Chapter 23
23
ANNA
T he silence in the ops room had thickened into something unbearable when Ryker’s phone buzzed.
One sharp vibration against the metal table.
He picked it up slowly, his expression unreadable. Everyone froze—Noah mid-pace, Marcus with his arms still crossed, Silas turning his head just enough to catch the angle of Ryker’s screen.
Ryker’s shoulders dropped.
Relief. Real, bone-deep relief.
“He’s okay,” Ryker said. His voice was low, steady, but it cracked ever so slightly at the edges. “Text just came through. He’s safe.”
My breath left me all at once.
“What did he say?” I asked, my voice already breaking.
“‘Holed up. Safe. Will be in touch. Wasn’t me re: Eugene.’”
Wasn’t me re: Eugene.
I didn’t know I’d been holding that question in my chest, not until those five words let it go. It was like he’d reached through whatever dark place he’d gone and pulled me back to him with just a few lines of quiet truth.
Mama exhaled softly. Papa sat down in the nearest chair and rubbed a hand over his face.
“Thank God,” Mama whispered.
“Smart move,” Silas murmured, nodding. “We need to get moving, too.”
Noah finally let out a long breath and glanced at my parents. “Might be time to get you both back to the East Wing. Atlas is okay for now. And it’s probably going to be a long day.”
“We’ll rest,” Papa said, standing. “While we can.”
Mama nodded once, but not before pressing a kiss to my temple. “If you need us, you know where we are.”
“I do,” I said softly.
Noah stepped forward and gestured them toward the hallway. “I’ll walk you back.”
They followed, murmuring something to each other in Russian as they disappeared into the shadows. I stood still for a beat, trying to breathe through the chaos in my head. My heart was still hammering, but the edge had dulled. He was alive.
Atlas was alive. And safe. And he hadn’t killed Eugene.
Marcus tapped something into the keyboard, pulling up financial records I didn’t understand. Silas went back to studying a digital floorplan of what looked like an estate on some island. Only Ryker stayed still.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. Then shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He tilted his head. “You will be.”
I didn’t respond. Just walked slowly to the chair across from him and sat.
For a few seconds, the quiet stretched again—comfortable, but laced with fatigue. I rubbed my palms against my thighs. Ryker leaned back, elbows on the armrests, watching me with that quiet, unfussy steadiness I was starting to recognize in all the Dane brothers.
Then he said, “Hey—just so you know, the number I put in your phone for Atlas earlier?”
I looked up. “Yeah?”
“It won’t be good anymore,” he said simply. “He would’ve torched the phone the second he left James Island. Standard protocol when we go dark.”
My heart twinged. “He destroyed it?”
Ryker nodded. “Guaranteed. Atlas doesn’t take chances. If he thought there was even the smallest risk someone could trace him through that device—burner or not—he’d wipe it, crush it, and drop it in the nearest sewer grate.”
“Oh.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “So, I really won’t hear from him.”
“You will,” Ryker said. “But only when it’s safe. He’ll find a new channel. We always do.”
His tone was gentle. But unshakable.
It made something in me want to trust him—these brothers, this place—even when everything else in my life felt like it was unraveling.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” Ryker added. “But Atlas thinks ten steps ahead. If he’s off-grid, it’s because he wants to be. And that means he’s moving. Calculating. Hunting.”
“For what?”
Ryker’s jaw ticked. “For whoever decided your pain was collateral damage.”
I didn’t speak.
I couldn’t.
We stayed like that for a while. Quiet. Working through the wreckage of adrenaline and uncertainty. The hum of equipment, the occasional beep from a new security alert. I watched his hands—broad and scarred like Atlas’s but different, too. Ryker had the steady grace of someone who’d survived something brutal and made peace with what it turned him into.
After a while, Ryker leaned back and stretched, his shirt pulling tight across his muscular chest. “We’ve all been there, you know.”
“Where?”
He looked at me. “Worried about someone you love.”
I swallowed. “You and Isabel?”
He nodded slowly. “At first, I let fear take the wheel. I thought I was protecting her by keeping her at arm’s length. But all I did was risk pushing her away.”
I watched his jaw flex, the admission costing him something.
