Chapter 7 #2
"She's not a hostage." Alexandra's voice broke on the word.
The clinical language, the strategic framing.
It was Erin's way of coping, of making the unbearable manageable by reducing it to tactics and logic.
But Florence wasn't a variable in an equation.
She was a little girl who slept with a ribbon from her sister's hair tucked inside her book.
She was a child who practised speeches in the mirror and worried about wobbling in her new shoes and knew the shape of her pony from a helicopter window. "She's our daughter."
Erin's face crumpled. For one terrible, beautiful moment, the tactical mask fell away completely and Alexandra saw the woman underneath: the raw, desperate fear that Erin had been holding at arm's length all day, the love that was so immense it was indistinguishable from pain.
Erin's eyes were full and her chin was trembling and she looked, for the first and only time that day, like she might break.
"I know who she is," Erin whispered. "She's everything. She's everything and I will not rest until she's home."
Alexandra reached up and touched Erin's face.
Her fingertips traced the line of her jaw, the ridge of her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth.
Erin turned her head and kissed Alexandra's palm, a slow, open-mouthed press that sent heat through Alexandra's wrist and up her arm and into the centre of her chest.
"We'll get through this," Erin said against her palm. "Together. The way we get through everything."
"Promise me."
"I promise you. The way I promised you on the steps when I took that bullet. The way I promised you at the altar. The way I promised Florence last night that I would keep her safe." Her voice roughened. "I broke that promise today. I won't break it again."
"You didn't break anything." Alexandra cupped Erin's face in both hands and held her gaze. "You didn't do this. This was done to us. To Florence. By people who have been trying to destroy us for years. And they will not win. Not this time."
Erin pressed her forehead against Alexandra's. Their noses touched. Their breath mingled in the small space between their mouths. The lamp threw their joined silhouette against the wall and in the warm half-dark it looked like one shape, not two.
They were very close now. Erin's breath was warm on Alexandra's lips and her hands were at Alexandra's waist and the grief and the fear and the exhaustion were still there but beneath them something else was rising, the need to be held, to be known, to feel something that wasn't terror.
The need to remind herself that she was alive and Erin was alive and their love was real and solid and present even in the worst of it.
Alex kissed her. Not gently. Not the careful, composed kiss of a woman who had spent her life being watched.
A desperate kiss, open and hungry and raw, her hands fisting in Erin's hair, pulling her closer.
Erin responded immediately, her mouth opening against Alexandra's, her tongue sliding past her lips, the kiss deepening until it was all breath and heat and the taste of salt from Alexandra's tears.
Erin's hands moved under the blue top, her calloused fingers dragging up Alexandra's sides, and the sensation was so sharp and so wanted that Alexandra gasped against Erin's mouth.
She'd worn this body next to this woman for a decade and the touch still sent current through her.
Still made her pulse slam and her skin tighten and her hips shift forward seeking contact.
"Off," Erin murmured against her mouth, tugging at the fabric. "Take this off."
Alexandra pulled the top over her head and Erin's mouth was at her collarbone before the fabric hit the floor. Lips. Teeth. The warm drag of Erin's tongue along the ridge of bone. Alexandra's head fell back and she gripped Erin's shoulders, feeling the muscle shift beneath her hands.
They fell back onto the bed together. Erin's weight pressed Alexandra into the mattress and the solidity of her was grounding, an anchor in the dark.
Alexandra's hands found Erin's bra and pulled it off, and the warm press of Erin's breasts against her own drew a low sound from both of them.
Erin's hands stripped her of her bra and her mouth moved down her body: the hollow of her throat, the swell of her breast. She took Alexandra's nipple into her mouth and sucked, her tongue circling the hardened peak, and the sensation shot straight between Alexandra's thighs.
Her hips bucked off the mattress and her fingers dug into Erin's hair, holding her there.
"More," Alexandra breathed. "Please."
Erin's teeth grazed the sensitive flesh, then her mouth moved to the other breast, sucking harder, and Alexandra's back arched and the sound she made was broken and desperate and came from somewhere deeper than words.
