Chapter Thirty #2
She takes it without saying anything, turning it once in her hands before shrugging it on in one smooth movement. No fumbling, no hesitation, just that steady, locked-in control she brings to anything important.
It isn’t nerves.
It’s awareness.
Of what this ride is.
Of what it means now.
When she swings her leg over the seat, it’s smooth, instinctive, her hands settling at my waist as if they’ve always belonged there. But her grip tightens a fraction sooner than usual, and I feel the difference immediately.
Not fear.
Just… more.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I will be.” Her hands tighten slightly.
“Good.”
Her arms slide around my waist, her body settling against mine with an ease that feels like muscle memory now.
When I roll the throttle open, her grip tightens a fraction, not out of fear, more like she’s bracing herself against the rush she refuses to acknowledge.
I feel the small, swallowed laugh vibrate through me, stolen by the engine and the stretch of open road, and I carry a grin the whole way there, aimed straight ahead where she can’t catch it.
The bakery sits on a corner three streets off the Strip, close enough to catch the spill of traffic but far enough that the air still feels local.
Millie doesn’t pause when we walk in.
She explodes.
“Oh my God! Okay, wait, no… this is bigger than I remembered. That’s good, that’s really good…
we can put the display cases along that wall, no, actually angled because then the morning light will hit the pastries and people will think we’re a lifestyle brand instead of just baked goods, which is stupid, but it works…
” She is already halfway across the room, pushing open cupboards, pacing the length of the prep benches like she’s rehearsing choreography.
Her voice fills the space before anything else does.
Her hands move constantly. She’s measuring, framing, and conducting a future that only exists in her head.
I lean back against the doorway and watch. Because this is who she is when she’s not holding the world together with bare hands and polite composure.
This is Millie uncontained.
And she is fucking breathtaking.
She spins toward me mid-sentence. “And the mixers will go here because the plumbing is already in place, which is honestly a miracle in commercial property, like… do you understand how rare that is?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer.
She never does when she’s excited like this.
She moves again, faster now, momentum building.
“And the front window is perfect for seasonal installs, like autumn breads and winter sugared citrus and summer fruit tarts and… oh my God! The foot traffic is going to be wild, Anchor, this is actually insane!”
I push off the wall and follow.
Not because she needs me to.
Because letting her walk away alone was never really an option.
Room by room, she pulls me through her vision until we reach the butler’s pantry, tucked at the back like a secret.
She steps inside, still talking. “And this can be dry storage, which means we free up floor space out there and I can finally do the long fermentation program I’ve been dreaming about for years and…” She turns to gesture at a shelf that doesn’t exist yet.
That’s when I lose whatever thin line of restraint I’ve been walking.
I’m done.
Done with the tour.
Done with the polite distance.
Done standing three feet behind her, watching her light up like the sun’s coming out, and pretending I’m not affected by every single word out of her mouth.
I move before the thought finishes forming.
One step.
Two.
My hands catch her hips, no hesitation in them, and her words cut off mid-syllable as I back her against the bench hard enough to make her gasp, the old timber solid behind her, then hoist her up.
“Anchor…” My name comes out of her, breathless and surprised, and it cuts through me like a live wire, straight down my spine, lighting everything up on the way.
I don’t give her the chance to say anything else.
I take her mouth like I own it.
Because I do.
Millie does the same to me, and we both know it, have known it for a long time, and I am finished pretending otherwise in empty rooms. She makes a startled sound against my mouth that turns fast, that turns hungry, her hands fisting in my shirt and yanking me forward like she’s been waiting to do it, like the interruption was the thing she actually wanted, not the fermentation program.
Her legs come up and lock around my hips, and she pulls me in against her with a grip that tells me everything about how not-reluctant she is.
Good.
I break just enough to breathe, my forehead against hers, both of us already running hot.
“You talk too fast when you’re happy,” I say.
She laughs, wrecked and breathless. “You just manhandled me into a pantry.”
