His whole body goes rigid, back arching off the bed, and I feel him pulse inside me — hot and deep and claiming. The sensation tips me over the edge with him, my orgasm crashing through me in waves that leave me shaking, clenching around him, crying out his name like it's the only word I know.
We fall together. Collapse together. His arms circle around me, pulling me down against his chest, and I can feel his heart hammering beneath my cheek — wild and erratic, matching my own.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. We just breathe, tangled together, skin on skin, and I realize that for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m wrapped up with a dangerous man and there’s a smile on my face.
The thought flashes through my mind:how long until this one turns my smile into tears? Are these arms around me safety, or are they a cage like the last time?
“Something wrong?” Breaker says, his eyes searching mine.
I smile and shake my head. “Nothing at all.”
Chapter Seventeen
Breaker
I wake to warmth. Soft breathing. The faint scent of vanilla and apples.
For a minute, I don’t move.
Riley is curled against me, one hand resting over my ribs like she belongs there, like she’s always been there. Sunlight filters through the curtains, softening everything it touches — the sheets, her hair, the edges of all the sharp places inside me.
And I feel something I haven’t felt in years.
Peace.
Real, bone-deep peace.
The kind that makes me exhale like I can finally rest.
And then — just as fast — the fear hits.
Suddenly I'm smelling blood and smoke. Instead of her breathing, I hear gunshots and screams.
A cold, crawling dread sinks its teeth into the back of my throat.
This is exactly how it always happens.
Right before everything goes sideways — before the ambush, before the explosion, before the screaming.
Peace is the warning.
Calm is the omen.
Happiness is the thing the universe gives you right before it guts you.
I stare at Riley’s sleeping face, and the fear gets worse.
Because everything in me aches to protect her.
And everything in me believes I’ll fail. The only thing that happens to the people I love who I keep close to me is that they die, or those that live end up wishing they’d died.
Except for Viper. He seems to be the only one who survived being close to me and only carries scars on the outside. How, I’ll never fucking know, and he’d never fucking tell me.
My chest goes tight all at once, ribs cinched with bailing wire and panic. I move before I can think about it, untangling from the covers and Riley’s body with the surgical skill of a bomb tech on his last wire. I don’t want to wake her, and I can’t stand the idea of her seeing this — the tremor in my hands, the pulse drilling in my neck, the jump-cut look in my eye I’ve seen in every mirror since the war.
I fumble a glass off the dresser, half-full of water, a stale afterthought from the night before. I drink some and stare at the closed bedroom door, listening for signs that Riley’s not stirring. Nothing but her breathing, steady and slow with sleep.
I need to move, need to be somewhere else, not in a room where the woman I would kill or die for could wake up and see me with my armor cracked and my insides showing.
