Something cracked open in his face then. Something deep, the expression of a man receiving something he had not expected to receive and did not entirely know what to do with.
He kissed me again, softer this time, both hands in my hair, and we moved together slowly in the enormous bed, unhurried,none of the hunger of before—something more like tending to each other, the intimacy of two people who had been through a hard day together and needed to remember they were alive.
He was so careful with me. His fingers traced the curve of my throat, then slipped beneath the fabric of my robe to skim over my breasts, fingers circling my nipples.
I arched into him with a soft gasp, feeling the heat of his body press against mine as he peeled away my robe with deliberate reverence, exposing every inch of skin as if committing it to memory. When his mouth followed the path of his hands—lips closing warm and wet around one sensitive nipple, tongue flicking slowly, then sucking with just enough pressure to draw a moan from deep in my throat—I trembled beneath him.
Every touch considered, every movement deliberate, as if I were something he had decided to be responsible for and was taking the responsibility seriously. He settled between my thighs, his weight a grounding comfort. I felt the thick, hard length of him slide against my slick folds, teasing, coating himself in my arousal before he pushed inside me. The stretch was exquisite, filling me completely in that slow, steady glide until he was buried to the hilt, our bodies locked together in perfect, pulsing heat.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. He groaned softly against my neck, the sound vibrating through me.
We rocked together like that—unrushed, profound—his hips rolling in deep, measured thrusts that dragged inside me with every stroke. His hand slipped between us, fingers finding my clit and circling with slick precision, building the pleasure in waves that made my breath hitch and my inner walls clench around him.
I clung to his shoulders, nails digging into muscle as sensation coiled tighter, my body surrendering to the steady rhythm of him moving inside me, over me, surrounding me.The wet slide of our joining, the heat of his breath on my skin, the way his eyes never left my face—watching every flicker of pleasure, adjusting to draw it out—made me feel cherished.
When release finally broke over me, it was slow and shattering, my body pulsing around his cock in long, rippling waves that pulled a ragged groan from him. He followed moments later, burying himself deep as he came, his come flooding me in hot pulses while he held me close, trembling with the force of it.
When it was over, we lay still. The room held us in its gold-lit quiet. After a long time, he said—low, into my hair?—
"I love you."
The words arrived and I went very still.
He felt it. "I know," he said. "I know it's—I know what it sounds like. Two days." A beat. "But I've spent my whole life knowing exactly one thing about myself, which is that when I've decided something, I've decided it. I decided it in an alley yesterday and I've been watching it be true every hour since." He paused. "When you know, you know. That's the one thing my mother always said. I thought it was horseshit." Another pause, shorter. "It wasn't horseshit."
I lay against him in the dark and felt the words settle through me.
"I love you, too," I said. "Which doesn't make logical sense."
"No," he agreed.
"I left my wedding yesterday. I was a runaway bride.”
"I know."
"I barely know you."
"I know that, too."
I tilted my head back to look at him. The jaw, the eyes, the carved face that had been through things and wore them honestly. The man who had sprinted toward the thing that was trying to kill me. Who had askedwhat do you wantlike it wasthe only question that mattered. Who held my hands and saidyeswhen I couldn't finish the sentence.
"But you feel like—" I stopped, looking for the right word.
"Like something that was already true," he said quietly. "Before you knew it."
"Yes," I said. "Exactly that."
He pulled me back against him.
Outside the tall windows, Dominion Hall's grounds lay dark and quiet under the Carolina night. Somewhere in this house, his brother was waiting with answers Brock needed, and somewhere in the city, our families were working through their own particular devastations.
My phone was gone. I hadn't called anyone, hadn't told my parents or Colleen what had happened, hadn't reached the contact in New York to say we wouldn't be coming, hadn't done any of the things that needed doing. All of it was out there, waiting. The thought of it pressed at the edges of the room. I let it press and did not open the door to it, because I did not have it in me.
Later, all of it would still be there, all the unresolved and the unfinished and the impossible.
But for now, there was just this room and this man and the slow, certain settling of something that had arrived without asking permission and did not appear to be leaving.
I closed my eyes. Sleep found me quickly.
