"Good?" Low.
"So good." I roll my hips.
The pace he sets isn't slow. I match it, lift to meet him, my hands at his back pulling him deeper. He hooks my leg higher over his hip and fucks me at an angle that makes me dig my nails into his shoulders. His jaw is tight and he's watching my face and he doesn't look away, not when it gets loud, not when it gets to be a lot.
It gets to be a lot.
"Harder," I say.
He goes harder. The headboard meets the wall. I can feel everything, the drag and push of him, his hips snapping against mine, and I'm making sounds I don't recognize as mine and his jaw tightens every time I make one.
He gets his thumb on my clit, and I come. My back leaves the bed, both hands fisted at his shoulders, clenching around him while he keeps fucking me through it, steady, relentless, untilI'm shaking and oversensitive and grabbing his wrist, and he comes then too, driving deep, his face in my neck, my name in his mouth once, shuddering hard against me.
We stay like that for a moment, basking in the glow.
The storm is still going outside, slightly less aggressive than before. The generator hums.
"Your research saved the east side of town," he says eventually.
"I know." I press my face into his shoulder. "All those interviews I thought were just data collection."
His hand moves in my hair, slow and without thinking about it.
"Someone should read the whole thing," he says. "Not just Tara. Someone who makes decisions."
"I'm working on it."
"I know you are." His hand stills. "I mean — let me help. I know people on the business association. I know who sits on the valley infrastructure board." A pause. "Split the work."
I lift my head to look at him.
He's looking at the ceiling, but when I move he looks at me, and what's in his face is the look he had in the radiator gap before he turned back to the junction box, except this time he's not turning back.
"Okay," I say. "Yes."
Later, the storm easing outside. I have my hand on his chest and he has his hand over mine.
"Your research saved the east side of town," he says eventually.
"I know." I press my face into his shoulder. "All those interviews I thought were just data collection."
His hand moves in my hair, slow, easy. Outside the storm finishes.
six
Ross
I'matMurphy'sHardwarewhen Garrett MacKenzie comes to find me. He has the look he gets when something's happening that he thinks I should know about.
"Someone at Celeste's place," he says. "Erik called. Saw the car turn onto Birchwood." A pause. "Not local. Some rich asshole."
I get there in record time.
Darren Kowalchuk is taller than I pictured and better put together, the kind of man whose clothes are meant to make a statement. He's standing outside Celeste's front door with a woman I take to be a lawyer when I pull up. Celeste is in the doorway, arms crossed, face perfectly composed in the way I've learned means she's working hard to keep it that way.
I come to stand beside her.
"Mr. Kowalchuk," I say.
