"It's a terrible idea." I'm already settling more firmly against him. "We could fall."
"We could definitely fall." His arms tighten around me. "So really, the responsible thing to do is wait for daylight."
"Very responsible."
"I'm a responsible guy."
I laugh into his chest. "You're a guy who just fucked me three times on a cliff ledge."
"Responsibly." He presses a kiss to my hair. "I did it very responsibly."
We get dressed anyway—the cold is too biting to ignore, and hypothermia would be an embarrassing way to die after surviving everything else. But we stay tangled together, sharing body heat, my back against his chest and his arms wrapped around me like he's trying to absorb me into his skin.
The stars are impossibly bright. Without city lights to compete with, the Milky Way stretches across the sky like spilled milk, dense clusters of light I've never seen from Sacramento. The canyon below is silent now—no voices, no engines, nothing but the whisper of wind through pine trees far below.
"I used to come here to watch meteor showers," I murmur. "August, usually. The Perseids."
"By yourself?"
"Always by myself." I trace patterns on the back of his hand. "That was the point. No one to perform for. No one to manage. Just me and the stars and the rock."
"Sounds lonely."
"Sometimes. Mostly it felt like freedom." I pause. "This is better, though."
His arms tighten. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
We don't talk much after that. Don't need to. The silence is comfortable—the kind that comes after you've said the important things and don't need to fill the space with noise. Eventually, his breathing evens out, deepens. Asleep.
I stay awake a while longer, watching the stars wheel overhead, feeling his heartbeat against my back. Processing everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours. The cabin. The chase. The climb. Him.
Three times? I rest my head in my hand and can’t help the foolish grin filling my face. My first one-nighter ever, with a man sent to save me. A man who I know nothing about.
Maybe that was the point. Not knowing gave me the freedom to be my authentic self. Like when I first started climbing, taking something purely for myself.
This wasn't supposed to happen. None of it was supposed to happen. I was supposed to be a witness in protective custody, not a woman tangled up with a man who kills people for a living and makes her feel more alive than she's felt in years.
But here I am, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I close my eyes and let sleep take me.
TWELVE
Morning After
EVIE
I wake to birdsong.
The canyon is coming alive around us—the tentative chirps of dawn, the rustle of wings, the distant call of something larger moving through the trees below. The sky has shifted from black to deep blue, the first pale fingers of light reaching over the eastern ridge.
Jon is still asleep.
He looks different like this. The tension that lives in his jaw has eased, and the lines around his eyes have softened. One arm is still wrapped around me; the other has fallen to his side, palm up, fingers loosely curled. Vulnerable in a way he never lets himself be when he's awake.
I study him in the growing light. The scar through his eyebrow. Stubble darkening his jaw. The mouth that said such filthy, beautiful things to me in the dark.
Something stirs in my chest. Something warm and dangerous and entirely too real for a woman who's known this man for less than a day.
