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He thrust forward and I cried out to the wrong deity. He didn’t move until I corrected myself.

“Tau,” I panted, using the magic word.

He grunted and I almost smiled. I say almost because he pulled back and thrust deeper. Everything I had known about sex went out the window. The tight grip on my wrists pinched, and I liked it. The weight of his body moving against mine created a delicious friction, and the cock that was ruining my insides was reaching places that had never been known to man before.

He was savage with his movements. In and out. A constant beat of a drum thumped inside me. Sweat dripped from his jaw onto my collarbone, and the headboard knocked against the wall. Then he would pause and slow down, shifting the angle of his hips until my feet curled tight.

“Fuck,” I gasped. “Tau. Oh, God. Tau.”

“That’s it, love,” he rasped between thrusts. “Come for Tau. I want you dripping down my balls when I pump my cum inside you.”

Nothing but his name rang in my head and I reared up to receive him. Each deep thrust shook my breasts. Each sound of slapping flesh was imprinted in my mind.

I did.

I screamed his name as I came again.

Reality split in two, but we became one. He roared my name like a triumphant war cry, and even as I clenched around his cock, I felt his hot cum erupt and pour into me.

His body moved over mine, his hips faltered, and I wrapped my legs around him to hold him inside. His weight settled fully onto me for the first time, heavy and hot, and I welcomed every pound of it.

I couldn’t wait to start all over again.

“My beautiful Zuri,” he whispered in my ear as his biting grip eased off my wrists.

No ropes. It seemed as if he had broken one of his rules.

I held him close, feeling our hearts beat together. Sweat cooled on our skin. Far below the window, the city murmured on.

He shifted to the side and held me just as close, kissing my head, my hair, anything he could reach.

“Mine.”

One single word that made me smile. It sounded less like a claim and more like a vow.

Amongst all the chaos, how had he become my anchor?

I tucked my face into his throat and listened to his heart slow. One text message had changed my life. For the first time since, the quiet did not frighten me.

Chapter 20

Tau

The man in the mirror had changed this morning. I might as well have ripped my ribs open and placed my heart in her open palms. I fixed my lapel and checked that the grenade was still there. The Armenian might have more use for it than I did. He could take the bag. I only needed the Glock and one knife until embarkation.

The bathroom door opened and I took a ragged breath at the sight before me. The struggle was real. We needed to remain low-key, but how could I not let her be herself?

She wore a cotton maxi dress in a wax print, a riot of teal and emerald and burnt orange, flashes of yellow and black, the pattern fanning out like feathers or leaves caught mid-fall. A small V at the neck. Short sleeves. A fitted waist that spared no one, and a full skirt that swung when she moved. She had pinned her curls back with a band cut from the same cloth. Beneath the hem, lime green flip-flops.

“Pockets,” she said, sliding both hands into them with a grin. “It has pockets.”

I had no words. I had never needed them less.

The lobby was empty except for the clerk and a man by the lifts who looked at her a moment too long. Zuri did not notice. I did. I moved half a step closer and set my hand across her shoulders, and the man found something to read on his phone.

“What was that?” she murmured.

“Nothing.”