I slide my free hand between us, find her clit, and work it with my thumb while I fuck her hard enough that Flint's old house protests every impact. She's making sounds she can't control now, her head thrown back, throat exposed, and I lower my mouth to that throat and bite down on the tendon where her neck meets her shoulder. Not enough to break skin. Enough to mark.
"Mine," I tell her, my mouth against the bite, my hips driving forward. "Everything they broke, everything they took from you. I'll burn them all down. Nobody touches you."
"Prove it," she breathes, and the challenge in her voice even now, even with me buried inside her and her body shaking apart, is what sends me over the edge of controlled into something else entirely.
I hook my arm under her knee, press it back toward her chest, and the new depth makes her cry out. I can feel her getting close, the way her inner muscles flutter and tighten, the way her breathing fractures into sharp, desperate sounds that matchthe rhythm of my hips. I keep my thumb on her clit, keep the pressure steady, and watch her face as the orgasm builds.
"Eyes open," I say.
She looks at me. And I watch her shatter. The orgasm rolls through her in waves, her body clenching around my cock in rhythmic pulses while her nails rake down my back hard enough to draw blood. She says my name like she's cursing me, like she's thanking me, like she doesn't know the difference anymore.
I last three more strokes. The orgasm tears through me, a full-body detonation that empties me into her while my face is buried against her neck and my arms are locked around her and the taste of her sweat is on my tongue. For a few seconds the world goes white and quiet, and everything outside this room stops existing.
We stay tangled together while the aftershocks roll through, small tremors in her thighs, my cock pulsing inside her, both of us slick with sweat and breathing like we just went eight seconds on the highest ranked bull in the pen. My hand rests on her ribcage, counting her heartbeats as they slow from sprinting to jogging to something that resembles calm.
Afterwards, we lie there catching our breath, tangled together on a bed that will never be level again.
"We need a plan," she says. "A real one. Not just riding bulls and hoping something shakes loose."
"I know."
"Merrick has resources. Money, connections, people willing to pull triggers for him. We have some photos and a theory."
"We have your photos of Vic with the syringe. What Flint told us about Thornton Livestock. The money trail. It's enough to get someone's attention."
"Whose? The local cops? A man like Merrick, who knows if they're in his pocket. Circuit officials? Same problem."
I stare at the ceiling. "Feds. FBI. Flint told me about a woman agent at the Albuquerque field office. Someone who looked into his son's death years ago. Told him to come back if he ever found a pattern."
"You think she'll take this seriously?"
"She will if we give her something solid. And what we've got is solid."
She rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand. The quilt pools around her waist, and in the dim light she looks like something out of a painting. Something worth fighting for. Something worth dying for.
I push that thought away. Hard.
"Tomorrow," I say. "We talk to Flint. Make copies of everything. Photos, financial records, all of it. We put it somewhere safe. Then we go to the Santa Fe event, and I ride, and you document, and we act like nothing's changed."
"While trying to take down the most powerful man on the circuit."
"That's the general idea."
She studies me for a long moment. "You know what happens when we do this. When we confront Merrick, or hand evidence to the feds, or go public."
"He comes for us."
"He comes for us harder than he already has. Tonight was a warning shot. Literally. The next one won't miss."
"Then we'd better be ready."
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I reach for it, expecting Colt or Kenna or one of a dozen people I've been ignoring.
Unknown number.
I open the message.
You have 24 hours to walk away. After that, what happened to Tyler Brennan will look like mercy.
