Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Ava
His thumb lingers at my waist, and I can’t help but glance down, catching sight of the ring sparkling on my finger. It’s extravagant, more than I ever imagined, the diamond catching the light like he plucked a star right out of the night sky and secured it to a gold band.
I look back up at him, and he’s watching me with that intensity that always makes my chest ache. “You like it?” he murmurs, voice rough.
I can only nod, words failing me, my fingers brushing over the diamond.
“We should…” I start, but my voice trails off when his gaze drops to my mouth.
“Should what?” he asks, his voice is rough, low.
“...Get some sleep,” I finish, but there’s no conviction in the words.
He braces one hand on the headboard behind my head, leaning in until I can feel the heat radiating off his skin. “I’m not tired…”
Oh.
“Then we should—”
He cuts me off, his free hand finding my waist under the blankets, his thumb brushing the sliver of skin where my shirt has ridden up. I gasp.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs.
My hands splay on his chest, one thumb brushing over his nipple. “Don’t you dare,” I say.
A sound, somewhere between a groan and a growl, escapes his throat. His hand drops to my hip, and he tugs me closer, his fingers biting into my skin painfully. He dips his head, so his mouth is hovering just above my lips.
“You’ve been through so much the last few nights,” he whispers, his breath hot against my lips. Then he kisses me. Slow at first, tender, questioning, but I push back, deepening it, claiming, desperate, until all that’s left is the language of our bodies.
His kiss tells me everything.
We’re here. We’re okay. We survived.
Our bodies remember what our minds sometimes forget—how seamlessly we fit together, how we’ve always been each other’s safety, even when we didn’t realize it. Every brush of his skin is a promise, a reminder that no matter what comes, we’ll face it side by side.
My hands slide across his skin, mapping familiar territory that still feels like home. Every breath, every point of contact is a conversation—about survival, about love, about us. Not romantic in some movie-perfect way, but real. Raw. Unbreakable.
This is how we heal. This is how we hold on.
He kisses me again, slower this time, less about hunger and more about connection.
My pulse steadies under the weight of it.
Each touch is deliberate, reverent. His thumb drags along my jaw, down the curve of my neck, and I melt into the familiarity of him—his scent, his warmth, the way he always feels like home after a storm.
We shed our clothes piece by piece, then the distance between us vanishes. His breath mingles with mine, uneven, the rhythm of us finding its old, unspoken pattern. It’s not rushed, it’s desperate in a quieter way.
“I love you,” he breathes, like it’s the first truth he’s ever trusted himself to say.
The words hit somewhere deep, undoing me in ways nothing else could. “Say it again,” I whisper, my hands gripping him closer, needing to hear it one more time, to believe it.
His mouth brushes my ear. “I love you, Mrs. McKnight.” A vow, a confession, a surrender.
And when I say it back, it’s not just a reply—it’s an exhale. A release of everything I’ve been holding in since the night everything went wrong. “I love you, too.”
Every movement after that feels different—slower, deeper, threaded with something that’s no longer just need but belonging. The tension that’s held us apart finally unravels, replaced by something softer, but stronger.
Our mouths find each other again, slow at first, tasting, teasing, memorizing.
His hands roam me like they’ve never left, mapping every curve, every shiver, every response he’s been craving.
I pull him closer, hips meeting, grinding, the friction sharp and perfect, and he groans low in my ear, “Mine, only mine.”
His hands twist in my hair, holding me as tightly as he slides his cock into me. My back arches instinctively, breath hitching, heat building until it’s unbearable, every nerve ending singing. I feel him tremble against me, and it sends a jolt straight through me.
God, he’s already so close.
And then we let go together, my body clenching around him, his groan swallowed by the rise and fall of our shared climax.
It’s messy, it’s perfect, it’s everything we’ve been holding back, finally spilling over in a rhythm that belongs only to us.
We collapse into each other, gasping, hearts pounding, skin slick with sweat, and I finally allow myself to just be here with him, in this, in the home we’ve made in each other.
Afterward, he pulls me close, tucking me beneath his chin. The silence feels safe now, heavy with the kind of peace that only comes after surviving something that should have broken you.
I trace lazy patterns across his chest and whisper, “We’re okay.”
He presses a kiss to my hair, voice rough and quiet. “Yeah. We are.”