Page 66 of Make Them Pay

I haven’t heard her laugh like this before. Ten days together—container, warehouse, safehouses, river, storage unit, breach, bank—and this is the first time. I want to hear it again. I want to hear it every day. I want to be the person who makes that sound possible.

“The Margaux decision,” she says. The laughter softens but doesn’t disappear completely. “I need to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“I made the right call. I still believe that. The evidence package is solid because I didn’t leave a gap. Serafina is in custody with charges that will stick because the financial map is complete. But a nineteen-year-old girl is going to wake up soon to frozen accounts and federal investigators and the discovery that her mother used her college fund as cover for a criminal operation. And I did that. Not Serafina. Me. I’m the one who went through her records and pulled the thread that’s going to change her life.”

“You’re the one who put together the evidence that’ll put the person who hurt your brother in prison.” I pause. “You’re going to carry the Margaux weight for a long time. I’m not going to tell you not to. But I want you to know that carrying it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you someone who takes the cost of her decisions seriously. That’s the kind of person I want beside me.”

She looks at me. The gold light. The lake behind her. The quilt. The room we were promised in a storage unit that feels like it belonged to a different lifetime.

“Beside you,” she says.

“If you want.”

“I want.”

I stand up from the chair, cross the room, and sit on the bed beside her. The mattress shifts under our weight. Sitting on an actual bed with real springs and real sheets and a quilt that smells faintly of lavender feels so different from every hard surface we’ve shared that it might as well be a different country.

I take her hand. The same hand that typed on my laptop, cracked encryption under pressure, and grabbed the front of my shirt in a storage unit. It’s warm and steady and fits in mine like it was always supposed to.

“I love you,” I say. The words come out the way everything important comes out of me: plain, direct, no decoration. Three words placed exactly where they need to be. Because that’s who I am. I don’t do speeches. I do exact words.

She looks at our hands, then at my face, then at the lake through the window. “I know,” she says. “I’ve known since the mint in the water.”

The mint. Day two. The cabin in the pines. Wild mint I picked on the perimeter walk because I noticed it and because noticing small, unnecessary things and acting on them is apparently how I show feelings I don’t have better words for.

She knew since day two. The distance was stupid for longer than I realized.

“I love you too,” she says. “In case that wasn’t clear from the fry theft and the storage unit and the ten days of sitting two inches from you pretending those two inches were enough.”

“They weren’t.”

“No. They weren’t.”

I kiss her. And it’s better than any kiss we’ve ever shared. The kiss deepens. Her hands slide up my chest and into my hair. I pull her closer until she’s half in my lap, the quilt bunching under us. When I finally break the kiss we’re both breathing harder.

“I need you,” I tell her, voice low against her mouth. “Wanted to get you somewhere soft and take my time.”

“Then take your time,” she whispers.

I ease her back onto the bed and follow her down. The real mattress is a luxury after days of concrete and cots. I stretch out beside her and run my hand slowly under her sweater, finding the warm skin of her waist, then higher, cupping her breast through the thin layer of her bra. She arches into the touch with a soft sound that goes straight through me.

“You feel so good,” I murmur, brushing my thumb over her nipple until it tightens. “Soft and warm and mine. I’ve been dying to get my mouth on these again.”

I push the sweater up and off, then the bra, and lower my head to take one breast into my mouth. I suck gently at first, then harder when she threads her fingers through my hair and holds me there. I give the other the same slow attention, licking and kissing until she’s shifting restlessly underneath me.

“Render…”

“I’ve got you.” I trail my mouth down her stomach, taking my time, tasting her skin. “I’m going to take care of you. Going to make you come slow and deep and then I’m going to get inside you and feel every second of it.”

I work her pants and underwear down her legs and settle between her thighs. The first slow drag of my tongue makes her gasp. I take my time, learning what makes her hips lift and what makes her fingers tighten in my hair. When I slide two fingers into her she’s already wet and ready, and the soft, needy sound she makes is the best thing I’ve heard all day.

“That’s it,” I say against her. “Let me feel how much you want this. You’re so wet for me already.”

I keep the rhythm steady and focused until she’s trembling and then coming with a broken cry, thighs shaking around my shoulders. I ease her through it, then climb back up her body and kiss her deeply so she can taste herself on my tongue.

She reaches for my clothes with impatient hands. I help her strip me down until there’s nothing left between us. When I settle between her legs again she wraps them around my hips and pulls me closer.