Chapter 33 Wren
WREN
The door wakes me first, the faintest creak breaking through my light sleep. It’s been a tough night, knowing River was out there in the cold.
It was Shade who had a bottle of whiskey brought over from the clubhouse and forced me to bed with a large glass in my hand.
The blankets lift, a cool breeze robbing some of the warmth, and then the bed dips as River climbs in next to me. Cold hands slip around my waist, rousing me fully from my half sleep. A sigh escapes me as he pulls me tight against his bare chest, his lips pressing right up against my ear.
“Ahh,” I squeal as I adapt to the chill.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he says, the words followed by a yawn.
I’m flooded with relief. It doesn’t even occur to me to ask whether Mika was there or what he found. I just care that he’s home.
Safe. Where he’s supposed to be.
I lift my pajama shirt a little and place his hands on my skin to warm them. “Are you in one piece?”
“Mm-hm. Still got all my fingers and toes. And I got you a stack of electronic goodies to look at in the morning. A laptop, drives, a tower, a phone.”
“You did?” I push up on my elbows, suddenly awake. My man looks tired. There’s a streak of dirt on his forehead. And, yes, I’m admitting it to myself that he’s mine. “I should go make a start at seeing what is—”
“Get back here,” River says, tugging me back to him.
“Pushy.”
River chuckles. “Whatever is on those files can wait an hour. Never been apart from someone and it really mattered before.”
His words make me smile. I love the honesty in them. It’s the way it should be in the quiet of this room, in the early hours of the morning.
“You’re a miracle,” I tell him as his fingers work the buttons of my pajama shirt.
He kisses my cheek, his lips wet against my skin. “That what I am?”
I turn over to face him when he’s undone the final button. The air touches my bare chest, cool but not cold. Enough that my nipples tighten. His gaze tracks downwards, then back to my face.
“Yes, River. That’s what you are to me. You’re everything.”
His hands slide into my hair, and he pulls my lips to his before I can breathe. His lips taste of coffee and dirt and adrenaline.
All of it, hot.
No pretense or performance, just overwhelming need for each other. The kind of need that makes me forget there are machines to be combed through and men to be stopped.
River pulls back, just enough to speak. “Been thinking about you all fucking night.”
“Yeah?” I ask.
He strips my pajama shirt off my body. “You have no idea how often I thought about coming home to you tonight. Some of those thoughts were about how we should have been together tonight. Either me with you here, or you with me there. How much I hated leaving you alone with Jackal and Shade.”
We’re basically nose to nose. “Next time, take me with you. What were the rest of your thoughts about?”
River shakes his head. “In the end, I was glad you weren’t. The FBI showed up.”
My heart rate spikes. “Oh my God. Is everyone okay? Were you—?”
He places a finger over my lips, which would usually irritate the crap out of me, but he swiftly shifts to running it over my mouth. “I’ll tell you everything later. I want to tell you about the rest of my thoughts.”
How my life has changed. It would never have been this easy to dismiss the danger we’re now in six months ago. But I want to know about the rest of his thoughts more than I do what happened.
“Tell me,” I encourage.
“Gonna do one better—I’m going to show you.”
I put my arms around his neck. “For the record, I missed you too. I felt every second you were away.”
Our bodies line up against each other. His naked body, and me, still in my pajama pants. “Gone ten hours and it felt like days.” He groans, pushing me down gently until I’m flat against the mattress, his weight braced above me.
“We don’t have to do this if you’re too tired.”
River laughs. “Fucking you is just the sleep aid I need.”
I wrap my legs around his waist and rock up against him, feeling the hot, thick ridge of his cock between my thighs. “The last thing a person wants to be referred to is a sleep aid.”
“Mouthy little thing,” he murmurs.
“You like it,” I mutter against his lips.
River’s hand covers my throat. “Yeah. I really fucking do.”
I grab the back of his neck and pull him down to me, kissing his jaw, then neck, before sucking hard.
“Yeah, Wren. Fucking mark me. I don’t care if the world knows I’m yours.”
His encouragement leads to more sucking and licking of his skin. It’s salty with the sweat and stress of whatever happened tonight.
His hips roll against me, sending strong vibrations through my very core. There’s something about the way my body responds to his that’s affirming. Something that makes me comfortable in the form it’s in that feels rare.
Our lips find each other again, and I thrust my tongue into his mouth, to meet his.
He releases the weight from his arms to fully lie over me.
It’s hard to remember the anxiety I had when I first arrived. Somewhere along the way, it’s been replaced with the kind of pressure that reminds you it’s good to be alive.
“I want you to find what you’ve been thinking about all night, River. Let me feel what you’ve been feeling. Show me.”
He groans, the sound desperate. “I love when you’re greedy for my cock.”
I roll my hips against him, his cock throbbing as I do. “I love the way you fuck me, River. I love how hard you get. How deep you go. How you don’t treat me like I’m fragile.”
He swears and then kisses me in a rough claiming. One that bruises my lips.
His hand slides between us, beneath the waistband of my pajamas, teasing and testing. He finds me already slick and warm.
