"Hey."
Her eyes were dark and warm and completely certain. "I love you."
Something in my chest expanded in a way I still hadn't gotten used to and didn't think I ever would.
"I love you, Anna-mine," I said. "More than I know how to say."
She smiled. "Then show me."
I sank into her slowly, giving her every inch one at a time, watching her face the whole way down. Her lips parted. Her head tipped back. Her nails found my shoulders and dug in asher walls closed around me, and I held still for a moment at the base of it just so we could both breathe.
"Okay," she whispered.
"Yeah," I said.
I started slow, deep rolls of my hips that kept us close and kept her feeling everything. She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me harder against her and I obliged, finding the angle that made her gasp and staying there, building it steady. There was none of the urgency from before, none of the stolen moments where we were always listening for someone at the door. It was just the two of us and the morning light and all the time in the world.
"Don't stop," she breathed against my jaw. "Don't you dare stop."
I had no intention of stopping.
Her nails raked down my back as I picked up the pace, our bodies moving together with the kind of ease that only came from knowing each other well, knowing exactly what the other needed. I pressed my face into her neck and felt her pulse hammering against my lips.
"Bee." Her voice was wrecked. "I'm going to?—"
"I know," I said. "Give it to me."
She came the second time with her face buried in my neck and her nails in my back and my name on her lips, and I followed her over a minute later with my forehead pressed against hers, both of us breathing hard in the quiet.
I rolled to my back and pulled her with me and she settled against my side with her head on my chest the way she always did, her fingers curling into my shirt.
Neither of us said anything for a long time.
"The windows are going to look better than before," I said eventually. "Ranger's guy does custom work."
She laughed, soft and real. "You're thinking about windows right now."
"I'm thinking about a lot of things."
She tipped her head up to look at me. "Like what?"
I looked down at her. Damp hair, sleepy eyes, the ghost of a smile still on her mouth.
"Like the fact that I'm not going anywhere," I said. "If that's all right with you."
She studied me for a moment with those sharp eyes that never missed anything. Then she settled her cheek back against my chest and pulled my arm tighter around her.
"Ask me again in ten years," she said. "I'll let you know."
I’d wait twenty. I pressed my mouth to the top of her head. "Fair enough."
Outside, the sun finished rising over Redd Valley, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like a morning worth waking up to.
EPILOGUE
BRUTUS
Five Months Later
