“How bad am I?” she asks.
I don’t want to tell her that when I saw her I didn’t understand how she was conscious…how she was able to get to her feet and walk out of that room on her own two feet. But she did.
“Alive,” I answer. “You’re fucking alive, and that’s everything.”
She huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh. Her hand drifts down my throat, over my chest, catching on cotton and the steady drum under it. I stay still and let her take inventory.
“You came for me.”
“We’ll always come for you.”
Her mouth finds the warm edge of my throat. Her tongue darts out and tastes, curious. Questing. My hand opens on her hip, fingers flexing, and waits.
“You found me. In that big, huge ocean…you found me. I knew you would.”
“We’ll always find you, Princess. We lo—” I stumble over the word, catch myself. “—we’ll always find you.”
She regards me gravely, then smiles, just a tiny hitch of her lips at the corner. “Yeah. I’ll always find you, too.”
She hooks two fingers in my shirt and tugs, a decision. I sit up enough to strip the shirt off and toss it aside. She slides with me, blanket slipping to her waist. My eyes stay on her face—watching for doubt, for a flinch, for any version ofno. She gives me the opposite: her palm flat to my sternum, then lower, then she pulls me between her knees like she’s done messing around.
Heat punches through me. “Phoenix.”
“Don’t make me say please,” she says, a bite in it I’ve missed, alive and sharp.
I cup her cheek, thumb brushing the taped scrape. “We stop whenever you want,” I say.
“I don’t want.” That’s pretty clear.
Removal of clothes gets clumsy. I pause at a particularly nasty bruise on her ribcage; she catches my wrist and squeezes. “Keep going.”
“Where are you,” I ask, meaning headspace.
“Right here.” She fists a hand in my hair and drags my mouth to hers. “With you.”
I make a sound that isn’t words and kiss her like I’ve been saving up for it—which I have. Control doesn’t leave me; it bows to this moment, to this woman. Her body answers like reality works better than fear—heat blooming, tension turning toward want. When I slide my hand under the soft waistband of the sweatpants Maverick left on the dresser, she lifts her hips to help.
When I push into her, I do it carefully but not timidly. She’s wet and welcoming, helping me shed any remaining doubts about her readiness, and I pull almost all the way out before driving hard back in.
She makes a sound, a little gasp caught in her throat, and loops her legs around my waist to drag me closer. The first sound she makes is that caught breath released; the second is my name, quiet and torn straight out of the center. I shudder like it hits bone.
“You feel me?” I ask, voice wrecked.
“I feel you. Fuck me harder.” She rolls her hips, rises to meet me and grind her cunt into my pelvis, and sets a lazy, filthy rhythm—half-asleep, fully chosen.
I follow it, mouth at her jaw, shoulder, the corner of her mouth, asking without words, taking only what she gives. When she slows to breathe, I slow. When she wants more, her nails press into my back and I give it—each thrust intentional, nothing like the rough hands she fought.
She holds my eyes when she crests, refuses to close them, lets me see the part of her that didn’t break. Pleasure rips through her and leaves everything looser, possible. I follow after, groaning into her cheek, shaking, and she palms the back of my neck and keeps me there like she’s reeling me back into a body I left hours ago.
We breathe. The room breathes.
I don’t move until she does. She shifts only to tuck herself in closer, her thigh over mine, face to my chest like she found an exact coordinate that calms her heart. I run my hand slowly over her spine—up, down—mindless. I kiss her hair.
Her lids slide down. Before sleep takes her, she tips her head and finds my mouth again, one more kiss, lazy and sure. “Stay,” she whispers.
“Always.” I hesitate, trying to be fair. “I expect the others will be in here soon, wanting to wrestle me for time.”
She smiles. “They can join us.”
