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"Mine," I tell her. "Like a man means it."

"Yes," she sobs. "Yes."

With her legs on my shoulders, I fuck her harder. I drive into her fast and deep, with my weight in my hips and none of it on her. The wet slap of our bodies fills the room, and the whole bed jolts across the floor with every thrust.

She cries out on every stroke, short and broken. Her clipped hands yank against my grip, and her toes curl tight beside my ears.

On one stroke her ribs catch, and she sucks in air. I ease off until she snarls my name, then drive into her as hard as before.

I shift my stance and come up into her at a steeper angle. Every thrust drags the ridge of my cock over the rough spot inside her that my fingers found.

She comes screaming my name. Her back bows off the mattress, and her legs go rigid against my shoulders. Her pussy locks around my cock and milks me in long, hard pulls, so tight I can barely move inside her.

I can't hold it. I slam into her one last time and shout her name. I come deep inside her in hot, hard pulses, and I feel every one of them while she shudders around me.

I ease out of her and watch myself slide free, slick with both of us. My come spills out of her after me, and she makes a soft sound at the loss.

I lift the bar off my shoulders and lower her feet to the floor. Her legs are shaking so hard that the bar rattles against the boards.

I kneel and unbuckle the bar. Her ankles have red marks where the straps sat. I put my mouth on each mark, one and then the other.

I unclip the rings and unbuckle the cuffs. The scars are still bare. I reach for her sleeves to pull them down.

She shakes her head.

I fold my hand over hers instead, well clear of the scars, and leave her sleeves pushed up.

I pick up the quilt she knelt on, then lift her and carry her up the bed to the headboard. I wrap the quilt around us both, with her back against my chest. She shivers. I pull the quilt tighter.

Her wrists rest on top of the quilt where I can see them.

"The Farrier doesn't get this part," she says. "Does it?"

"No." I put my mouth against her hair. "Nobody's ever written their limits on a feed store receipt."

She laughs, a short, wet sound I feel in my chest.

Her paper is on the floor where it fell off my knee. The green ledger is down the hall behind my rifles. She signed one of them tonight, and she doesn't know the other exists.

My phone buzzes in my jeans on the floor. I lean over and dig it out.

It's Raven, and Jesse's on Whitlock's front gate tonight. I answer before the second buzz.

"Yeah."

"I'm going to tell you what I did, and you can tell her I did it," Raven says. Her voice carries out of the phone, loud enough for Delilah to hear every word. "This afternoon I asked Torres one question, with nothing but Delilah's first name. Did her trafficking case ever turn up a Delilah from the Hill Country?"

Against my chest, Delilah has gone completely still.

"Torres didn't say anything for a long time," Raven says. "Then she told me to ask Delilah if she knew what any of them said about a director's exception. Torres wants to hear her say it herself."

Delilah sits up out of my arms and holds out her hand for the phone. I give it to her.

"I know what was said," she says into it. "I'll say it to Torres's face. And Raven? The next time you hand somebody my name, you ask me first."

13

DELILAH