Chapter 23
HALLIE MAE
I t was dark. The kind of dark that felt alive—thick and humming, like the whole night knew something was coming.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed in Noah’s suite at Dominion Hall, the hum of the AC the only sound, my hands clenched in my lap.
Noah had insisted I stay here for the time being—“Just until this part is over,” he’d said, brushing his lips over my forehead before slipping out earlier that evening.
I hadn’t even met most of the people who lived here—the men who moved like shadows in the hall, all muscle and military silence. They nodded when they passed me, respectful but distant, like they weren’t quite sure what to make of the preacher’s daughter sleeping in their brother’s bed.
And then there were the women—the fiancées.
Isabel, sharp-eyed and stunning, who moved through the place like she belonged to Ryker and the steel walls in equal measure.
Claire, serious, always reading something when I glimpsed her in the common room, her hand brushing Marcus’s like they were tethered by something invisible.
And Anna, quiet but watchful, with the kind of grace that made it obvious why Atlas looked at her like she was the first good thing he'd ever seen.
Even the staff made me pause—housekeeping, security, cooks—men and women who were clearly trained, clearly loyal, but treated like family.
There were no uniforms or yes sirs, no one barking orders.
Just people who had found a strange kind of home here inside the storm.
That part helped. The way they smiled at me like I belonged, even when I didn’t feel like I did.
I felt out of place. But I stayed. Because Noah asked me to. Because it meant something to him that I be where he could protect me.
I hadn’t expected him back tonight.
But then the door opened. And there he was.
Shadows clung to him—his jaw tight, black shirt still rumpled from whatever meeting he’d just left, his eyes burning like something already gone to war.
I stood, heart lurching. “Noah?”
He didn’t speak at first. Just shut the door quietly behind him, then leaned back against it like he couldn’t trust his legs anymore.
“I have to go,” he said finally, voice low and rough. “Tonight.”
I felt it like a punch to the chest.
“How long?”
“Couple days, maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. Could be less. Could be more.”
I crossed the room slowly, my bare feet silent against the hardwood. “Where?”
He shook his head once. “You don’t want to know.”
“I think I already do.”
His eyes locked on mine—haunted and fierce all at once. “Then you know it’s bad. You know what kind of people we’re dealing with.”
“Department 77,” I whispered.
He nodded. “They killed a federal agent. The guy the CIA sent to mediate. The bad guys have taken the war to the next level.”
My knees almost gave out. But then he stepped forward, caught me, held me close. I breathed him in—salt and sweat and gunpowder and the warmth of something I didn’t know I could lose until now.
“You’re safe here,” he said against my hair. “You’re locked up tighter than a vault.”
I pulled back enough to look up at him. “You really think I care about that right now?”
His mouth quirked, the faintest ghost of a smile. “I think I needed you to know you’re not alone.”
Tears prickled the backs of my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall.
“How much time do we have?”
He checked his watch, then met my gaze. “An hour.”
And that was all it took.
One breath.
One look.
Because we both knew what this was.
This was if we don’t get another chance .
This was I need to remember what you taste like if they take you from me .
This was love me like you might die .
He kissed me hard—no buildup, no preamble, just heat and want. I yanked his shirt over his head, my hands already tugging at his belt. He spun me toward the bed, laying me down with a reverence that broke something inside me .
“Noah—” I gasped as he pulled off my sleep shirt, baring me completely, his hands trailing down my ribs.
“You’re everything,” he said, voice wrecked. “Everything good I never thought I could touch.”
Then he dropped to his knees at the edge of the bed and parted my thighs, like he was opening a sacred text.
He kissed the inside of one knee, then the other, then lower still—until his mouth was on me, and I cried out, hand flying to his hair.
He worshipped me.
There was no other word for it.
His tongue moved like he knew my every need before I did, slow and deliberate, teasing and coaxing until I was trembling, my thighs shaking, my back arched off the mattress.
I came once—fast and hard. He didn’t stop.
Just kept going until I was breathless and blinking up at the ceiling, dazed with the kind of pleasure that made my soul ache.
Then he stood, unzipped, and crawled over me.
“You sure?” he asked, breath hot against my ear. “I don’t ever want to take this for granted.”
“You’re already inside me,” I whispered. “Even when you’re not.”
He slid in slowly—so deep it stole my breath—and we moved together like something ancient. He kissed me everywhere—my lips, my neck, my chest—his hands cradling my hips like they were breakable.
“I used to think God only loved the clean,” I said softly, tears slipping free now. “The quiet. The untouched.”
He stilled inside me.
“And now?”
“Now I know He made me to love you. ”
He kissed me so slow then—so reverent—it felt like salvation.
I rolled him onto his back and straddled him, taking him in deeper, watching his mouth fall open as I rode him. His hands gripped my thighs, his gaze locked on mine like I was the last thing he’d ever see.
“I’ll come back,” he swore, voice shaking. “I swear it, Hallie Mae.”
And I believed him.
Even if I knew it might not be true.
He flipped me again, lifted my hips, and thrust into me hard, his fingers between my legs, coaxing me higher and higher until I came again, crying out his name.
We collapsed together, sweat-drenched and trembling, tangled in each other like the only thing holding the world together was this moment.
This breath.
This love.
He shifted first—rolling onto his side, pressing a hand to my cheek like he could memorize the shape of me in one touch. I turned into his palm, kissed the inside of his wrist, and whispered, “Don’t go yet.”
He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, then back at me.
I sat up, the sheet pooling around my waist. “Shower?”
His brow arched, surprise flickering through the shadows in his face. “You want to ...?”
