18. Alex
ALEX
Ryder’s breathing heavy, almost snoring against my neck when I wake up.
That shouldn’t feel like a discovery worth obsessing, but it does.
His arm is heavy around my waist, his palm spread over my stomach beneath the blanket, holding me against him without trapping me.
His face is turned toward the back window, even in sleep, like some part of him stayed pointed toward the fence all night.
The flashlight he put on the nightstand sits beside my phone and a glass of water I don’t remember asking for.
The room is pale in the morning light that’s filtering in.
Rain still taps lightly against the glass, but the storm has burned itself down into something tired and gray.
Ryder’s breathing is slow at my back. Actual sleep.
Not the half-awake, waiting-for-the-world-to-fail kind of rest I know he’s been getting.
I lie still longer than I should, because moving means leaving the warmth of him and admitting how natural this feels. His bed. His arm. His shirt twisted around my hips because I fell asleep wearing it after he helped me take back one dark piece of myself Preston had stolen.
I don’t even quite remember him giving it to me, because my body just about collapsed like an exploding star with the orgasm.
My body remembers that part before my brain can decide whether we’re being embarrassed about what Ryder was able to do with just his fingers.
I shift carefully, trying to reach my phone without waking him, but Ryder’s arm tightens before my fingers make it to the nightstand.
His mouth brushes the back of my shoulder, sleepy and warm, and the small contact hits me harder than it should.
I stop moving. So does he, like his body figured out what it did before the rest of him caught up.
But there’s no mistaking the way his dick is pressing against my ass, making everything so much more intense.
“Bathroom,” I whisper, even though I’m not moving toward the edge of the bed or even thinking about leaving.
His arm loosens immediately. “Okay.”
The roughness in his voice makes my stomach dip.
I should get up. I should go brush my teeth, find pants, locate coffee, and pretend I’m a person who didn’t spend half the night grinding against his hand in the dark while asking him to help me take back pieces of myself.
Instead, I turn in his arms until I’m facing him, morning breath be damned.
Ryder’s eyes open, heavy and unfocused for only a second before they lock on me. Face. Mouth. His shirt on my body. The blanket caught at my hip. He takes all of it in, and I feel the effort it costs him to keep his hand still against my waist.
“I was trying not to wake you,” I admit.
“You didn’t.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Yeah.” His thumb moves once over the borrowed shirt, low on my ribs. “It is.”
The honesty makes me smile before the nerves surrounding what I want can eat me alive.
I slide my hand up his chest, feeling the warmth of him through his T-shirt, the steady thud of his heart under my palm.
He watches the movement like it matters more than breathing.
Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why my own breath keeps catching every time his fingers flex but don’t grab for me.
I lean in and kiss him.
Ryder lets me start it. He lets me press my mouth to his, lets me shift closer beneath the blanket, lets me make it soft for exactly three seconds before his restraint starts to fray and I can feel the groan before I hear it.
His hand slides from my waist to my back, pulling me into him with a growl that turns the quiet room into something hotter.
Less safe, maybe, but not unsafe. Never unsafe.
My leg slips over his hip, and the hard length of him presses against me through too much fabric.
I break the kiss with my face hot and my hand fisted in his shirt. “I’m trying very hard not to be embarrassed right now.”
His forehead rests against mine. “Don’t be.”
“Very easy for the man who didn’t just climb on top of someone before dental hygiene.”
His hand moves down my thigh, slow and firm, keeping me there when I start to hide behind sarcasm. “Alex.”
The way he says my name makes the embarrassment soften into something else.
I look at him, really look, and see the question he isn’t asking because he promised himself he wouldn’t push me.
Last night, in the dark, I asked him not to stop.
This morning, with gray light in the room and the world quiet around us, I want him to know I’m still choosing him.
I rock my hips once, deliberately, and his breath leaves him hard.
“I want this,” I say before he can turn restraint into another wall between us. “I want you. Right now. No panic, no blackout, no proving anything. Just because I woke up in your arms and I don’t want to move away.”
Ryder’s eyes darken, and this time, he doesn’t make me argue with his fear first. He rolls me beneath him, one hand braced in the pillow beside my head while the other pushes the blanket down my body.
The borrowed shirt rides up around my ribs.
He kisses the bare skin he finds there, then lower, taking his sweet time while I’m trying not to implode with need.
“Ryder.”
“I know.” His mouth presses to my stomach. “I’ve got you.”
The words shouldn’t undo me. They do anyway.
We move slower than I expected and not nearly slow enough.
Clothes carefully removed instead of being pushed aside.
His T-shirt disappears somewhere near the foot of the bed, my borrowed shirt is dropped off the edge next to my head, and every inch of him that touches me feels like an answer to a question I’ve been too afraid to ask for years.
When he settles between my thighs, he pauses with his mouth against mine and his hand wrapped around my hip, waiting only long enough for me to nod.
Then Ryder is inside me, and the whole room narrows down to the stretch I feel as he fills me, the heat of our bodies coming together, the sound he makes against my throat.
“Jesus Christ, Alex.” His voice is broken. “Don’t fucking move or I’m going to come like a teenager.”