“Goddamn, you’re so ready for me,” he says.
“Always for you.”
He kisses me again while his fingers circle slowly over my clit, dragging gasps from me until I’m panting into his open mouth.
My fists twist the sheets, my hips jerking up to meet his touch. When he removes his hand, sucking two glistening fingers into his mouth, I positively growl.
“I want your mouth on me,” I manage to say, finding the words from somewhere.
Then, River is sliding down the bed, yanking off my pajama pants, and spreading me wide open with hands that tremble enough to wreck me.
He’s impatient.
Hungry.
As desperate for me as I am for him.
He licks deep, slow, at first, tongue flat and firm. He teases me until I curse him out between shallow breaths.
“River,” I cry. “Make me come.”
There are days I want to be edged. Today isn’t one of them.
He adds a finger, then two. He knows just how to curl them to press where I want them most. His tongue flicks over me in tight, devastating circles.
And I break.
Coming with a cry that’s sharp and sudden. His hands grip my thighs as he wrings every ounce of pleasure from my body, licking me through it. Softening only when I tug at his hair.
He climbs back up my body, planting wet kisses as he goes. And when his lips meet mine, he tastes of me.
“You good?” he murmurs against my mouth.
“Better than! But I want more of you.”
“You need to ride me again, or you gonna let me be in control this time?”
“You can be in control.”
“Get on your knees,” he says as he rolls off the bed just long enough to grab a condom from the drawer and put it on.
I hesitate for a second, uncertain whether I want to be in such a position. It’s complicated. I kneel, but don’t place my hands on the bed. Somewhere between the loss of eye contact that strips away intimacy, and the old scripts telling me I’m being made subservient. I’m not sure I want this.
River turns back to the bed and finds me, but he grips my chin with his thumb and forefinger. “If you’ve got to think that hard about it, the answer is no, Wren.”
And with that, he pushes me over, then grabs my legs so I end up on my back beneath him.
He crawls over my body. “Better?”
“How could you tell?” I ask.
He smiles. “I’m learning how to read this body of yours.”
The weight of him as he settles between my thighs grounds me. We shift as he enters me, inch by inch, his gaze never leaving mine.
A slow thrust, a gentle withdrawal, as I soak his cock.
I see the different facets of him. The playfulness, the intensity, the protection, and the calm.
He reaches for my hair and moves a tendril off my face. “Fuck, I love you,” he says.
The words catch me off guard, but they are the prettiest four words I ever heard.
“You do?”
His lips reach mine, soft and tender. “You came out of nowhere, Wren. Had no idea you’d be my reward for this year, but if you’re all I get for Christmas, then I’ll be a happy man.”
I wrap my arms tightly around him. “I love you too, River.”
I move. A slow grind and controlled roll, circling my hips until I feel the pressure of him in the place certain to destroy me.
“What a life we’re going to have,” he says, taking some weight in his arms, making it easier for him to thrust into me.
There’s no control, no fight for dominance. No clear alpha. Just two people coming together.
“Oh, God. Yes,” I say when he hits me exactly where I want him. “There. You’re so deep. Stretching me and filling me.”
It’s harder and faster, and I’m sure I’m panting and flushed as sweat slips between our bodies.
“Love watching the way you take me, sweetheart. Feeling you squeezing the life out of me.”
He tips his head back, and I see the tight muscles in his neck.
“You want to come too?” I ask.
“Yes,” River says. His eyes back on mine.
“Then earn it.” I struggle to keep my face straight as I say it.
But River grins as he ravages the side of my neck. “You want me to earn it, babe?”
I brace my hands over my head, holding tight to the headboard, as he fucks me like he means to ruin us both.
I close my eyes, chasing the edge. The orgasm is wound tight, building at the base of my spine like a storm. My abs tighten.
“You feel so good, River. So thick. So hard.”
We groan together, inhaling each other’s breath.
River’s hips meet mine in hard strokes. Thrust for thrust, we chase the same goal. Not just to come, but to meet each other, as we are, right here, at our most vulnerable.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he says, biting then licking my shoulder.
“Then let me ruin you. Let me make you come so hard, you forget your name.”
His rhythm stutters, and he drops his forehead to mine. And he fucks me harder.
Rough and desperate.
Perfect.
So perfect that my orgasm hits me like a thunderous wave, stealing my breath and sanity. I sob his name as I come.
River follows me a heartbeat later, hips jerking, a groan torn from his chest as he comes deep inside me.
My body shivers as he works through his own orgasm until we collapse together, limbs tangled.
River’s hand finds mine, and he laces our fingers next to my temple. “I’m always coming back to you, Wren. Always. Promise me, when this is over, you won’t leave. You won’t go back to Jersey.”
“That might be the easiest yes I’ve ever said.”
He reaches between us, grabbing the condom and easing out. It takes him a moment to go to the bathroom and clean up. When he comes back to bed, I open the covers for him.
“I know you’re itching to get to those devices, but I really want to fall asleep next to you,” he says.
“Then here is where I’ll stay.”