I wrap my legs around his waist on instinct. The cold limestone scrapes against my bare shoulders, but the friction of his body pressing flush against mine erases the sting. There is no gentleness here. It is the raw, violent need to prove we survived the tornado, the breach, the mud, the kill.
He claims my mouth again, swallowing my cry as he drives into me.
The impact knocks the breath from my lungs.
He doesn't pause. He doesn't ask. He sets a punishing, relentless rhythm against the wall of the cave, his hips driving up, his arms locking me securely in place. My hands scramble for purchase, gripping his shoulders, my nails biting into his skin.
"Wyatt—"
"Hold on." His voice is gravel, destroyed by the same feral need tearing through me. "Just hold on to me."
The adrenaline from the evasion spikes, mixing with a blinding, desperate heat. The smell of woodsmoke and rain and him. The sound of our breathing echoing in the small limestone hollow.
It's too fast. Too intense. The climax shatters through me in a violent rush, my body convulsing against his. I cry out, burying my face in the curve of his neck.
Wyatt groans, a harsh, tearing sound, his body locking rigid against mine.
He holds me there, pinned between his chest and the cold stone, our breathing ragged and loud in the quiet cave. The fire pops, sending a spark up the natural chimney.
Slowly, the adrenaline begins to recede. My legs are trembling against his waist.
He doesn't let me go.
He slides his hands down to my waist and steps back from the wall, carrying me toward the back of the cave. The floor here is banked high with generations of dry, soft pine needles.
He lowers me down onto the bed of needles, following me down, covering my body with his own.
The frantic urgency is gone, replaced by something heavier. Something utterly consuming.
He traces the line of my jaw in the firelight. His eyes are pitch-black, stripped of the tactical distance he wears like armor.
"You're freezing." He shifts his weight, his hand sliding down my ribs.
"I'm fine."
"You're not." He kisses the pulse point below my ear. "But you're going to be."
He moves over me again, entirely different this time.
Deliberate.
Possessive.
The frantic need to prove we're alive transitions into a slow, devastating claim. He dismantles whatever defenses I have left, his hands tracking every shiver, mapping the heat rising under my skin.
He takes me apart in the firelight, completely erasing the terror of the ridge, replacing the cold and the dark with the absolute reality of his body.
I give him everything. The control, the fear, the exhaustion. I surrender it all to the steady, dominant rhythm of his hipsand the dark, unreadable depth of his eyes holding mine in the shadows.
When it breaks over me the second time, it's a slow, agonizing slide into pure sensory overload. Wyatt follows a second later, dropping his forehead against my shoulder, his breathing tearing through the quiet.
The fire burns down to a low, pulsing bed of orange coals.
I'm lying on my side on the pine needles, wrapped entirely in Wyatt's dry tactical undershirt. It hangs past my thighs, smelling of gunpowder and him. My wet clothes are spread out near the coals, steaming in the dry air.
The shivering is completely gone. My core is warm.
Wyatt sits beside me, his back against the limestone wall, his legs stretched out. He's bare-chested, his tactical pants still on, methodically breaking down and cleaning his sidearm in the dim light.
