Page 107 of No Good Fight

She’s here.

She’s here.

I lift her so easily it’s almost comical the way Alex’s legs wrap around my waist, and the sound she makes against my mouth turns my restraint into something thin and useless. I pin her with my body and she moves against me like she’s done waiting for me.

“This is what I want,” she says against my mouth. “You. Like this.”

“Say it again.”

Her hands slide into my wet hair, tugging until I look at her. “I want you, Ryder.”

I bury my face in her neck for a moment because hearing it still does damage. Then I reach between us, finding her with my fingers first, making sure her body is with us and not only her stubborn, beautiful mouth. She gasps against my shoulder, hips rolling into my hand, and the sound drags a curse out of me.

“You’re sure?”

She bites my shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt. Enough to make a point. “I swear to God, if you ask me one more time, I’m going to start taking it personally and I will murder you.”

A laugh breaks out of me, rough and short and almost painful. It’s the first thing in hours that doesn’t taste like rage.

I line myself up and push into her slowly, even though every instinct I have is screaming at me to take, claim, keep. Alex’s head falls back against my hand. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out at first, and I watch her face because I need to see every second of this. Not to manage her. Not to search for fear. To be here with her while she chooses me.

All of me.

The part that makes her coffee. The part that checks the locks. The part that wants to be good for her and the part that would bury a man for putting bruises on her arms.

When I’m fully inside her, I stop.

Alex’s eyes open, heavy and dark through the steam. “Ryder.”

“I know.” My voice sounds wrecked. “Give me a second. You’re my every hope and dream rolled into one, and being inside you is fucking perfect. Just…give me a minute.”

Her expression softens in a way that makes my chest ache. She touches my face, thumb sliding over my cheekbone, and I realize she understands this pause isn’t hesitation. It’s me trying to survive the fact that she is in my arms after I thought, for a few terrible seconds today, that someone was taking her somewhere I shouldn’t follow.

But I would have.

There’s no me without her.

“You got me back,” she whispers.

I move before the words can split me open.

The first thrust is slow. The second isn’t. Alex holds on, legs tightening around me, body taking mine with a trust that I haven’t earned and will gladly spend the rest of my life trying to deserve. Water beats down over us, muting every sound except the ones I can feel against my mouth. Her breath, my name, the broken little noise she makes when I change the angle and hit something that makes her nails bite into my skin while she tries to hold on.

I keep one hand behind her head and the other under her thigh, holding her open for me while she uses my shoulders to meet every movement. This isn’t gentle the way this morning was. It isn’t careful in the same soft, sleepy way. It's an insatiable need with both eyes open. It’s Alex looking straight at the worst parts of me and refusing to step back. It’s me realizing she isn’t mistaking my darkness for safety.

She sees it, all of the obsessive intrusions and the incessant need to claim and own her in a way that feels like it’s destroying me. She sees me, and she’s still claiming me.

The thought nearly ruins me.

I slow enough to kiss the bruise on her arm, once, then the inside of her wrist, where no mark shows but I know a gloved hand held her there. Alex’s breathing catches, and her grip in my hair tightens.

“Don’t disappear into your head,” she tells me.

I look up at her.

Her face is flushed, wet, stubborn, alive. “Stay with me.”

An echo of the words I’ve given her.