7. Ever #2
This part I can do. I can give her a place to put the shaking.
I can take the edge of her fear and turn it into heat, into pressure, into the brutal mercy of a body that can still feel pleasure after surviving horror.
I can hold her open and make her stay here, in this shower, under my hands, with me.
She comes with my name dragged out of her throat, hips bucking against my mouth, fingers slipping on wet tile.
I stand before she has finished trembling.
She grabs at me, greedy now, and I thank every vicious god I’ve never believed in because I need her greedy. I need her demanding. I need proof she still wants things for herself.
I turn her toward the wall.
Slow enough that she can stop me if that’s what she wants. Thankfully she doesn’t.
Her palms hit the tile. Her head bows. I run one hand down her spine, over the curve of her hip, and bend her over the shower bench.
Water runs along her back in shining lines.
My body goes painfully hard at the sight of her like this, trusting me with her back even though the whole world has taught her better.
I grip her hip and line up behind her, then push into her in a single hard stroke because god help me but I can’t wait for finesse. Not today.
The sound she makes nearly puts me on my knees.
She is hot and tight around me, and for a second the whole world becomes water, skin, breath, her hands flat against tile while mine hold her steady. I give her what she asked for. Hard. Deep. Controlled only by the thin, savage thread of not hurting her in any way she does not choose.
I pull out, and she pushes back against me before I have time to complete the next stroke. Hard. Fast. Urgent. Fucking me.
“More,” she says. “Harder. Faster. Fuck me, goddamnit.”
My forehead drops between her shoulder blades for half a breath.
Then I give her more.
The bench hits the wall with each thrust. Water sprays against glass.
Her voice breaks and keens, then finds itself again.
I slide one hand beneath her, fingers circling and pinching until her legs shake and her back arches.
The fear in me does not disappear. It burns with everything else until I cannot tell one fire from another.
She comes again with my arm locked around her waist.
I follow hard, teeth gritted, body shaking with the force of it. I hold myself over her afterward, one hand on the wall, the other splayed across her stomach, feeling her breathe.
For a while, that is all I do. Feel her breathe.
Her hand covers mine.
“I’m here,” she says. “I’m good. We’re good.”
My eyes close, and I squeeze her gently. I hate that she knows that’s what I need. I love that she gives it to me anyway.
The shower runs until the water starts to cool. I clean her carefully, despite the way she rolls her eyes when I become too gentle. She cleans a smear of mud from my forearm with her thumb, stubbornly focused as if that small task matters.
Maybe it does.
When we step out, I wrap her in one of the thick towels from the shelf. She lets me. Her hair drips down her back. Her face looks softer now, exhaustion finally pressing through the rage.
I carry her into the bedroom, her legs wrapped around my waist, because I want to and because she does not argue enough.
“Homer is on the bed,” she says.
“He can move.”
Homer opens one eye when I approach. I give him a look. He gives me one back, then rises with deep offense and relocates to the chair by the window as I shut the blinds and then turn the covers down.
“Thank you,” Reva tells him.
The cat turns his back.
I lay her on the bed and climb in behind her.
The quilt is too bright for the night we just had.
Blue and gold and green beneath us, a ridiculous patch of color in a room full of locked glass and grief.
I pull her against me, her back to my chest, one arm banded under her breasts, the other across her waist.
She fits here.
That thought is dangerous. I let myself have it anyway.
For a few minutes, neither of us speaks.
The marsh is brightening beyond the shades, but in here, it’s cool and dark, and we’re due for a few hours shut-eye.
Somewhere in the cabin, Nash’s voice moves low over a phone call.
Shiloh opens and closes a cabinet. The house settles around us, secure and temporary.
Reva’s fingers find mine.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I stare at the back of her head. “For what?”
“For making things harder.”
“You don’t need to apologize for that.”
She goes quiet.
I tighten my arm when I feel her start to withdraw inside herself.
