was, her head busy churning at thread counts.
This . . . this was a different kind of momentous and overwhelming.
This was Oliver Queen.
Survivor. Boss. Liar.
Friend. Hero. Partner.
Lover.
Lover. Her mind stumbled on the label, even as it supplied it. Lover, her body insisted, cataloging the tingling of her swollen lips, the stubble burn on the delicate skin of her thighs, the tenderness between her legs, the scent of musk and sweat cooled on her skin.
Yeah, that was a new one.
So. A problem? Maybe.
Overwhelming? Oh, definitely.
Solution?
Solution? Her train of thought fizzled and spun out. She took a steadying breath, told herself not to be a baby, and rolled her head to the side.
He was there, of course. He lay with his head pillowed on his arm, looking at her from a foot away with that sober, unblinking stare of his. His face was schooled into an impassive blank. She'd seen that look before. It was an Arrow look, a hunter's gaze, steady and watchful.
She cut her gaze from his before she let herself read what was in his eyes. That way lay danger. Instead, she studied the stubble along his jaw, the small scar near the hollow of his throat (oh she had, she had definitely licked the sweat that had pooled there), the amazing breadth of his shoulders, the muscular expanse of his chest, rising and falling gently with his breathing.
She looked at his hand, his fingers curled upon the mattress between them. She knew, better than most, that his hands held the power to destroy. She'd seen them balled in anger, clenched with frustration; seen them loose arrows with unflinching precision. But she'd also seen those hands tend wounds, offer comfort, save lives.
She found herself staring at the elegant shape of his fingers, the bluntly cut nails, and felt a sudden, intense swoop of desire. Now she knew what they felt like fisted in her hair, skating gently across her collarbone, digging into the flesh of her hips.
"Felicity."
She looked up at him. God, he had stupidly long eyelashes.
The direction of her thoughts must have read in her face, because his eyes had softened and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Ogling: busted.
He reached out to her, smoothing the hair back from her temple. He traced his thumb along her cheekbone and down the line of her jaw, urging her chin up. She met his eyes.
"Hey," he said, softly. "You okay?"
She turned to her side to face him fully. The open tenderness in his look was almost too much to bear. She felt it rush along her blood, felt it rubbing raw deep in her chest. She was teetering at the edge of a precipice, about to tumble over. It scared her, how easy it would be to fall. She didn't know if she would survive it. But she could not back away.
"I was just wondering . . . do you know the thread count of these sheets?"
He huffed out a breath, the ghost of a laugh, but his eyes were serious and intent on hers. "Felicity." There was a command in it this time.
She knew what he wanted from her, but how was she supposed to put to words the feeling that she lived on the knife's edge now? That whatever trembling shield she had held up between her and the terror that lay waiting for him—for them—had been ripped away? That she was worried that maybe that thin shred of professional detachment was the only thing keeping her sane and functional and able to go down to the Foundry night after night, and now it was gone. And if she lost him now . . . what then?
She settled for a shadow of the truth. "I'm just freaking out a little. Maybe a lot? It's hard to tell."
He released a slow breath and pulled her back against him, enfolding her in his arms. He was naked and warm, solid behind her.
"Okay," he said, his voice low, his breath hot against her ear. She could not tell if it was an acknowledgement, a reassurance, or a vow. If it was for her benefit, or his own.
He drew the sheet up over them and tightened his arms around her. "Okay," he said again.
There was fear and danger waiting for them in the dark. She knew it, and he knew it. But for tonight, she didn't need a solution. For tonight, this was enough.