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I kiss her hard and drive into her again and again.

Her fingers knot in my hair. Mine grip her thigh. The room fills with the sounds of skin and breath and Serena saying my name in ways I am going to replay in my head until the day I die.

I find a rhythm that makes her cling to me.

She sinks her teeth into my shoulder, hard enough to make me suck in a sharp breath.

Her answering laugh breaks into a moan when I angle my hips differently.

“I want you so fucking badly. You drive me insane.” I slide a hand between our bodies and find her clit.

Every flicker of pleasure across her face feels like privileged information. Something she doesn’t show the rest of the world.

Something she’s letting me see.

Her breathing catches. “There baby?”

She nods.

I keep exactly that rhythm, and her pussy chokes my cock.

I release a stuttered breath.

“I know.” She kisses me, dazed and only half there.

“No, I don’t think you do.” I thrust into her harder, still working my fingers exactly how she likes

Her thighs tighten around my hips. “I⁠—”

She comes around me with a strangled cry, body tightening beneath mine, and I barely manage another few thrusts before I follow her.

For several seconds, neither of us moves. I am vaguely aware of my heart attempting to punch through my sternum.

Serena’s breathing is warm against my neck, her fingers making one lazy pass through my hair.

“Well.”

“Well?”

She laughs against my shoulder. “I was going to say something more substantive, but I appear to have lost several IQ points.”

I lift my head. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Her eyelids are heavy. “Don’t get used to it.”

24

SOURCE CONFIDENTIALITY

BARYN

Turns out, I was wrong about the whole asceticism is the path to enlightenment thing. I’d like to take that part back.

Every lecture I’ve given myself on the virtues of the void? Trash.

I’m pushing a cart through Stillwater’s only grocery store while Serena and Tamsin are back at the inn going through the evidence again, ostensibly because we needed coffee and food that didn’t come out of a vending machine. Somewhere around aisle three, this became less of an errand and more of an embarrassingly detailed inventory of things I know about Serena Harper.

The dark chocolate she breaks into perfectly even squares before eating. The stupidly expensive cherries she spent ten minutes debating whether to add to her grocery order before declaring them economically indefensible. The specific brand of coffee she called acceptable, which, from Serena, is practically a Michelin star. I’ve got all three in the cart.