Chapter Twenty-Five
SOPHIA
Waking slowly, I feel warmth first.
The solid warmth of something real beneath my cheek, not a pillow or the mattress. It’s something that rises and falls slowly and steadily.
A heartbeat.
I become fully conscious all at once.
Not moving.
In the still gray of early morning, his arm is still around me, my hand is on his chest, and the whole of yesterday is sitting between us.
Tate.
He’d come when I screamed. He’d sat beside me in the dark while I shook and couldn’t stop seeing Ryan burning in my dream. He’d gotten into this bed, held me, and I’d fallen asleep against his chest. Somewhere in the night, the nightmare had let go, and something else had taken its place.
Something warm.
Something that feels right.
I lie there, breathing, feeling that rightness, and waiting for the guilt to arrive.
It comes.
Quieter than expected.
Underneath the this is Tracker’s brother and the what would Ryan think and all the rest of it, something else is quieter still and more honest.
You haven’t felt like this since Ryan.
I close my eyes.
Open them.
Look up.
Tate is awake.
He is looking at the ceiling, or had been, because the moment I move, he looks down, and our eyes meet. For a long, suspended moment, neither of us says anything.
We just look at each other.
His arm is still around me, my hand is on his chest, everything unspoken between us right there in the space where words would have been.
Watching it move across his face, that careful, controlled face that keeps everything filed away, and for once, he doesn’t file it away. For once, he lets it be there.
I push myself up slightly and look at him properly at the dark curls, the green eyes, the jaw, and the way he looks in the early morning when the president, the patch, and the weight of everything he carries are all still sleeping, and it is just him.
He looks like Ryan.
He always looks like Ryan.
But he also looks entirely, completely, and unmistakably like himself.
And it is him I am looking at.
Not a ghost, a substitute, or grief reaching for the nearest familiar shape.
Him.
“Tate,” I say softly, and even the way his name comes out of my mouth feels different, like something I’d been holding back finally finding its way through.
“Sophia.” His voice is low and careful. His arm is still around me, fallen to my lower back. Neither of us has moved. “You just miss him. That’s all this is. You had a nightmare. and you’re—”
“No,” I say.
He goes still.
I hold his gaze.
“I know what missing Ryan feels like. I’ve been doing it for months. I know every version of it.” A pause. “This isn’t that.”
He looks at me.
Something shifts in his expression, the last wall he’d been building for a very long time finally cracking open.
“Sophia.”
“I need you, Tate,” I say quietly. “Not Ryan. Not a memory of him. Not because I’m lonely or scared or grieving.” Holding his eyes. “You. You are what I want. You are what I need.”
The room is very still.
He briefly runs his tongue across his bottom lip, and something lights up in me that I hadn’t felt in so long I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
His arm tightens around me, just slightly, just enough, and his gaze holds mine for a long moment with nothing hidden in it for once.
“Are you sure?” Low and careful.
“I’m sure.” Completely and entirely sure. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He reaches up and touches my face, his thumb moving across my cheek, slowly and deliberately, the way you touch something you’ve been trying not to want for a very long time. I lean into it, close my eyes, and feel the last of the distance between us dissolve.
When I open my eyes, he is still looking at me.
“Come here,” he says quietly.
And I do.
He is gentle at first.
The way he is gentle about everything, without making a performance of it or announcing it, just careful. His hands, mouth, and the unhurried patience of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and has decided that this moment deserves every second he is going to give it.
His mouth finds my jaw, neck, and the place below my ear that makes my breath catch, and I feel him smile against my skin at the sound of it. It’s that quiet, private smile I had been mentally ticking off for months without letting myself understand why.
“Tate…” There’s an urgency in my voice I don’t recognize.
“I know,” he breathes out.
He cups the back of my neck and pulls me down for the kiss I have been craving since I opened my eyes and found him beside me this morning.
His kiss is slow at first, exploring, unhurried, like a man who has time and intends to use every second of it. Tate’s lips are soft and demanding all at once. His tongue finds mine, and I groan against his mouth.
He pulls back just slightly, just enough to look at me, his eyes burning in the morning light, and whatever he sees in my face makes me lean back down into him.
Harder this time.