“Yeah.” I pull back just enough to look at her properly, flushed, bright-eyed, completely undone, and something low in my gut tightens hard. “I’m going to do a hell of a lot more than that.”
Her eyes darken. She grabs my face and kisses me first this time. There is nothing soft about it, and I groan against her mouth because this woman has always known exactly what she wants and has never once been shy about taking it.
I grip the backs of her thighs and haul her closer, fully flush against me, and she makes a sound that belongs only in this room, her arms locked around my neck, her fingers tugging in my hair just enough to completely wreck what’s left of my self-control.
I push my hands under her shirt.
She arches into it.
“Yeah?” I say against her jaw.
“Don’t ask me twice,” she says.
Her shirt goes over her head. My cut is placed on the counter, and my shirt is thrown. Her hands find my chest before the fabric hits the floor, sliding over my shoulders and down my arms, like she’s decided she’s going to take her time. I let her… for exactly as long as my patience lasts.
Which turns out to be not very long at all.
I lean in, my mouth finding the side of her throat, that spot below her jaw that makes her breath catch every single time, and I stay there, then working my way down the line of her neck while my hands find the clasp of her bra and deal with it efficiently.
She shivers when it goes, even though the room is warm, even though my hands are already there, covering her, palms curved around her with a possessiveness I’m not interested in apologizing for.
I reach into my jeans, pull out my wallet, flip it open, and slide a condom free, tearing the packet open with my teeth.
Undoing my jeans and pulling my cock out, I roll it on one hand, my mouth returning to her collarbone like I never left, and she lets out a low, amused laugh. “Of course, you keep one in there.”
“Property of a prepared man,” I say against her skin.
“That is not the saying.”
“It is now.”
Her jeans and panties come down next. Mine don’t.
No time, no room, no patience left for it, and honestly, the urgency of that is something we are both fine with.
She hooks her leg around the back of my thigh, tilts her hips forward, and I thrust into her slow, sure, and absolutely deliberate, watching her face every second of the way because her face is the thing I will never get enough of.
Her head drops back, and her mouth falls open. “Jesus Anchor.” Her voice is low, wrecked. The one that hits like a fist, right in the center of my chest, every single time she uses it.
I grip her hips harder, and her sharp inhale bounces off the walls. Then I set a pace that isn’t gentle and isn’t rushed, like I know exactly what I’m doing and I’m going to do it right.
Her nails find my shoulder and dig in. I take that as encouragement and roll my hips. She makes a sound she tries to muffle, but spectacularly fails. The little pantry holds it like a secret, and I am immensely satisfied with myself.
“Keep going,” she manages. “Don’t you dare stop!”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I say into her hair.
I shift my grip, one hand firm at her hip and the other sliding to the small of her back, tilting her toward me, and the change makes her gasp my name again, “Anchor!”
Not Will, but my road name, the one that belongs to this life, to this cut, to the man I finally get to be all the way, and it sets something off in my blood that is primal, uncomplicated, and entirely mine.
The words dry up.
One second, she is breathing out half a sentence against my jaw, something fragmented and breathless that stopped being coherent two minutes ago, and then there is nothing.
Just the sound of her, ragged and stripped back, each exhale shorter than the last, her mouth open against my neck like she has forgotten how to close it.
Her nails break through my skin. Ten small points of pressure driving into my shoulder, her hands finding the only thing available to grip while everything else in her world comes undone.
Her thighs press in against my hips, shaking, a fine continuous tremor running through the muscle like she is holding something at the edge of a cliff by her fingertips.
I drive deeper.
Her breath punches out of her.
The heat of her tightens around me, a slow, insistent pull that moves through every nerve ending I own and leaves nothing untouched.
Each time I roll forward, she draws me in and holds, her body making its own argument, squeezing with a pressure that shuts my thoughts down one by one until there is nothing in my head but the slick drag of her, the sound of her breathing, and the bench creaking under my hand.
Pressure builds inside me, but I try to fight it off, forcing my teeth to clamp down.
Not yet.