“She’s my best friend’s little sister. And I—” He shook his head. “I had all these ideas about how I should act. I tried to do the right thing, but I did it all wrong.”
“But she fell for you anyway,” I said softly.
His gaze lifted. “Not because I deserved it. Because Isabel’s the kind of woman who sees through the wreckage. Who still believes there’s something in me worth saving.” His voice dropped to something quiet, almost reverent. “She’s incredible.”
“It all ended well.”
“Because I’m a lucky bastard,” he said simply. “And she’s smarter than I am.”
“I doubt that,” I said, and he smiled faintly.
“You really would like her,” he said. “Isabel’s got this terrifying ability to read people. Sweet to everyone but soft for no one. Except me, maybe. On a good day.”
“I look forward to meeting her,” I said again. This time, I meant it in a way I hadn’t before. There was something grounding in the way these men talked about their women. Not as accessories. Not as trophies. But as anchors.
“Claire’s the same,” Marcus said from his corner, voice low and even. “She walked into the fire with me. Never looked back.”
Ryker reclined in his chair, half-smiling. “She’s the only one I’ve seen make Marcus blink during a briefing. She calls him out without flinching.”
“She also called for a nationwide manhunt on her podcast and got results that we couldn’t,” Silas added. “I’d say that earned her some brownie points.”
“And she didn’t crack when Mayor Hart’s guy had her tied to a chair. Hell, she was the one buying time,” Ryker said.
“Nearly got herself killed doing it,” Silas muttered.
Marcus finally looked up. “But she didn’t. Because she’s tougher than all of us.”
There was a long beat of silence.
Then Silas murmured, “Still think she bit you that one time.”
Marcus didn’t miss a beat. “She did.”
A pause.
“That’s foreplay.”
I choked on my laugh.
Ryker glanced at me, amused. “You good?”
“I just wasn’t expecting this conversation to turn into … that.”
“We’re still men,” he said, deadpan. “And not monks.”
“You’re also kind of terrifying.”
“That’s part of the appeal,” Silas said without looking up.
Marcus cracked his knuckles. “We’re loyal. Obsessive. Dangerous when we need to be.”
“Also apparently really into biting,” I muttered.
“That, too,” Ryker said, grinning now.
It shouldn’t have made me laugh. Not with everything happening. But it did.
And then, the laughter softened into something else. A warm thrum in my chest. A memory of Atlas’s hands, his mouth, the way he looked at me like he was unraveling every carefully coiled piece of himself and handing it to me on instinct.
Sex with him hadn’t been just sex.
It was claiming.
And I knew, in the marrow of my bones, that whatever else the world tried to take from us?—
That part?
Was ours.
Ryker stood and stretched again, then reached for my phone. “Here. I added my number, plus Marcus and Silas. Noah’ll give you his in the morning. If you need anything—anything at all—you text. Doesn’t matter what time.”
I nodded, suddenly grateful in a way that had nothing to do with logistics. “Thank you.”
He held my gaze for a beat. “Breakfast is at seven. But you don’t have to wait. Chef’s on call. She’ll make you whatever you want, whenever you want it.”
I smiled faintly. “That’s dangerously tempting.”
Ryker grinned.
He didn’t say anything else. Just turned and rejoined the others, already shifting back into ops mode—screens glowing, data scrolling, tension knitting itself quietly back into the air.
I slipped out of the room, the halls of Dominion Hall somehow quieter than before. The storm was still out there, curling toward Charleston, but in here … I felt something different.
Not peace yet. But safety.
I let myself back into Atlas’s suite, the air inside still thick with his scent.
I left his shirt on and crawled back into bed. I rolled to his side. Let my fingers trace the pillow where his head had been. And I thought about sex.
Not in the abstract. Not even in that wild, bruised kind of way that had left my body aching.
But his sex.
The way he kissed like he was taking something. The way he looked at me like I’d already surrendered.
The way he moved—silent, powerful, terrifyingly in control—until I made him lose it. Until he gave in to whatever storm lived inside his chest.
It hadn’t just been heat. It hadn’t even just been pleasure.
It was the kind of intimacy that felt like worship from a man I wasn’t even sure believed in God.
And it shook me.
Because I wanted more.
Not just the sex—but the surrender that came with it. The way he unraveled against me. The way I wanted to be the only place he ever came undone.