Erin knew this. Knew that Alexandra's breasts were the fastest route to making her incoherent, knew the exact pressure that transformed her from composed to gasping.
Ten years of this knowledge, wielded without mercy.
Erin kissed down her stomach, over the faded silver stretch marks she kissed reverently on quieter nights but tonight traced with urgency, and her fingers found the waistband of Alexandra's trousers and unzipped them, working them down along with her underwear in one practised motion, the fabric shoved aside with the impatience of a woman who had no interest in ceremony.
The cool air hit Alexandra's bare skin and she shivered, but Erin's hand was already between her thighs, fingers sliding through the slick heat of her, and the shiver became a full-body tremor.
"God, you're so wet." Erin's voice was rough against Alexandra's hip, reverent and raw. "Lex."
"Don't tease me. Not tonight."
Erin didn't tease. Her fingers found Alexandra's clit with the certainty of a woman who had spent a decade learning exactly where to press, exactly how to circle.
Two fingers working in tight, steady strokes that wound the tension up from Alexandra's core until her breathing shattered.
The pleasure was immediate and devastating.
It was always devastating, but tonight the desperation stripped away every layer of self-consciousness and left only nerve endings and want and the sound of Erin breathing hard against her skin.
"Right there," Alexandra gasped. "Right there, don't stop."
Erin shifted lower, her mouth trailing down the trembling plane of Alexandra's stomach, and Alexandra's hands found her hair and gripped because she knew what was coming.
She felt Erin's lips on the crease of her inner thigh, felt the warm breath against the place where Erin's fingers were still working, and then Erin's mouth replaced her hand and Alexandra cried out, the sound torn from her throat without permission.
Erin's tongue was slow and deliberate, circling her clit with the patience of a woman who knew how long to draw this out before it became unbearable.
She flattened her tongue and licked in one long, firm stroke that made Alexandra's thighs clamp around her head, then returned to the tight circles, alternating pressure and pace in a rhythm that Alexandra's body recognised the way it recognised breathing.
Her hands gripped Alexandra's hips, holding her steady against the mattress, and Alexandra's heels dug into the sheets and her back arched and the sounds coming from her mouth were not words.
"Erin—" She managed the name, barely. "I need—I'm going to—"
Erin slid two fingers inside her. The stretch was full and perfect and combined with the relentless rhythm of her tongue, it made the world collapse to a single blazing point of sensation.
Erin's fingers curled, finding the spot inside her that made everything go white, stroking in time with her mouth, and the orgasm built like a wall of water, enormous and impossible to hold back.
It broke through her with a force that tore a cry from her throat.
Her muscles clenched around Erin's fingers and her body bowed off the mattress and the pleasure crashed through her in waves, each one cresting higher than the last, each one stripping away another layer of the composure and the dignity and the performance of strength she'd been holding together all day.
She shook and gasped and Erin held her through it, her mouth gentling but not stopping, her fingers still moving inside her, coaxing out every last pulse until Alexandra was trembling and oversensitised and had to push Erin's head away with a broken, breathless sound.
"Wait, I can't—"
Erin pressed a kiss to her inner thigh and crawled back up her body, her face flushed and her lips swollen and wet, and the look in her green eyes was fierce and tender and full.
Alexandra pulled her down and kissed her hard, tasting herself on Erin's mouth, and the intimacy of it, the rawness, made her chest ache with something too big for a single word.
Alexandra kissed her jaw, her throat, and her hand was already moving down Erin's stomach, feeling the muscles contract beneath her fingers.
She slid beneath the waistband of Erin's briefs and found her soaked, the evidence of Erin's wanting so undeniable that it sent a fresh surge of heat through Alexandra's own body.
Her fingers slid through the slickness and found Erin's clit, and Erin's hips jerked forward, a groan punching out of her that was raw and involuntary.
Alexandra knew this body. Knew that Erin needed firmer pressure, knew to keep the rhythm steady, relentless circles that built without mercy.
She pressed her mouth to Erin's neck and worked her with the precision of a decade's practice, feeling Erin's body coil tighter with every stroke.