16. Alex #3
I should be thinking about the cameras, the locks, or even the spread of articles across the dining room table. I should be thinking about Preston and gas cans and the fact that safety keeps turning temporary no matter how many deadbolts stand between me and the world.
But Ryder has his fingers join his mouth, and every thought I don’t want fades immediately. It’s only us. Here. In this moment.
He doesn’t rush, doesn’t push, and the sounds he’s making…
they’re the first thing that breaks me. He holds my hips with a steady hand, not pinning me in place, just keeping me there while he learns what makes my breath stutter and what makes my fingers twist into his hair.
When I try to hide my face against my arm, he kisses the inside of my thigh and waits until I look at him.
“Stay with me,” he says.
There is no demand in his words. No order for me to follow. Just the request of a man who sounds like he’s starving.
That makes it easier to obey.
I keep my eyes open as long as I can, watching his head between my thighs, the flex of his shoulders, the way his hands soothe over my skin when my body starts to shake.
Pleasure builds slowly at first, then too fast when his fingers hit a sensitive spot, turning my breath into broken little sounds I would be embarrassed by if Ryder did not seem to love every single one.
His name comes out of me like a warning.
He doesn’t stop.
One hand slides up my stomach, warm and solid, giving me something to hold on to when the pleasure gets sharp enough to scare me. I cover his hand with mine, and he turns his palm so our fingers lock over my ribs.
The orgasm hits so hard my back bows off the rug.
Ryder holds me through it, mouth still working over my clit, hand firm in mine while the storm drowns out the sound I make. My whole body pulls tight, then goes loose, and when I finally drag in a breath, he is kissing his way up my stomach like he has nowhere else in the world he would rather be.
By the time he reaches my mouth, I’m soft, shaking, and furious that he looks as smug as he does.
“Do not look so proud of yourself,” I whisper.
He kisses the corner of my mouth. “I’m extremely proud of myself.”
“That’s unattractive.”
“No, it isn’t.” He kisses the same spot. “You think it’s hot as fuck, and you’d love it if I stayed between your legs all night.” `
I hate that he’s right, but I laugh, breathless and helpless, while he settles beside me on the rug and pulls the edge of the throw blanket from the couch over my bare legs.
His hand stays on my hip, warm through the blanket, and for a few minutes, the house feels like it belongs to us instead of the storm.
“You’re perfect, Allycat. Every sinful inch of you. Your taste is everything I ever dreamt possible.”
Then the exterior lights flare white through the living room windows.
Ryder is on his feet before I fully understand what changed and why it’s a big deal that the lights flashed.
The loss of his body heat snaps me awake faster than the lights. “Ryder?”
He grabs the remote from the couch and turns on the monitors.
Front porch. Driveway. Garage. Back door.
Side yard. The feeds glow blue-white across the room while I sit up, pulling the blanket tight around myself and trying to get my jeans back over my hips with shaking hands.
I grab his hoodie instead of my sweater, and even through my panic I love the fact that I’m drowning in it.
“Stay here,” he says, already moving toward the back door. “Watch the monitors.”
“No.”
He stops with one hand on the doorframe.
I shove my foot into the wrong pant leg, swear, and fix it while he stands there fighting himself. “Do not tell me to stay here after what just happened between us.”
His eyes flick over me, not with heat now but assessment of my current state. Scared. Dressed enough. Shaking. Angry. He does not like any of it. He also doesn’t argue.
“Behind me,” he says.
“That I can live with.”
We move through the mudroom and out onto the back porch.
Rain hits cold and immediate, soaking through my sweater in seconds.
Ryder keeps one hand slightly behind him, not holding me back, just making sure he knows where I am while the floodlights bleach the yard making it a mix of silver and water.
At first, all I see is rain, grass, and the dark line of trees beyond the fence.
Then Ryder goes still and I follow his line of sight.
The message stretches across the back fence in black paint, letters tall and uneven and fresh enough that rain cuts thin trails through them.
HE CAN’T KEEP YOU
For a second, I can’t hear anything except the storm.
Ryder steps in front of me, blocking part of the fence with his body, but I’ve already seen it. The words are inside me now, cold and ugly, trying to turn the last hour into proof that safety was a joke and there’s nothing that will keep me out of Preston’s greedy little hands.
Ryder looks up toward the corner of the house where one of the cameras should have caught the fence. His face goes flat in the floodlight.
“It’s out of range,” I say unhelpfully.
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to.
Preston found the edge of Ryder’s protection and decided to shit all over it.