My thighs pressed together under the sheets, the ache blooming again.
Possession.
Him.
I turned onto my side and curled tighter around his pillow, breathing him in.
Outside, the wind picked up—soft at first, then sharp. Trees rustled. The walls of Dominion Hall creaked like a ship at sea.
And that’s when I saw it.
A small, black box sat on the nightstand. Elegant. Minimal. Beside it, a folded note with my name written in ink—precise and slanted, unmistakably his.
I sat up slowly, heart thrumming. Reached for the card first.
Take care of yourself. Think of me when you do.
—A.
The words shouldn’t have made me tremble. But they did.
I opened the box.
Satin-lined. Sleek. A vibrator—streamlined, powerful, the kind of toy that didn’t just hum, but promised devastation. No frills. Just intent. Like everything else about him.
God.
He’d left me this.
A gift. A command. A tether.
I let out a shaky breath and rested my hand over my chest. He saw me. Not just the public-facing harpist or the woman under fire from every angle. He saw me.
Because this—this wasn’t for a shy little wallflower.
And I wasn’t one. I never had been.
I was a woman with a body I knew, with cravings I didn’t apologize for. Sex had never been shameful to me. It was expression. It was release. And Atlas must’ve known—maybe from the first kiss, maybe from the way I touched him, or how I opened for him without hesitation.
He saw the hunger I carried.
And now, he’d left me this. Something to hold me over. Something to ground me. Something to remind me I still had ownership over this body, even when the world felt like it was tearing me apart.
But God, the timing.
My parents were asleep in the East Wing. The press was probably crafting another hit piece as I lay here. My job—my entire identity as a musician—was on pause. My reputation, cracked wide open. Atlas was gone, and I didn’t know when he’d be back. I didn’t know what he was doing.
And the storm …
The storm outside was coming closer. Inescapable. Like everything else that was hurtling toward me.
I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t fix any of it.
But I could feel. I could hold this moment. Anchor myself in it. Take something back.
My breath caught as I pulled back the covers.
The room was dim, the bedside lamp casting a soft gold glow across the sheets. Atlas’s scent clung to the pillow, to the air, to the spaces where his body had caged mine.
I leaned back, legs parting slowly, fingers skimming the waistband of my yoga pants. I pushed them down, peeled them off inch by inch, baring myself to the empty room that didn’t feel quite so empty anymore.
The vibrator was warm in my hand. I ran my fingers along the length, learning it. Letting it become familiar.
Then I closed my eyes.
And conjured him.
Atlas.
Not just his body—though that alone could undo me. But his presence. The way he filled a room. The weight of his stare, hot and unflinching. The way he spoke to me in low, deliberate tones, like each word was a promise and a warning.
You’re mine.
I pressed the toy between my thighs, teasing the slick heat already waiting for him.
Already missing him.
A breath shuddered from my lips as the vibration pulsed to life—low, steady, coiled like a hum in my bones. I circled it around my clit, slowly at first, imagining the weight of his body pinning me to the bed. His mouth on my breast. His voice in my ear.
You don’t come until I say.
I bit my lip.
But he wasn’t here.
I was alone. With the ache. With the noise in my head. With the want.
I turned the vibration up, moaning as it met the throb of my need. My hips lifted, seeking more, chasing the edge. My free hand slid up to cup my breast, thumb flicking over the nipple as I imagined his teeth there. His growl. The feral way he’d taken me, marked me.
I imagined his voice. The rough, frayed groan when he pushed inside.
This pussy’s mine. Say it.
“Yours,” I whispered into the room, my back arching, thighs trembling.
I slipped the vibrator lower—just a little. Just enough. It didn’t take long. The pressure inside me met the pressure building outside, and I shattered.
Hard.
Violent.
A sob tore from my throat as the orgasm rolled through me, fast and merciless, my body clenching around the empty space I wished was him.
I cried out.
I came hard.
And when it passed, I curled into his pillow again, breath ragged, tears slipping silently down my cheek.
Atlas was out there, somewhere in the storm.
I wondered where he was. If he was thinking about me. If he still felt me on his hands.
And I was here.
But I wasn’t waiting helplessly.
I was holding on.
To what we had.
To him.
To me.