He kissed my forehead, soft and lingering. “Good.”
We sat on the couch, a tangle of limbs, sweat, and satisfaction. The sun had set, the room gone dim and quiet, but I’d never felt more at home. I didn’t care what the world thought. I had him. And that was all I needed.
We didn’t even try to get up for a long time. The two of us just sat there, sweat cooling and breathe still coming in ragged waves, the couch beneath us ruined but not as wrecked as we were.
I could feel the pulse of Ransom’s cock still twitching inside me, the heat of him searing my insides in the best way possible. My thighs ached. My ass was raw. My ribs complained about the weight, but I wouldn’t have moved if the house caught fire.
Eventually, he shifted, pulling me in closer. His hands didn’t stop roaming—up my back, down my arms, everywhere at once, as if he had to keep touching me or risk vanishing. I ran my fingers over his chest, tracing every tattoo I could reach, cataloguing them like the only map that mattered.
“Hey,” he said, voice a soft rumble in my ear.
“Yeah?”
He kissed the curve of my jaw, feather-light. “You meant it, right?”
“Meant what?”
“That you’re not letting me go. Ever.”
I laughed, but it stuck in my throat. “You really think you could get away from me?”
He grinned, teeth grazing my neck. “Not if you keep sitting on me like this.”
“Good,” I said, and ground down a little, just to prove a point.
He groaned, but the smile didn’t leave his face. “God, you’re a fucking menace.”
“I learned from the best.”
We stayed like that—sticky and tangled and half-naked, my head on his shoulder, his arms a vise around me. I felt like if I let go, even for a second, he’d disappear and I’d wake up back in that hospital, or worse, alone in my too-big, too-quiet house. I wasn’t about to risk it.
At some point, the exhaustion caught up to me. I dozed off right there, his heartbeat a slow thump under my ear, his breath warm against the top of my head. I dreamed of nothing, which was the best kind of sleep I’d had in years.
When I woke, it was to the feeling of Ransom’s hands on my body again, soft and gentle, like he was afraid to wake me but couldn’t help himself. I blinked and found him watching me, the look in his eyes so unguarded it made my chest hurt.
“What?” I said, voice sleep-rough.
He brushed my hair off my forehead. “Just making sure you’re real.”
“I could say the same.”
He laughed, the sound low and private. “You know you snore?”
“Bullshit.”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “Not bullshit. It’s cute.”
I snorted and tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let me. “Stay,” he murmured, and I did.
For the first time in a long, long time, I let someone else hold me. Not just for sex, or comfort, or because the world was on fire—but because I wanted it. Because I needed it.
We talked, a little, in the kind of lazy, half-drowsy way you do when there’s nothing pressing left to say. He told me about the first time he’d ever noticed me—at the county fair, six years ago, when I’d arrested his cousin for public urination behind the funnel cake stand. He said he’d thought I was the meanest bastard alive.
“I was right,” he added. “But also wrong.”
“Why wrong?”
He shrugged. “You care. Even when you don’t want to.”
