“I didn’t want this,” she whispers. Voice cracking. “I didn’t want to drag anyone else into my mess. I just wanted to do the right thing. I just wanted?—”
“You did.” I press my lips to her temple. “And you’re not dragging me anywhere. I carried you in here. I locked the door behind us. I put my hands on you. My mouth on you. My cock inside you. That was my choice. Every fucking second of it.”
She shudders against me. Fingers digging into my shoulders. “I’m scared,” she admits. So quiet I almost miss it over the wind.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to lose this.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “I don’t want to loseyou.” The words land like a fist to the sternum. It steals my air, and cracks something open inside my chest I didn’t know was still sealed shut.
I pull back just enough to cup her face in both hands. Thumbs brushing away the tears tracking down her cheeks. “You won’t,” I say. And it’s not a promise. It’s a fact. Carved into bone. “You hear me? You’re not losing me. Not to a storm. Not to some suit in a black SUV. Not to anything. This—” I rock my hips once, just enough for her to feel how hard I still am for her, how much my body still wants her even in the middle of this conversation—“this isn’t temporary. This isn’t convenient. This is mine now. You’re mine now. And I protect what’s mine.”
Her breath catches again. Different this time. Not fear. Something hotter. Hungrier. She leans in, forehead pressing to mine. “Then don’t let me go.”
“Never.”
Her mouth finds mine—soft at first, trembling—then harder. Needier. Like she’s trying to crawl inside me and stay there.
I kiss her back the same way. Desperate. Claiming. Hands sliding under the flannel to grip her bare hips, pulling her tighter against me until there’s nothing between us but heat and want and the pounding certainty that whatever comes next, we face it together.
She breaks the kiss long enough to whisper against my lips, “Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If they come… don’t be a hero. Don’t die for me.”
I smile against her mouth. Dark. Dangerous. “Sweetheart, I’m not dying for you. I’m living for you. And anyone who tries to take that away is gonna find out real quick how permanent that decision is.”
She shivers. Not from cold. Then she’s kissing me again—fiercer this time—and I’m lifting her, carrying her back toward the bedroom because words aren’t enough anymore.
The storm howls louder. The fire burns lower. But right here, right now, with her legs locked around my waist and her heartbeat thundering against mine?—
We’re untouchable.
And I’ll burn the whole damn mountain down before I let that change.
SIX
SABRINA
The bedroom is dim, lit only by the faint orange glow bleeding under the door from the living-room fire. Beck’s asleep again—deep this time, chest rising and falling in slow, even rhythm after we exhausted ourselves trying to outrun the fear with skin and sweat and whispered promises.
I should be asleep too. Instead I’m sitting on the edge of the mattress, knees drawn up, staring at my phone.
No signal, of course. Hasn’t been since the storm thickened. But I keep the screen on anyway, thumb hovering over the lock screen photo I haven’t changed in two years: me and my older brother, Ethan, arms slung around each other at the Seattle waterfront, both of us laughing like nothing could ever touch us.
Ethan.
The name alone makes my throat close.
I told Beck the truth—mostly. The files. The cooking books. The quit. The tail. What I left out—what I’ve never told anyone—was the reason I didn’t go straight to the authorities.
Because the person who hired the firm to cook those books?
Was my brother.
Ethan Hart. Golden-boy CFO. The one who taught me how to ride a bike, who stayed up with me the night our mom died, who promised he’d always protect me. The one who looked me in the eye six months ago and said, “Sabrina, I’m in deep. Help me cover it. Just this once. For family.”
I didn’t help him cover it.
