Chapter 22
Coop
I found Mia asleep at Travis’s conference table, surrounded by composite faces.
The drive from the FBI field office in Billings had taken three hours, and I’d broken every speed limit.
Nearly thirty hours of interrogation, bad coffee, and agents explaining in excruciating detail how I’d complicated their operation.
The only thing that kept me from losing my mind was knowing Mia was safe.
Now I stood in Travis’s doorway, watching her breathe.
She was slumped over the massive table, her head pillowed on her folded arms, blonde hair spilling across the polished surface. Printouts surrounded her—composite faces scattered everywhere, some crumpled and discarded, others marked with handwritten notes in her neat script.
She’d worked herself to exhaustion. Knowing Mia, she couldn’t sit still and do nothing—had to feel useful, had to keep her hands busy and her mind occupied.
Travis appeared from behind his bank of screens, energy drink in hand, dark hair falling past his collar. He crossed the floor without a sound—CIA training that never switched off. His eyes held something I hadn’t seen before. Something that might have been approval.
“She’s been at it for hours.” His voice was quiet. “Wouldn’t stop until her body made the choice for her.”
I crossed the room, boots too loud on the wood floor. She didn’t stir. The exhaustion went bone-deep—I recognized it because I felt it in my own marrow.
I lifted her from the chair as carefully as I could, gathering her against my chest. She weighed next to nothing.
She barely stirred. Just murmured my name, curling her hand into my shirt like she needed proof I was there.
“I’ve got you,” I said against her hair. “I’ve got you.”
I looked at Travis. “I’m taking her to my place. Don’t expect to see us for a few days.”
Travis just nodded and got the door for me.
The drive from his compound to my house took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of dark mountain roads, my headlights cutting through the night, Mia asleep with her head against the window. I kept glancing over. Confirming she was breathing. Confirming we were both really okay and safe.
My house wasn’t much. A small ranch-style place I’d bought when I first moved to Garnet Bend. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that could charitably be called functional. The kind of house a man bought when he didn’t expect to share it with anyone.
But it was mine. Private. Safe.
I carried her inside, navigated the dark hallway by memory, and laid her on my bed. I barely got my boots off before I collapsed beside her.
We were both wrecked. Days of terror for her, weeks of playing a monster for me. She curled into me instinctively, even in sleep, and I pulled her close. I was out within seconds.
She woke sometime in the middle of the night.
I felt her stir, her breathing shifting from slow and steady to sharp with fear. Disoriented.
“Coop?” Her hands found my face in the dark, then my chest, fingers pressing against fabric like she was checking for wounds. “Coop?”
“I’m here.”
Her hands kept moving. My jaw, my shoulders, the solid bulk of me. Not gentle exploration—desperate confirmation. Like she needed to map every inch to believe I was real.
“You’re alive.” The words cracked. “I saw you fighting Oliver, and I thought— When Beckett drove away, I thought—”
“I made it out.” I caught her hands, pressed them flat against my chest so she could feel my heartbeat. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I left you.” Her voice broke on the words. “We drove away and left you there with him, and I didn’t know if you were…if he’d—”
“Hey.” I pulled her closer, cradling her face in my hands. “You did exactly what I needed you to do. What I told you to do. You survived. That’s all that matters.”
“It’s not all that matters.” Her fingers curled into my shirt, fisting the fabric. “You matter. God, Coop, I thought I’d lost you again. I thought—”
I kissed her to stop the spiral. Meant it to be gentle. Reassuring.
It wasn’t.
The moment our mouths met, something ignited. All the fear and adrenaline and desperate relief combusted into heat. Her hands were in my hair, pulling me closer, and I rolled her beneath me, settling between her thighs like I belonged there.
“Need you,” she gasped against my mouth. “Need to feel you.”
I understood. This wasn’t about pleasure—not yet. This was about proof. About feeling each other’s heartbeats and knowing we’d survived.
I stripped off her borrowed shirt, and she yanked at mine until I pulled back long enough to tear it over my head. Then, skin against skin, we both exhaled like we’d been holding our breath for days.
Hell, maybe we had.
