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Four years. Four years of nothing and now this, and his body didn’t know how to process the difference. His eyes burned, and he kept them open because he wanted to see her face. Cassandra’s face.

It wasn’t just that he was with a woman; it was that he was with her.

Cassandra above him, looking down at him with heat in her eyes and something fierce underneath it. She’d spent the whole night being told what to do. Right now, nobody was telling her anything, and it was glorious to behold.

He reached up and traced the line of her collarbone with his fingertips, down between her breasts, across her stomach. She shivered and her hips rolled, and he gripped her waist and pulled her down harder against him.

She gasped. He did too.

Then she started to move, slowly at first, figuring out the fit of their bodies, the angle, what made her breath catch and what made his hands tighten on her skin. He ran his palms up her thighs, her hips, her ribs. Pulled her down to him so he could take her nipple into his mouth, and he felt her whole body arch when he did. The sound she made vibrated through his chest.

He couldn’t get enough of her. He dragged his mouth down her throat, tasted the salt on her skin, bit gently at the curve where her neck met her shoulder, and felt her clench around him in response.

His hands gripped her thighs, slid up her ribs, pulled her closer when closer shouldn’t have been possible. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and he thrust up into her, and she cried out, her head falling back. He watched her face and knew he’d remember this exact moment for the rest of his life.

They found a rhythm together. Deep and slow. His hands gripping her hips, guiding without leading, matching every roll of her body with one of his own. She braced her hands on his chest, and he covered one of them with his, lacing their fingers together, holding on while they moved.

She leaned down and kissed him. The angle shifted and he sank deeper into her, and they both groaned into each other’s mouths. He could feel her body starting to tighten around him, the rhythm getting faster, her breathing fracturing. He pressed his forehead against hers.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “Right here. I’m right here.”

She came apart. Her whole body shaking, her hands gripping his, a sound pulled from somewhere deep that had nothing to do with performance or cover or anything except what was happening between them right now. He watched her face and felt something break open in his chest that had been locked for four years.

He followed her. His hand in her hair, her name in his mouth, his body breaking underneath her. Messy and raw and nothing like the precise, detached release he remembered from years ago. His breath came out shattered, and he buried his face in her neck.

She collapsed against his chest. Neither of them moved. He could feel her heartbeat against his ribs, fast and hard, gradually slowing to match his own.

He braced himself for the coldness to settle in the way it had in the past. For the warmth to drain out of him and the calculation to take its place. For the part of him that had spent years turning closeness into a weapon to wake up and ruin this.

It didn’t come.

After a while, she lifted her head. Hair a disaster, face flushed, eyes soft and clear. She studied him for a long moment, reading him in whatever way her brain read things. Then she put her head back on his chest.

A short time later, he got up and disposed of the condom, then pulled the blanket over both of them. She pressed closer. He ran his hand slowly up and down her spine. Not because anyone was watching. Not because it was part of any cover. Because he wanted to touch her and she wanted to be touched, and for right now, that was enough.

Her breathing evened out. Her body went heavy against his. She was asleep.

He stayed awake. Feeling her weight on his chest and the quiet in his own head and the strange, terrifying fact that he had just been intimate with someone and the only thing he felt was grateful.

He didn’t deserve her. That probably wasn’t going to change.

But the coldness hadn’t come. And she was here. And tomorrow, they’d figure out the rest.

He closed his eyes and let himself sleep.

Chapter 20

Ryder’s right cross hit the punching bag, and the chain rattled against the ceiling mount.

He’d put her on the bench when they’d come down twenty minutes ago. Hands in her lap, chin tucked. Invisible. He patted her on the top of her head as he’d walked over with the Diehls and their men to do their weightlifting and workout.

Nobody even snickered at that behavior anymore. Two days of watching Ryder control her every action in public had caused it to become too routine to be interesting any longer.

She was just…furniture.

The stone behind her still held the morning cool, and she was supposed to be looking at the floor. Eyes down. That was the rule. And the sick irony was, her brain agreed. She looked at these men too long and the spirals started, so the floor was fine. The floor was safe. The floor, she could do.

But Ryder had his shirt off and his hands wrapped, and he was hitting that bag hard enough to rattle the chain on every strike.