Chapter 32 Beckett
Beckett
Her mouth still pressed against mine as the last of my discipline shattered. Rules, orders, reasons—they all dissolved in the dark until only she remained. Elara. Heat, defiance, and a tremor I could feel deep in my bones.
I pulled her onto my lap, the rifle clattering forgotten onto the stone floor.
She straddled me without hesitation, her hands threading into my hair, her mouth urgent and demanding.
The knife she’d gripped for survival slipped loose, forgotten, as if she trusted me enough to lay down her last weapon.
The taste of her was fire and more fire, her kiss fierce one second, breaking the next like she was drowning in it.
My hands roamed over the sharp lines of her body—waist, hips, the edge of bandages beneath her torn shirt.
She gasped against my lips when I touched a bruised rib, pain and pleasure tangled together.
“Tell me to stop,” I rasped, words breaking against her throat.
Her answer was a shiver, her nails scraping down my back. “Don’t you dare.”
The desert night pressed close, muffling the world above.
Every breath, every heartbeat belonged to us.
My mouth trailed from her lips to her jaw, down to the pulse hammering in her throat.
She tilted her head back, eyes shut, armor slipping piece by piece until I could feel the raw truth of her—strong, scarred, needing.
I laid her back on the ground, the sand beneath softened by nothing but desperation. My body hovered over hers, every muscle wound tight. She pulled me down anyway, legs wrapping around my waist, binding me to her.
“Elara,” I groaned, her name torn from somewhere deeper than want.
“Show me,” she whispered, breath catching. “Show me I’m more than what they made me.”
And then there were no more walls. No more rules. Just the ragged sound of our breathing, the slide of skin against skin, and the way she clung to me like I was the only thing anchoring her to this world.
The ravine around us might as well have vanished. Hydra, orders, the war waiting beyond the shadows—it all disappeared in the fire of her body against mine, in the reckless, unstoppable truth neither of us could deny anymore.