She looks up at me. "I love you."
The words land in the center of my chest and detonate. Not because they're unexpected, but because they're true, and because I've been holding the same words behind my teeth for days, afraid that saying them out loud would make this real in a way I can't survive losing.
"I love you," I say back. "And that's why you're not going to be anywhere near the arena when I ride in Las Cruces."
Her expression shifts. The softness calcifies into something harder. "We already discussed this."
"I'm undiscussing it."
"Grant—"
"You're going to be at Flint's. With copies of everything. If the plan works, you don't need to be there. If it doesn't, you need to be alive to make sure the evidence reaches the right people."
"You're asking me to let you walk in there alone."
"I'm asking you to survive. That's the only thing I'm asking."
She's quiet for a long time. I can feel her resistance, the fundamental stubbornness that defines her, the refusal to be sidelined or protected or told what to do. But I can also feel the practical mind working underneath the emotion, calculating the odds, recognizing that I'm right even if she hates it.
"If you die," she says, "I will never forgive you."
"Fair."
"I'm serious, Grant. If you ride into Las Cruces and let them kill you because you were too stubborn to walk away, I will spend the rest of my life being furious at you."
"Also fair."
"Stop agreeing with me."
I kiss her. Not gentle. Thorough. The kind of kiss that says everything the words haven't covered, that presses my entire argument into her mouth and swallows her objections. She kisses me back with the same desperation, fingers fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer like proximity can protect us from what's coming.
"One more night," she says against my lips. "Give me one more night where we don't talk about Merrick or the plan or Las Cruces. Just us."
"Just us."
She pulls my shirt open. The snaps pop. Her hands find my chest, my shoulders, the ridges of scar tissue that map a decade of getting thrown by animals. She traces each one with herfingers, then her mouth, learning me with the same attention I've been giving her.
I shed the rest of my clothes then I undress her slowly. Every layer peeled back is another piece of armor removed, another wall that comes down between who she shows the world and who she is in the dark with me. The boots, the jeans, the cotton shirt with a coffee stain on the sleeve that she never bothered washing out. Underneath all of it, just Rainey. Skin and freckles and the lean muscle of a woman who carries heavy camera equipment for a living.
"Look at me," I say.
She does. And I see her. All of her. The fear and the courage and the grief she carries for Tyler and the love she's decided to risk on a man who might not come home.
This time is slow. I take her to bed and lower her onto the mattress like she matters more than anything I've ever held. I start at her wrists, kissing the thin skin where her pulse thrums against my lips, and work inward. The bend of her elbow. The soft underside of her arm. The curve of her shoulder where freckles scatter like thrown dice.
She reaches for me and I press her hands back against the pillow. Not pinning. Asking.
"Let me," I say. "Just let me."
She leaves her hands where I put them.
I take my time with her breasts, cupping the weight of them, dragging my thumb across one nipple while my mouth closes over the other. She arches into me, a soft sound leaking from her throat, and I stay there until both peaks are swollen and sensitive and she's squirming under the attention.
Then lower. My mouth tracing the dip of her waist, the ridge of her hip bone, the soft skin of her inner thigh where she flinches when my stubble drags across it. I spread her legs andsettle between them, hooking one thigh over my shoulder, and press my mouth against her.
She tastes like salt and heat and the specific sweetness of wanting someone past the point of reason. I lick her slow, long strokes of my tongue from her entrance to her clit, and feel her thighs tremble on either side of my head. Her hands leave the pillow and find my hair, gripping, not directing, just holding on.
I circle her clit with the flat of my tongue, then suck gently, and her hips lift off the mattress. I slide two fingers inside her, curl them forward, and stroke while my mouth works her over with patient, relentless precision. She's wet enough that the sound of my fingers moving inside her fills the quiet room, and the moan she lets out when I find the right rhythm is low and broken and honest.
