"You're mine," I say against her mouth. Not a question. Not a discussion. A fact, the way I stated it in Church, the way I stated it to the room.
She's mine and I'm hers and the whole fucking world can deal with it.
"Prove it," she says.
I push her underwear to the side.
She reaches between us and frees me from my jeans, and I'm inside her in one motion and the sound she makes—half gasp, half moan, her forehead dropping against mine—is the only thing I want to hear for the rest of my life.
She rides me. Slow at first, finding the rhythm, her hands on my shoulders and her eyes on mine.
No looking away. No closing her eyes.
She watches me while she moves, and I watch her, and there's something about the eye contact that makes this more intimate than anything we've done—more than the first time, more than the dresser.
This is two people choosing each other in real time, over and over, with every roll of her hips.
"I was scared tonight," she says. Her breath is unsteady, her hips never stopping. "While you were all out there."
"I know."
"Don't—don't make me wait like that again." She grips my shoulders harder, changes the angle, and both of us groan. "Don't make me sit in this house wondering if you're coming back."
"I'll always come back." My hands on her hips, guiding her, matching her rhythm. "Every time. I'll always come back to you."
She kisses me. Deep, desperate, her body tightening around me as the pace picks up. I pull her closer—as close as physics will allow, skin against skin, her heartbeat slamming against mine through the thin wall of our chests.
"Faster," I breathe against her mouth.
She gives me faster.
Her thighs tightening around me, her breath coming in short, broken gasps, her nails digging into my shoulders.
I slide my hand between us and find the spot that makes her fall apart, and I work it while she moves, and her head falls back and she says my name—not Coin, Colton—and the sound of it in her mouth while she's riding me undoes every lock I have left.
"Come for me," I tell her. My voice is wrecked. "Right here. Right now. Come for me, Leah."
She does.
She comes with a cry she tries to muffle against my neck and her whole body shaking in my lap, and I hold her hips downand push up into her and follow her over the edge—burying my face in her hair, holding her so tight I can feel her ribs expand with every breath, coming with her name on my lips and her heartbeat under my hands.
We stay like that. Connected, breathing hard, foreheads pressed together.
Her hands on my face, my hands on her back, the couch cushions probably ruined and neither of us caring.
"You came home," she whispers.
"I came home."
She kisses me once more. Soft this time. Tender.
The adrenaline version of us settling back into the real version.
The one that drinks coffee at the kitchen table and does homework with my kids and sits on the porch in the cold and talks about scars.
We clean up quietly—voices low, footsteps careful, checking the hallway before we move because Wrenleigh's room is fifteen feet away and getting caught half-dressed by my sixteen-year-old daughter is not how I want to end this night.
In bed, she curls against me.