“I want you to remind me,” I said, sliding off the bed and holding out my hand. “What it feels like to be clean. To be claimed. Before you go off to battle.”
His jaw clenched—emotion tightening the edges of his control—but he took my hand anyway.
The bathroom lights were dim, just the faint glow of the vanity mirror. I turned the faucet, waited for the steam to rise, then stepped into the water and let it hit my skin—warm, endless, a river to carry away everything I couldn’t name.
Noah stepped in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, his lips brushing the curve of my neck. I could feel him—hard again, impossibly so—his cock pressed between my thighs like it belonged there.
“We don’t have much time,” he murmured, but I shook my head.
“We have this.”
He turned me to face him, water cascading between us, rivulets tracking over his chest, down his abs, pooling at our feet like a baptism. I tilted my chin up, kissed the pulse beneath his jaw, then reached between us and guided him back inside me.
The angle was new, the sensation sharper—his hands gripping my hips, mine braced against the tile behind me. Every thrust was wet, deep, unrelenting. Water slapped against our skin, steam rising around us like smoke.
He lifted one of my legs, hooked it over his hip, and thrust deeper. I gasped, nails digging into his back, anchoring myself to the only thing in the world that felt real.
The water kept falling.
Washing us.
Washing me.
And I thought of every sermon I’d ever heard about salvation. About purity. About the holy.
None of them came close to this.
To Noah’s breath against my ear. To his cock driving into me like a promise. To the feel of his heartbeat pounding wild against mine, like the world might end and he needed me to know it beat for me first.
He pulled back just enough to look me in the eye. “This,” he whispered. “This is what I’ll fight for.”
I kissed him—hard and open and desperate—and let the flood take me again.
But I didn’t want to stand anymore. Didn’t want to feel the weight of the world in my knees or the distance between us in the few inches still separating our bodies. I wanted to be lower. Grounded. Rooted in something raw and real.
I reached behind him and turned the dial all the way to warm, then tugged his hand and sank down to the slick tile floor, the water raining harder now.
Noah followed, eyes dark, jaw tight, his knees planting on either side of me as he knelt in front of me under the spray.
The water slicked his hair to his forehead, ran down the ridges of his chest and over the muscles in his arms, and I watched every drop.
He cupped my face and kissed me again—slower this time—and I reached between us, wrapped my hand around his length, and stroked him in slow, wet pulls that made his breath catch.
“Hallie Mae,” he rasped, voice cracked open with want and wonder.
I didn’t answer.
I just leaned in and took him into my mouth, one inch at a time, eyes never leaving his.
He gasped, one hand flying to my hair, the other braced against the tile wall as my tongue curled beneath him, sucking slow and deep as the water poured down my back. His hips flexed but didn’t push—didn’t force. He let me take my time. Let me worship him like he’d worshipped me.
The tile was cool beneath my knees, the water hot across my skin, and all I could hear was his breathing—the staggered, ragged kind.
“You’re killing me,” he groaned, fingers tightening in my hair. “You don’t even know what you’re doing to me.”
But I did. Because this was about remembrance—leaving a piece of myself with him to carry into whatever war he was walking into.
I pulled back just enough to whisper, “Lie down.”
He blinked, dazed. “What?”
“Here,” I said, guiding him gently. “On the floor. With me.”
He obeyed, body easing back against the tile. I crawled over him, kissed his ribs, his chest, the flutter of his heart under his skin.
Then I climbed atop him, slow and unhurried, and sank down.
We both moaned at once—his hands flying to my hips, mine to his chest.
But this time I didn’t ride him hard.
I moved slow. Luxurious. Like the water around us wasn’t rinsing away sin, but sealing in memory.
Each roll of my hips made his head fall back. Each shift in pressure made his breath catch and whisper my name.
He held me like something precious, his fingers tracing my spine, his mouth murmuring things I couldn't make out but felt all the same.
I leaned down, kissed him long and deep, our bodies locked, the water now pooling around us, turning the shower floor into something between baptism and bed .
We came like that. Together. Drenched in heat and grace and something bigger than either of us.
When he spilled inside me—deep, hot, and claiming—I felt it like a promise. A flood of warmth that reached places I didn’t know could ache. I clung to him, breath catching, as the pulse of it rippled through me.
It wasn’t just the sensation. It was the knowing. That he was part of me in every way a man could be. That I wanted him there—wanted to hold onto him in the most human, hungry, holy way.
My head dropped to his shoulder. His arms held me so tight it hurt.
When we finally stepped out of the shower, dripping and quiet, he reached for a towel and wrapped it around me, careful and slow like I might shatter.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead, breath warm against my skin, and whispered, “Don’t say goodbye.”
So, I didn’t.
I just held his face in my hands, water still trickling from his hair, and said the only thing that mattered.
“Come back to me.”
His eyes shuttered, jaw tightening as he nodded once. Then he began to dress.
I stood, too, my hair wet, my heart heavier than it had ever been.
He turned and kissed my temple. Then my mouth. Then dropped to his knees before me, pressing his forehead to my stomach like a man praying for one more miracle.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.
“Noah,” I said softly, “will you be back in time? For my daddy’s funeral? ”
His breath caught, and for the first time, he didn’t have an answer right away.
“I want you there,” I whispered. “So bad, it hurts.”
He lifted his head, eyes fierce. “I’ll do everything I can to be there, Hallie Mae. I swear it.”
I nodded, even though I could feel my chest caving. “Okay.”
He stood again and touched my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“I will come back,” he said, voice rough and sure. “Even if I have to crawl through hell to do it.”
And then he was gone. The door shut behind him.