I looked down. His eyes were closed, completely focused, his mouth glistening. The sight of him—the concentration on his face, the way he gave himself over entirely to this—sent a fresh rush of heat straight through me.
He added a second finger, careful and slow, and the pleasure thickened. My thighs started shaking against his shoulders, and he felt it, shifting his focus, sucking softly on my clit while his fingers stroked deep and steady.
“Come for me, Libby,” he murmured against me, his voice rough. “I want to feel it.”
I broke apart—waves of pleasure moving through me, slow and powerful. He stayed with me through every pulse, drawing it out until I trembled with over sensitivity, then gentled to soft, reverent kisses along my inner thighs.
When he crawled back up my body and pulled me against his chest, I could taste myself on his lips when he kissed me. Something warm and possessive settled in me, low and certain.
He held me against him, one hand stroking my back, the other cradling my face. His own arousal still pressed against my hip, but he made no move toward more. He just held me. Patient and solid and sure.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
I smiled against his jaw and kissed him deeply instead of answering, because the word ‘okay’ felt impossibly small for this.
Outside, the world was still a nightmare.
But here, with Finn’s arms around me and his heartbeat steady under my palm, I’d found something I hadn’t let myself want in a long time.
Something that actually felt like
Safety.
Eighteen
What The Fuck Just Happened? -Finn
Iwoke to empty arms.
My body registered it a full second before my mind caught up, a brief, disorienting reach toward something that wasn’t there.
Irritation followed fast and hard—not at her, not exactly, but at myself. At the tightness in my chest. At noticing, and at how, for just a fraction of a second, it had seemed like something other than a problem.
What the fuck, Ward…
I dragged a hand down my face and sat up in the dim light, my brain replaying every decision that had led me to this moment on this floor.
Twenty-nine years of simplicity. No attachments, no complications—nothing that couldn’t be set aside when needed. Move. Act. Survive. I’d watched emotions get people killed, seen the folded flags. I’d made myself a promise I intended to keep.
And yet here I sat, losing it over a woman I’d known for a matter of days. A middle-aged woman who, by every standardI’d ever held myself to, shouldn’t have ranked anywhere beyond a responsibility—a civilian to protect, a variable to account for.
But she had somehow wiggled her way past responsibility straight into feelings, and if I was honest with myself, it scared the absolutefuckout of me.
Shit!
I pressed my tongue flat against the roof of my mouth and pushed it down. Hard.
No.
I stood, forcing myself into motion. Into the familiar. Into reliable. My body understood how to do this.
That’s what mattered now. That’s the only thing thatcouldmatter now.
Life and death waited outside the front door—in the streets, in every decision between here and my home, in the hundreds of small miscalculations that got people killed when the person responsible for preventing them had stopped paying attention. I carried responsibilities that predated last night—that outweighed it—responsibilities that didn’t negotiate and didn’t make allowances for whatever feelings had decided to crop up now.
Fiona came first. She was, and always would be, the priority. Nothing about last night changed that.
But Libby and Lily were in it now too—I’d made sure of that the moment I walked through the door. Which meant no mistakes. No hesitation. Nothing sitting between me and a clear head, because a clear head was the only thing standing between all of us and the alternative.