Her hands roamed my chest, my shoulders, down my sides. When her fingers found the fresh wounds from the hunt—still tender—she made a sound low in her throat.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. None of this is fine.” But she was pulling me back down, her mouth finding mine again, her hips lifting to meet me. “I need— Coop, please—”
I worked her pants down her legs, then removed my own, and as I settled between her thighs, I had to stop myself from rushing. She was warm and wet and ready for me, and when I finally sank my cock into her heat—inch by inch, giving her time to adjust—we both went still.
The world narrowed to this. Her body wrapped around mine. Her heartbeat pressed against my chest. Just breathing. Just feeling.
“You’re here,” she whispered.
“I’m here.”
I moved slowly at first, drawing it out, watching her face in the darkness. Her eyes fluttered closed, lips parting on a soft moan. I dropped my forehead to hers, breathing her in, letting the reality of her wash over me.
Alive. Safe. Mine.
She raked her nails down my back, and I picked up the pace, driving deeper. She wrapped her legs around my waist, changing the angle, and I felt her walls clench around me.
“Don’t stop.” Her voice was ragged. “Please don’t stop.”
I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to. I was lost in her—the sounds she made, the way her body moved with mine, the heat building between us. When she came, it was with my name on her lips, her whole body arching off the mattress. I followed seconds later, burying myself deep and letting go.
We lay tangled together afterward, sweat cooling on our skin, hearts pounding in unison.
“You’re here,” she said again, softer now.
“I’m here.”
We didn’t let go of each other for the rest of the night. I shifted onto my back, and she followed, draping herself across me like she was afraid I’d disappear if she wasn’t touching me. Her cheek pressed against my chest, her arm wrapped around my waist, one leg slotted between mine.
I pressed my face into her hair, breathed her in, and let my eyes close. For the first time in weeks, the darkness behind my eyelids felt safe.
Four days later, I watched her get ready in my bathroom.
She’d borrowed one of my shirts—a blue flannel this time—and the hem brushed her thighs as she towel-dried her hair. Still wet from the shower, darkened to honey-gold and curling at the ends.
We hadn’t left the house in three days. Phone silenced. Door locked. Nothing but each other.
At the compound, we’d had one night without cameras. Here, there was nothing. No threat. No ticking clock. We could finally let go completely.
And we had. Over and over again.
I’d woken that first morning with her body still wrapped around mine, leg thrown over my hip, face pressed into my neck. When she’d stirred and felt my cock already hard against her, she’d reached down without a word and guided me inside her.
We’d moved together slowly, lazily, half asleep and unhurried.
She’d risen above me at some point, hands braced on my chest, riding me with her eyes closed and her head thrown back.
I’d watched the morning light play across her skin, memorizing every detail—the way her nipples tightened to hard peaks, the flutter of her lashes, the way her lips parted when she got close, the soft sounds she made when I reached between us and stroked her clit exactly like she needed it to come.
God, I loved this woman. I always had, even when I’d been idiot enough to leave her.
We ate when we remembered to—whatever was in my fridge, which wasn’t much after six weeks undercover. Crackers. Half a jar of peanut butter. When that ran out, I’d made a quick run into town for supplies, breaking every speed limit to get back to her.
The second day, I’d explored her body properly. Taken my time mapping every inch of her, learning what had changed and what had stayed the same.
The scars on her legs made me slow down.
I’d seen them at the cabin, traced them in stolen moments while danger pressed in on all sides.
But here, with time and safety, I could give them the attention they deserved.
She still tensed when I pushed up her borrowed T-shirt—that instinct to hide hadn’t gone away yet.
Maybe it never would completely. But I was determined to replace every bad memory with something better.
“You don’t have to—” she’d started, trying to close her legs, to hide.
I’d held them open gently. “I want to see all of you, Kitten. Every part.”
I’d traced each scar with my fingers, feeling the texture of the damaged skin, imagining the terror she must have felt.
Then I’d followed the same path with my mouth, pressing kisses to every mark until she stopped tensing.
Until her fingers relaxed in my hair and her breathing changed from anxious to aroused.
By the time I’d worked my way up to the inside of her thigh, she was trembling for an entirely different reason.
“Coop.” My name came out strangled.
I’d looked up at her, holding her gaze as I pressed a kiss to the crease where her thigh met her hip. “Tell me what you want.”
“You know what I want.”
I did. But I wanted to hear her say it. Wanted to give her back the control that had been stripped from her during those days at the compound.
“Tell me.”