Her nails rake down my back. “Wyatt! I’m… I’m…”
“Hold on.” My forehead presses against hers. “I want to feel you come around me, baby. I want—God, I want?—”
I slide my hand between us, circling her clit in tight, steady strokes.
Sadie jerks and mewls, pressing her throbbing sex against my hand. “Oh! Wyatt!”
She breaks first.
Her pussy clamps around me, trembling, crying out my name like a prayer she wasn’t sure she’d ever get to say again.
And I’m fucking gone.
I bury myself in her, groaning into her throat, coming so hard the world blurs.
We stay like that—trembling, clinging, breathing each other’s air.
Her face is buried in my neck. My arms are locked around her like my body doesn’t trust reality yet.
“Wyatt?” she finally whispers, voice small and wrecked.
“Yeah, Dove?”
“I don’t ever want to be without you.”
My chest aches.
Not with the pain I used to carry. This is different. This is the kind that comes from having something to lose and choosing it anyway.
“You won’t be,” I promise. “Not for the rest of my life.”
She nods against me, soft and shaking.
I kiss the top of her head and say roughly, “Next time, sweetheart? We’re using the bed.”
Her broken laugh vibrates against my skin.
Her legs loosen from around my waist, but I don’t set her down right away.
Not until her breathing evens.
Not until the last of the fear leaves her muscles.
Not until I believe she’s really here.
I pace the same strip of floor while Sadie showers. My whole body feels wired wrong—too tight, too empty, too full of all the ways this day could’ve gone differently.
She’s home.
She’s alive.
She’s behind a thin wall and a locked door, and I still keep checking over my shoulder like Clarissa might step out of the shadows.
The shower cuts off.
Footsteps. A pause. The soft rasp of a towel on skin.
My chest eases a fraction.