I hold onto his shoulders while my body adjusts around him. He stays still even though I can feel how badly he wants to move, his control shaking through his arms, his breathing ragged against my skin.
There’s no darkness to hide in. No edge being dangled out of reach. No punishment for wanting too much. Just Ryder above me, watching me like I’m the only thing in the world he trusts himself to touch.
“Okay?” he asks.
I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him closer. “Perfect.”
He moves then, slow at first, giving me time to meet him.
I do. Every thrust drags a soft sound out of me, and instead of swallowing them down, I let him hear.
His hand slides under my thigh, opening me more, and the angle makes my nails dig into his back.
He drops his forehead to mine, eyes open, jaw tight with the effort of holding himself back enough to keep this ours instead of only his need.
I don’t want him to be careful forever. I want his rough, the edges that he tries to smooth just for me. I want everything.
I turn my mouth to his ear and whisper, “I won’t break.”
Ryder kisses me hard enough to steal the rest of the sentence.
His pace changes, deeper now, more certain, the bed shifting beneath us while morning light spreads slowly across his room.
I cling to him and take every bit of it, every rough breath, every low sound, every whispered curse against my mouth when I tighten around him.
The orgasm builds differently this time.
This one isn’t dragged out of the dark. It rises steady and full, rooted somewhere under my ribs where all the things I’m afraid to feel have been gathering since the first time he looked at me like I mattered.
Ryder feels it happen. His hand slips between us, fingers finding my clit with practiced attention, and I come with his name pressed into his shoulder while I’m screaming my release.
He follows a few strokes later, burying his face against my neck, his whole body going tight above mine before he shudders and stills.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I feel his weight, his heartbeat, the damp heat of our skin, and the strange, terrifying quiet that comes after giving someone more than I meant to and realizing I don’t want it back.
Eventually, Ryder lifts enough to look at me. His hand comes to my face, thumb brushing along my cheek with the kind of tenderness that makes it impossible to ignore.
“Oh God,” I whisper as my body revolts against me.
His mouth curves, soft and wrecked. “Bathroom?”
I cover my face with both hands. “Immediately.”
“You go do that. I’ll make coffee first,” he says, voice rough. “Then I’ll just live in my inappropriate thoughts.”
“That sounds like scheduling, and I don’t appreciate being managed.” The sarcasm is back with a force, and I can’t stop it.
He sits up the rest of the way, slower now, giving me room to stand. “You’re the one who put coffee and the bathroom first.”
“I’m complicated.”
“You are.”
The words are quiet enough that they don’t feel like a joke.
I pick up the flashlight because I need something in my hand, then set it back down before I walk to the bathroom.
By the time I come out, Ryder is gone and I can hear him downstairs.
Cabinets opening. Coffee starting. The low murmur of his voice, probably checking messages from Remy, or ordering three more cameras, or threatening the weather for having poor boundaries.
Normal should not feel like this much of a gift. But I’m starting to crave it more than anything else. This life. With Ryder.
I borrow another one of his shirts after I shower because my clothes situation has become pathetic, then stand in front of the bathroom mirror with wet hair, bare legs, and a toothbrush in my mouth while I stare at myself like I’m waiting for a verdict.
There’s a faint mark on the side of my throat from Ryder’s mouth.
I touch it before I can stop myself and feel heat climb my face.
Then I remember the fence.
HE CAN’T KEEP YOU.
The warmth in my chest drains fast enough to make me cold.
Downstairs, Ryder has coffee, toast, my laptop bag, and an expression that says he’s trying not to ask where I plan to be every second today. His phone is facedown beside his mug. I notice because the restraint is loud.
“I’m going to work,” I say before he can turn breakfast into a hostage negotiation.
He butters a slice of toast with careful, even strokes. “Okay.”
That answer is too calm to trust.
I pull a mug from the cabinet I learned yesterday and fill it before looking at him again. “And I need to stop at my apartment first.”
The knife stops halfway across the toast.
There it is.
“I need clothes,” I add, because if I keep talking, maybe he won’t. “My charger. My hard drive. A few notebooks. The dry shampoo that keeps me from looking like a bridge troll with deadlines.”
Ryder sets the toast on a plate and slides it toward me instead of responding right away. The plate bumps gently against my wrist. Breakfast as a delay tactic.
“I’ll take you.”
“I can drive myself.”
His hand stays on the edge of the counter. “Alex.”
I take a bite of toast because arguing on an empty stomach seems irresponsible. “I’m not sneaking out. I’m telling you the plan. That’s called growth.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I know.”
He exhales through his nose and looks toward the back windows, where the damaged fence is hidden by the angle of the house. When he looks back, his face has gone quieter, which is somehow worse than angry.
“Call me before you get out of the car.”
“I can do that.”
“Stay on the phone.”
I pick up my coffee and hold it between both hands. The order should irritate me. It does. The relief underneath irritates me more.
“Fine,” I say. “But if you say the words ‘stay in the car’ in your scary voice, I reserve the right to mock you.”
“I’ll use my regular voice.”
“Your regular voice is also scary when you’re being unreasonable.”
His mouth moves, almost a smile, but it doesn’t stay. “I’m trying not to be. Just for you.”