“You’re angry,” I say. “You’re scared. You want your sister. You want Cal safe. None of that makes you difficult.”
“Shiloh said I was.”
“Shiloh said you were making it difficult to keep you alive. He was right.”
She huffs. “Very comforting.”
“I’m not trying to comfort you.”
“No kidding.”
My mouth brushes her damp hair. “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”
Her fingers move over my knuckles, restless. “I can’t leave Delia there.”
“I know.”
“Knowing doesn’t fix the problem, Ever.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then what does?”
The question sits between us, heavy and honest.
“We plan,” I say. “We train.”
She shifts enough to look back at me. “Train…to do what, exactly?”
“Survive long enough to make choices.”
Her eyes narrow. “That sounds like something written on a gym wall.”
“It should. People might learn.”
“Ever.”
I draw a slow breath. “I’m not turning you into an assassin overnight. That would be stupid, and you don’t have the patience.”
Her mouth opens.
I put my hand lightly over it.
“You don’t.”
She bites my palm.
I let her.
Then I move my hand to her jaw, thumb resting near her mouth.
“We keep working on the things we started. Escaping holds. Creating space. Using what’s around you.
Shooting under pressure. Reading exits. Not freezing when someone bigger grabs you.
Not wasting energy when fear tells you to fight wrong. ”
The room changes as she listens.
I can feel her attention sharpen. This is something better than peace. It’s a direction. Something to grab hold of.
“I’m not fragile,” she says.
“No.”
The answer leaves me without pause. Her eyes search mine in the low light.
“You’re furious and untrained,” I say. “Which makes you a vulnerable target. Those are different problems.”
A breath slips out of her. It sounds almost like relief.
“We keep you secure here while Nash builds a map. Deacon stays near Cal until we rotate. Shiloh works people because people hand him things they should keep. I break down routes, cameras, habits. When we know where Delia is, and when we can move without handing Isabel another target, we go get her.”
Her throat moves.
“And if that takes too long?”
“Then we adjust.”
“That’s vague.”
“That’s honest.”
She turns back onto her side, facing away again, but her body stays against mine.
“I hate waiting. I hate hiding. This…I hate all of this.”
“I know.”
“I hate that you walked away from me earlier.”
My arm tightens before I can stop it. “If I stayed, I was going to say something I couldn’t take back.”
“What?”
“That I would lock you behind every door in this place before I watched you run toward Isabel blind.”
Her body goes still.
I press my mouth to her shoulder.
“I don’t want to cage you,” I say. “But I won’t let you put yourself in harm’s way.”
For a long time, she says nothing.
Then her hand covers my arm where it rests across her waist.
“I don’t want to be rescued so hard I disappear.”
The words go through me clean.
I turn her in my arms until she faces me. Her eyes are tired, red at the edges, still burning under all that grief.
“You won’t disappear with me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ll learn how to make sure.”
It is not a perfect answer. I don’t have those. Perfect answers belong to men who lie or men who haven’t been tested hard enough. I have only this body, these hands, this need to keep her alive, and the discipline to make that need a tool instead of a leash.
She studies me for a long moment.
Then she sighs. “I guess I’m gonna have to trust you.”
There is no bite in it this time. Only exhaustion. Acceptance, maybe, though not the soft kind. Reva does not accept things softly. She takes them into herself with suspicion and teeth.
I touch her cheek. “We start in the morning.”
“With what?”
“Getting out of my grip.”
Her brows lift.
I let one hand slide around the back of her thigh and pull her closer. “You’ll be terrible at it first.”
“That is a dangerous thing to say to a woman who knows where you keep the axe.”
My chest loosens for the first time since the terrace.
“Ha,” I say. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She tucks her face against my throat, and I hold her while the cabin hums around us.
Cal is alive, Delia is gone, and Isabel is coming.
In the morning, we train. In the morning, we plan. In the morning, I start teaching the woman in my arms how to survive the hands that want to take her from me.