His hands move into my hair, and I forget everything—the canyon, Mexico, the nightmare, all of it. There is nothing left in the world except his mouth, hands, and the low sound he makes against my lips that tells me everything he hadn’t been saying for months.
He’d wanted this.
As long as I had.
Maybe longer.
“I’ve wanted this since before I should have,” he says quietly, his forehead resting against mine, both of us breathing hard. “But you weren’t mine to have. I kept telling myself that.”
“I understand,” I say. “This is hard for me, too, Tate.”
He pulls back and looks at me, really looks, the way he rarely lets himself, and what is in his face in that moment is so unguarded and certain that something in my chest gives way.
“Whatever this is,” he says quietly. “I’m here.” Not a line, not reassurance, just the plainest possible truth from a man who means every word he says.
Something inside me that has been braced for a very long time stops bracing.
I lean down and kiss him again. Slow and deliberate, giving him everything. I feel his breath catch against my mouth, and he pulls me closer like I am something he has been waiting for.
“Sophia.” My name comes from his mouth like that.
Like I am something.
Like I am everything.
Our kisses become urgent, and I lift myself to straddle his thighs, looking down at him in the morning light.
He looks up at me, all that careful containment completely gone, just him, this, and the way a man looks at a woman when he has finally stopped pretending he doesn’t want her.
Something moves through me that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with being truly, completely seen.
“Tate,” I say. “I want you. All of you.”
“Fuck, baby, you’re killing me.” Low and rough, his hands slide up my sides and rest on my hips, anchoring me there like he needs something to hold onto.
With confidence, I lift the hem of Tracker’s T-shirt and pull it over my head, dropping it to the side of the bed.
His eyes move over me slowly and unhurriedly. It’s the way he looks at things that he has decided matter, all of it, every inch, and what is in his expression when his eyes come back to mine is so completely without armor that I have to remind myself to breathe.
“You are so beautiful,” he says. Not a reflex or a performance, but the simple, plain truth of it from a man who doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean, delivered like something he has been thinking for a long time and is only now allowing himself to say out loud.
It lands somewhere I didn’t know was still open.
His hands come up and cover me, both of them, warm and certain, and my breath leaves me completely. His thumbs move, and I whimper before I can stop myself.
He looks up at me when I make that sound, those green eyes burning.
“Again,” he says quietly.
His thumbs move, and I oblige him, completely involuntarily, and then his mouth is on me. Warm, urgent, and absolutely without hesitation, his tongue moves, his teeth graze, and I drop my head back. My hands go into his hair and hold on because there is nothing else to hold onto.
He is relentless, slow, then urgent, then slow again, reading every sound I make and using it, as if he has been paying attention to me for months and intends to put every single thing he has noticed to work.
He has.
God, he has.
“Tate…” It is barely a whisper.
He hums against my skin.
“Tate…” His name comes out broken.
“Stay with me,” he says against my skin.
His mouth moves up my throat and jaw, finding mine again, hungrier now, both of us past careful. I rock against him and feel him groan into the kiss, his hands gripping me harder.
“Still sure?” he asks.
“Don’t you dare stop,” I say.
The corner of his mouth moves.
In one smooth movement, he rolls us, my back meeting the mattress, him above me, and his hands find the waistband of my panties and draw them down slowly, followed by his own, his eyes never once leaving mine.
I look up at him.
All of him.
His body is like something carved, with his broad chest, tattoos mapping his skin from collarbone to hip, and a trail of dark hair leading down from his navel. He is already hard, and the sight of him sends heat moving through me that I feel in every part of my body.
And then I feel it.
His heart is hammering against my palm where my hand rests on his chest. It’s faster than I expected or imagined from a man who is never rattled by anything.
I look up at him.
There is something in his face I haven’t seen before.
It’s not desire, though that is absolutely there, but something underneath it.
Something that looks like a man asking himself a question he isn’t sure he can answer.
His jaw is tight. His eyes are on mine. And in them, beneath the want and everything, something that looks remarkably like a man who is terrified of not being enough.
Of not being the right man.
Of not being what I need.
“Hey,” I say softly.
His eyes find mine.
“I’ve got you,” I say. “I’m right here.”