The angle put me deeper. She felt it. Her spine arched against my chest and a sound left her I had not heard from her before, low and broken in the middle. My arm tightened across her stomach and pinned her back against me, every inch of her bare skin against mine. My other hand came up under her jaw, gentle, and turned her mouth back to mine over her shoulder. I took her like that. Crooked and deep and hungry. I started to move.
She came apart for me at this angle in a way she had not before. Louder. Less guarded. The dam was full down now. Every sound she made hit me at the base of the spine and pushedmy control closer to the edge. I held it. Just. Her hand came up and gripped the back of my neck and held on as if she would fall without it.
"Stay with me," I said into her hair. "I am here. I will not let go."
"I am here," she breathed back. "I am here, I am here, please, don't stop."
I did not stop. My palm slid up from her stomach and lay flat between her breasts, over her heart, the way I had done before her body broke for me the first time. It hammered against my hand. Her own hand came up and pressed mine down harder against her. That was the thing that broke me. That small fierce gesture of hers, claiming the hand that was claiming her.
I put my hands on her hips. I let her find her own pace. She rose up on her knees, slow, and slid back down onto me, and her eyes closed and her head tipped back and her mouth fell open into something that was no longer thinking. I let her ride. My hands stayed open and steady at her hips, the anchor when she needed it.
Her rhythm broke against me. She cried out and her head fell back against my shoulder and I felt her come around me, the long tight clench of her body taking me with her. My arm wrapped tighter across her front. My other hand fisted in her hair at the nape. I drove up into her hard and deep and felt my own control finally go.
I spilled inside her with my face buried at her shoulder and both arms wound tight around her, holding her against me so there was no edge between us. "Mine," I said into her skin. Rough. Wrecked. "Mine."
It took a long time for my heart to come down out of my throat. She sagged back against me and I held her, both of us breathing too hard, my mouth still at her shoulder. I felt her breath slow against my arm. I felt mine slow with it.
I slid out of her slow and turned her in my arms to face me. She came willing. Her cheek went to my collarbone. I lowered us down onto the mattress on our sides, her tucked into the curve of my body, my arm under her head, my other hand smoothing up the length of her spine and back down.
I kissed her temple. I kissed the soft spot under her ear where my mouth had been. I pulled back just enough to see her face. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was damp at the hairline. Her eyes were soft and tired and clear. The shock was gone. She was here with me. All of her.
"Thank you for that," she said. Her voice was small and a little rough. "You really have your own way of comforting a girl."
My mouth almost moved into a smile. Not quite. I tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear with the side of my thumb.
"You did what had to be done today. You saved my life. There is no other side of that ledger." I held her eyes. "And you do not carry this alone."
She nodded against my chest. Slow. Real. She breathed out into my collarbone and did not pull the breath back in fast. The tremor that had lived in her hands since the shot on the parkway was gone. Her fingers lay quiet and warm against my ribs.
I had spent my adult life believing the way to take care of a woman was to keep her clear of the dark places, to stand between her and the road and let nothing past me. Tonight I had learned a harder thing. The road had found her anyway. She had stood in it and done what had to be done, and what she needed from me afterward was not a wall. It was a hand reaching into the dark place beside her, and a body to lead her back out. I tightened my arm around her and held her against me, and for the first time in a long while I did not feel like I was guarding a door. I felt like I was home behind one.
28
CHLOE
Lily's sitting room caught the best of the late autumn light. It came in low through the tall windows and laid itself across the rug in long honey panels. Somewhere across the hall in the kitchen, something simmered that filled the apartment with the smell of toasted spice and slow heat. Three wine glasses stood in a neat row on the side table. Lily held the bottle like it had personally offended her.
"Hold this," she said, shoving the corkscrew at me. "If I yank this thing and it sprays on the silk, I will not survive the conversation I have to have with myself."
"Pakhan's wife, afraid of a cork." Sienna was already on the loveseat with her shoes off and her legs tucked under her, scrolling something on her phone with the calm of a woman who had decided the workday was over and dared anyone to dispute it. "Embarrassing."
"You uncork it then, counselor."
"I am a guest."
"You are family."
"Family adjacent." Sienna looked up and smiled at me, slow and warm. "Hi, Chloe."
"Hi."
"How's your grandma?"
I felt the soft click in my chest that question always made now. "She's home. She's good. She made me promise to come for dinner once a week or she would, and I quote, fly back here and drag me by the ear."
"That tracks."
"It absolutely tracks."
