Before we could leave, Smoke stepped out of shadow as if the room had been folded over him. Butch was a slab behind him, arms folded, eyes like cut stone.
“Tariq Hunt,” Smoke said, the air shifting with the words. “Sanaa. It’s done. The heat, the hit, the men who thought they could test me through you—gone. You’re clear.”
“And if it loops back?” I asked, not because I doubted him but because saying it aloud steadied something inside.
“It won’t.” He stepped close enough I could smell the expensive dark on him. “You’ve earned your peace, son. Don’t waste it.”
Then he was gone. Smoke didn’t exit a room like other men. He evaporated.
I looked around, spooked a bit by how he could come and go like some kind of vampire, but dealing with him, I knew digging into the answer would only disrupt the one thing we had now: peace.
Sanaa’s smile softened when the space settled again. She pulled my hand and guided me down a hallway I hadn’t even noticed—carpet thick underfoot, doors half-shadowed. She stopped in front of one slightly ajar, pushed it open, and we slipped inside. The room was a half-curated vault: canvases stacked, sculptures propped, dust motes moving like little planets. She locked the door with a soft click and turned to me.
“I want you,” she said, close enough that I felt the heat from her body.
“You have me,” I answered.
“No.” She stepped forward until our chests touched. “Now.”
The slit of her dress revealed the slick promise at her thigh. She pressed me to the wall—no hesitation—mouth finding minehard and hungry. Her hands found the button of my trousers like she’d been rehearsing this assault in private, and then she dropped to her knees.
She didn’t look away. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine, “I need to taste you.”
Warm and wet and holy, she took me in. Her mouth was everything: slow at first, learning the exact pressure that pushed me over the edge of reason, then deliberate—circles, suction, a hollowing that made my knees want to buckle. I braced my palm against the wall, one hand at the nape of her neck, holding and yielding at once.
“Fuck—Sanaa,” I breathed, and she answered me with a sound that vibrated straight into my bones.
When she stood, I didn’t waste a second. I grabbed her hips, turned her so the settee was low behind her, and lifted one leg, settling her against the cushion. I slid into her in one long, claiming thrust—slow enough to let the world rewrite itself around the sensation, hard enough to mark a line between then and now.
Her body folded over the settee, hands braced on the wall, and I found a rhythm that was half worship, half ownership. My hips drove, steady and sure; her breath came ragged, punctuated by cries that carried like the clink of glass. She met every stroke, driving her jiggling ass back, grinding into me when I pulled out, then pressing harder when I filled her again.
“You know how to make me come undone, woman,” I grunted between thrusts.
“It’s only fair,” she gasped, her voice hoarse and bright.
I changed the angle with a twist of my hips, fingers splayed across the small of her back to anchor her to me, and she screamed my name as I hit that place that made her eyes go white. The velvet under her knees slid; the light caught the sweatat the nape of her neck. When she clenched, I felt it through my core—hot, fierce, absolute—and it wrecked me.
“I can’t wait to marry you.”
“I’m already yours.”
The foundry held its old scar like a secret kept well. Exposed brick and blackened beams still remembered the blaze that had gutted the place in 2011, but those blackened ribs had been polished into a new kind of altar—custom lighting, curated installations, the ruin folded into an elegy for what can be remade. Sanaa had chosen it the moment she and Tariq first stepped inside months ago, fingers skimming scorched iron as if she could feel history thrum beneath her skin. The memory of that fire—what it took and what it gave back—sat in the room like a benediction. It was right. It was theirs.
She did not want a church or a garden. She wanted a cathedral of shadow and flame, a place that honored the way beauty can grow out of ruin. He wanted that for her. He wanted her happy—he wanted her whole.
Tariq waited at the altar in a black tux, the oxblood of his shirt bleeding quietly into the evening. Near his pocket a small onyx phoenix pin caught the light—sharp, private. The guest list was spare: their blood, a handful of friends, the people whose hands had steadied them after the smoke.
Then a low sound started on the street. Engine 8 rolled up slow, not an alarm but a steady, respectful arrival. A single piper stood on the sidewalk and played — plain, aching notes that cut through the foundry noise. The crew climbed down in dress blues, polished chrome catching the lights.
Tariq picked out faces immediately. There was Rawlings, older now but the same man who'd pulled him onto investigations years ago, and a couple of other firefighters he’d trained with at that first station. They fell into formation, fists to their hearts. For a moment his expression softened — gratitude and something like relief moving through him — then he squared his shoulders and looked forward. The last note from the pipes hung in the air like a small benediction.
Sanaa wore black — of course she did. A gown of velvet and mesh, midnight with a deep maroon underlay that shimmered like blood in candlelight. The neckline dipped low. Her sleeves were sheer, ending in cuffs stitched with lace and jet beads. A long cathedral veil trailed behind her, studded with black crystals that caught every flicker of light. No bouquet. Just a ring of obsidian on one hand, a smell impression of a phoenix etched into it, gifted to her by a local artist.
Tariq forgot how to breathe.
She moved slowly, deliberately, as if the floor bowed for her. Her eyes never left his. They didn’t speak their vows aloud. Not to anyone else. Just to each other, whispered in low tones meant for no one but the other. And when the officiant — a woman Sanaa had worked with during an art initiative — said, “You may kiss the bride,” Tariq didn’t hesitate.
He kissed her like he’d waited all his life. Like he’d walk through flame again and again just to feel her mouth open to his.
