I exhale and kiss her forehead. “Thank you.”
She pulls back enough to look at him and see the truth in my eyes—this wasn’t just desire. It was everything. And I read the same truth in hers.
I brush her hair back gently. “Need to clean you up, sweetheart.”
I leave the bed and return a minute later with a warm washcloth. Sadie shivers as I run it gently over her swollen flesh.
“Sore?”
She flushes. “A little. In the best way.”
I ditch the cloth in the wash basket in the corner before returning to the bed and dropping a kiss on her swollen lips. “What do you need? Water? Food?”
She shakes her head and tugs me back into bed, pressing her naked body against me. “I just need this. You.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and tighten my arms around her.
Snow shifts outside the window, but in here, the world is warm and still.
Chapter 13
Wyatt
I wake first.
Sadie is asleep against my chest, one palm splayed over my chest above my heart, which she’s somehow managed to claim in less than two weeks.
I woke her in the night with my mouth between her thighs, licking and teasing her to another orgasm. Then she wrapped her fingers around my cock, slow and sure, and worked me until I broke apart in her hands.
She’s wrecked me. And remade me into something better.
I drink her in as she sleeps. She looks different. Not younger—that’s what people say when they don’t understand how living to survive works. She looksunguarded.The crease between her brows is gone. Her mouth is soft. My shirt is bunched at her shoulder because she stole it at some point in the night, and I let her. I’d let her take anything from me and call it a blessing.
I don’t move for a while. I just look and let all my hard edges unclench around this impossible, extraordinary woman.
I trace the air an inch above Sadie’s hair, not touching. If I touch, she might wake, and I want her to have this—ten more minutes where the world holds its breath and she doesn’t have to.
Ten turns to five when she does the small, instinctive flinch of someone whose body remembers danger. I speak before whatever memory is disturbing her peace can take hold.
“Morning,” I murmur. “You’re at the cabin. With me. Safe.”
She melts back into me, tipping her head back enough to see me. Sleep-warm eyes. A smile that makes my heart beat faster.
“Hi,” she says, voice rough with sleep. “You’re still here.”
“Planning a long campaign.” My mouth twitches. “Don’t think I’ll be leaving.”
Her smile blooms. “Okay.”
“How are you feeling?” The words “after last night” hang unspoken.
She flushes as she wriggles. “Sore, but worth it.”
I roll so she’s beneath me, my body pressed along the length of hers. “Loved last night with you. Loved hearing you moan as you came all over my mouth and my cock.”
Her cheeks blaze. “What can I say? My man is good with his mouth.” Her gaze flicks between us as I harden against her stomach. “And his… weapon was fully loaded.”
That earns her a grin. “You’re lucky I come with excellent aim,” I murmur, brushing my nose along the line of her throat. “And precision targeting.”
