He lets go of my hair only to grab my hip, holding me still as he grinds against me, the thick head of his cock sliding between my folds until my heart is beating so hard I feel like I can’t breathe fast enough.
I try to hook a leg over his hip, but he gives a small, firm shake of his head, eyes burning. He lifts one finger to his lips.
Quiet.
I nod, heart banging against my ribs.
He slides his hand under my shirt, the heat of his palm skating up my stomach before he cups my breast. My nipple hardens instantly under his touch, nerve endings firing in bright, electric pulses against his big, rough hand.
Then he shifts lower, positions himself, and pushes in, slowly, stretching me open around every thick inch of him. A gasp escapes me, too loud, and he clamps his hand over my mouth, his eyes molten. His other hand stays locked on my hip, anchoring me.
He fucks me slowly, silently, grinding against my clit each time he drives in. Every stroke builds pressure that feels unbearable, too sharp and too sweet.
I’m unraveling in minutes, my body seizing around him, breath stuttering against his palm. I come hard, pulse after pulse rocking me, my vision going white.
Ryder’s face twists, like he’s in pain, and then he’s spilling inside me with a deep, choked groan muffled against the pillow. When he catches his breath, he presses his forehead to mine, hand still in my hair, pulling just enough to make my nerves spark again.
We stay like that for a long time, breathing hard, bodies fused, his hands cradling my head. Eventually his grip loosens. His brow softens. His eyes open, warm and dazed and adoring.
His cock softens and slips from me, wetness spreading between us, but he doesn’t pull away.
I brush my fingers over his bicep, then his cheek, and kiss him softly. We nuzzle, kiss again, blinking slow and stupid and happy.
Finally, I drift into sleep, inhaling the warm exhale of him, wrapped in the safest place I’ve ever known.
CHAPTER FIVE
AFTERNOON LIGHT SLANTS through the cabin windows, catching dust motes over the kitchen table where Jake is working. There’s no internet service anywhere near the cabin, but Jake, MIT graduate and professional hacker, is trying to jerry-rig a connection.
He’s hunched over a mess of cables and electronics that he and Damian bought in town this morning: a prepaid phone, a small drive the size of a deck of cards, a cheap router, and an aluminum antenna wired through the open window. At the center of the table sits a scuffed black tablet that Wyatt grabbed from the paint booth at the O.D. clubhouse. He says it belonged to Silas.
Damian leans over Jake’s shoulder as if he can make sense of what he’s doing, then snorts. “Black magic,” he mutters.
Jake doesn’t look up. “Anything but. I’m piggybacking the modem in this tablet,” he says, tapping the cracked screen of the tablet, “spoofing a new address, and bouncing the signal off a repeater over in town. Just physics, baby, not sorcery.”
“Lil’ genius.” Damian ruffles his fingers through Jake’s thick hair, making it stand up on end. Jake swats him away without tearing his eyes from the tablet, and Damian wanders into the living room where Wyatt is asleep in the recliner. He stretches out on the couch, throws an arm over his eyes, and sighs.
I’m trying to make myself useful, washing dishes and organizing the growing stock of canned and fresh food that Jake and Damian also picked up this morning. For a while, the only sound is the tinny clatter coming through the open window from outside, where Ryder is stringing a line of empty cans along the treeline, rigging a trip alarm from our recycling and a roll of fishing wire.
Jake’s focus is absolute, shoulders tight, breath held, and then, suddenly, he breaks the silence with a triumphant laugh. “Got it!” he calls out to no one in particular. “One bar, barely, but LTE’s bleeding in.”
From the couch, Damian calls, “Praise be to Saint Silicon,” and pushes to his feet. “It’s working?”
“It’s working,” says Jake, grinning. “Signal’s thin, but it’s real.”
I dry my hands on a towel and drift toward the table as Damian walks back in, curiosity lighting his face. Together we bend over Jake’s shoulder. On the tablet screen, a patchwork of windows flickers—several command prompts with scrolling code.
“Okay,” Jake says, excitement in his tone. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes of stable bandwidth before it drops. I can pull data in short bursts, cache it, scrub, and sift later. What do we need most?”
He glances up at Damian, then toward the living room where Wyatt is sleeping.
Damian leans toward the open window and calls, “Hey, Ryder! We’re live!”
A few seconds later there’s the crunch of boots on the porch, and the door swings open on a draft of cooler air. Ryder strides into the kitchen, hair knotted back, shirt sticking to the hard planes of his chest, a sheen of sweat on his neck. He doesn’tlook at me when he walks in. We’ve been acting like nothing happened since we woke up.
“Talk to me,” he says to Jake in his deep voice.
“Got a limited connection. I can mirror public feeds and scrape encrypted chatter, but we’ll need priorities.”
