I pulled back and drove into her and the sound she made sent a jolt through me that I felt from my scalp to the soles of my feet. I did it again, harder, finding a rhythm that matched the urgency in both of us. Her hips rose to meet every thrust, her body rocking with the force of it, and the friction between us was unbearable. She was wet and hot and every time I buried myself inside her she clenched around me and my vision went white.
The bed frame hit the wall and neither of us cared. She pulled me down, her mouth against my neck, her teeth scraping my skin. Her breasts pressed against my chest, the hard points of her nipples dragging across my skin with every thrust, and I slid one hand under her lower back and tilted her hips up and the angle changed and she gasped.
"There. Right there."
I held the angle and drove into her at a pace that had sweat running down my spine and the headboard keeping time against the wall. She was loud and she didn't care who heard. Every stroke pulled a sound from her, raw and genuine, and I wanted every single one.
She pushed at my chest and I pulled back, confused for half a second before she flipped us. Her hands on my chest, her thighs straddling mine, and she sank down onto me and the visual of her above me, her body catching the light from the hallway, ended me. I held on by sheer will. She planted her hands on my chest and rolled her hips and the rhythm she set was slow, grinding, and devastating.
I gripped her thighs. Watched her move. She was using me exactly the way she wanted, taking her pleasure with a focus that had me clenching my jaw to hold on. Her head tipped back, her hands sliding from my chest to her own thighs, and she rode me with an authority that said this body was hers and she was done letting anyone forget it.
"Jesus Christ," I breathed, and she looked down at me with the corner of her mouth pulled sideways. She knew exactly what she was doing to me.
I sat up. Put my hands on her back, pulled her against me, chest to chest, her legs still around me. I thrust up into her from underneath and she wrapped her arms around my neck and the closeness was intense, her breath hot against my ear, the sounds she was making right against my skin. I could feel every part of her. The slick heat where we were joined, her stomach against mine, her breasts pressed flat against my chest, the shake in her thighs as she matched my rhythm.
I reached between us. Found her with my thumb and pressed and she jerked against me, her whole body tightening. I kept the pressure there, circling, while I drove into her, and her breathing went ragged, her nails biting into the back of my neck.
"Don't stop. God, don't stop."
I didn't stop. I felt her build around me, the tightening that started deep and spread until her whole body was coiled. Her breathing fractured into something that wasn't words anymore. She came hard, her body clenching around me in waves, her face buried against my shoulder, her fingers gripping the back of my head. She shook and shook. I held her through it, still moving inside her, feeling every pulse and contraction.
I lasted seconds after that. She was still trembling around me when my own climax hit, and it tore through me with a force that whited out my vision and locked every muscle I had. I came inside her with a sound I didn't recognize, my arms tight around her back, my face buried against her neck, and she held me while I shook apart.
We stayed like that for a long time. Sitting upright, wrapped around each other, still connected, breathing hard. Her heartbeat hammered against my chest, fast, then slowing. Theroom was quiet again, except for the quiet heavy breathing. The tracker was still in pieces on the floor.
She fell asleep with her head on my chest and her hand flat over my heart. I lay there and stared at the ceiling and let the thought I'd been circling for four days come in and sit down.
I was falling in love with her.
I'd known since the first day. Maybe since I first laid eyes on her. The feeling had been there that first night, solid and undeniable behind my sternum, and every day since had just been me learning its shape. And the shape was exactly this moment. Her hand on my chest. Her hair across my arm. The weight of her trust against my body, heavier than anything I'd ever carried and the only thing I'd ever wanted to hold.
I knew that somewhere on that dark highway, the men who’d hurt Melissa were out there still. I swore in this moment, hell would freeze over before I let anything happen to her ever again.
I pulled her closer.
Whatever came through that gate was going to have to come through me.
FIVE
MELISSA
I woke up in his bed with his arm across my waist and the morning light coming through the window. His breathing was slow against the back of my neck, even and deep, the breathing of a man who was asleep and trusted the room he was sleeping in. His chest was warm against my back, his arm heavy, his knuckles rough where his hand rested against my stomach.
I didn't move. I lay there and let the quiet sit around us. Here, in this bed, with this man's arm around me, I wasn’t running, I wasn’t hiding, and I wasn’t counting locks or listening for footsteps. I was just a woman lying next to someone she wanted to be next to, and the simplicity of it made my throat tight. But even despite this, something still just sat with me. The fact that the men had tracked me here, they knew where I was and I felt certain that they wouldn’t rest while I was still alive and could identify them all.
Razor stirred. His arm tightened, pulling me closer, and His mouth pressed against my shoulder. Warm, unhurried. He kissed the curve of my neck, slow, like he had all the time in the world, and last night had just been desperate, furious, and necessary. This was something else entirely.
I turned in his arms and faced him. His eyes were open, watching me with a focus that made my stomach drop. The same eyes that had been wild last night, dark with rage and want, were calm now. Present. Looking at me like he was trying to memorize every detail before it changed.
"I'm scared," I said.
I hadn't planned to say it. The words came out on their own, quiet, honest, pulled from somewhere I'd been keeping sealed since the road. Scared of the men in the truck driving away with coordinates. Scared of whoever they were planning to do to get me back. Scared that the safety I'd let myself feel in this compound and in this bed was temporary, because every safety in my life had turned out to be temporary.
He didn't flinch. Didn't look away. His hand came up and rested on my jaw, his thumb against my cheekbone, and his eyes were so certain it was hard to breathe.
“Trust me, they have to come through me," he said. "They won't."
He said it the way he’d say anything. Like a fact.
