Hal's shoulders tensed inside the hug, but he was too surprised to do anything but return it with intense awkwardness before pulling back into his own bubble.

This was a challenge too, even if he suspected he was being heavily manipulated. (Although with no ill intent.) He could have kept moving back, away from the reach of her hands, but he made himself stand in place. After a second the urge to straighten his appearance proved too strong an itch, but he'd done it. He'd let her in even as briefly as he had, and no great catastrophe had dropped out of the sky.

She reminded him of Katherine, the same spark and steel, and there hadn't been a woman like Katherine in over a century. She'd been--exceptional, and it wasn't lost on him that she'd also been a werewolf. "You did make the proposition rather irresistible," he pointed out as if he'd just made some marvelous deduction of logic. "I'd be loathe to disappoint a lady."