Then I move.
Slow at first, long strokes that drag against her walls, that have her nails digging into my back with every pull. She's so wet I can hear it, that slick sound that strips the last of my control. Her hips roll up to meet mine, and I feel her clenching around me already, still sensitive from before, her body greedy for it.
Her nails rake down my spine.
My grip on her hip tightens, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and I drive into her deeper. She gasps against my neck, pulls me closer, urges me on, and that's it. I stop being careful. I fuck her the way I've wanted to since she looked at me across that drawing room and told me I was late.
Hard. Deep. The headboard cracks against the wall with every thrust, and she takes it all, her body rising to meet mine, her voice breaking apart on sounds that wipe everything else from my head. No war. No Frank. No mole. No ghosts. Just the slick, tight heat of her clenching around my cock and the way she keeps saying my name like it means something.
I feel her tightening again, her walls gripping me in pulses, and I reach between us and press my thumb to her clit. She cries out, her whole body going rigid beneath me.
"Come for me," I say against her throat. "Now."
She shatters. Clenches around me so hard my hips stutter. Her nails break skin at my shoulders, her back arches off the mattress, her throat bares completely, and I bite down on it, mark her, feel her milking my cock through every wave of it. I drive in once more, deep as I can go, and come hard, buried inside her, her name the only word left in my head.
I don't move. Can't. My whole body is heavy, wrung out, every muscle spent. Her legs are still wrapped around me. I can feel her heartbeat where my mouth is pressed against her throat, frantic and fast, slowly finding its way back.
I stay inside her longer than I should.
Afterwards, neither of us moves. Her fingers trace slow patterns on my shoulder blade. My face is still at her throat. I can feel her pulse coming down, steady now, almost calm.
I should say something. Don't know what.
"That was different," she says eventually.
"From what?"
"From what I expected from you." A beat. "From what I expected from any of this."
I lift my head and look at her. "What did you expect?"
"Someone who didn't care whether I was with him or not." She holds my gaze.
She's quiet for a moment. Then: "What are you thinking?"
Honest answer. "That I need to deal with something tonight and I'd rather not."
Her expression shifts. Waiting.
"There's something you need to know," I say. "About why we're here. About what's been happening."
She sits up slowly, draws the sheet around herself, and looks at me with the kind of clear-eyed practicality that would have irritated me two weeks ago and now just settles something.
"Tell me."
So I tell her about Frank.
Not the way I'd rehearsed it in my head. Just the truth, the way it comes out when you're lying in the dark next to someone who's already seen you at your worst.
"My uncle," I say. "Frank Murphy. My father's brother."
She waits.
"My family thinks he's dead."
I feel her go still beside me.
"He's the one who warned me. About the attack on the house. That's how I knew to get us out." I look at the ceiling. "He came to me. Said he'd been watching, that he knew what was coming. In exchange, he wanted back in. Back into the family. I gave him shares. An advisory position."
