Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Something was weighing on him.
Fallon could feel it in his body—a tension he hadn’t let go of, a tightness across his chest that didn’t match the quiet or the way his arms held her.
His chin rested against the top of her head.
His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, but faster than it should have been for a man sitting still.
The rocking chair moved beneath them in a slow, aimless cadence. The stars were thick.
But Isaac was somewhere she couldn’t reach.
She didn’t push him to talk about it. Whatever it was, it would come when he was ready. She’d spent enough of her life building walls to recognize when someone was standing behind one. The difference was that Isaac’s walls weren’t designed to keep her out. They were holding something up.
She shifted in his lap. Turned her face out of the warm hollow of his neck and found his jaw with her mouth. A press of lips against stubble. Then the corner of his mouth. Then his mouth.
The kiss was slow. Deliberate. She wasn’t asking a question. She was making a decision.
His hand came up to the side of her face. He kissed her back—deep, unhurried, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. She felt the tension in his chest ease by a single degree. Then he pulled back.
“Your body’s been through hell.” His voice was low, rough at the edges. “The last thing I want to do is make it worse.”
She cupped his face in both hands. Her right wrist ached with the movement but she held on anyway.
“You won’t. I trust you to give us what we both need.”
His eyes searched hers. Hazel gone dark in the starlight, green swallowed by something deeper. She watched the argument build behind them and dissolve before it reached his mouth.
He stood with her gathered up against his chest. She wrapped her good hand around his neck and let him take them through the door, through the house, up the stairs to the bedroom.
He set her on the bed. The moonlight through the window laid a pale wash across the sheets.
He reached for the hem of his shirt she’d put on after the bath and eased it over her head.
His knuckles grazed her ribs on the way up.
She felt every point of contact like a current running just beneath her skin.
She pulled his off. He let her, standing close enough that her fingers trailed down his chest as the fabric cleared.
Then his hands were on her hips, his thumbs tracing the hollows above her hipbones, and he lowered her back against the pillows with the kind of care that had nothing to do with hesitation.
He undressed her the rest of the way. Slow. Her pants eased down over the knee that was still stiff, his palm warm against her thigh as he guided the fabric past it. Her panties followed, his fingers sliding beneath the waistband and drawing them down her legs.
Then he knelt beside the bed and pressed his mouth to her knee. The bad one. A kiss so gentle she barely felt the pressure, just the warmth of his lips against the swollen joint.
Her breath stopped in her throat.
He found her wrist next, his lips brushing the edge of the compression bandage where it met bare skin. He stayed there, breathing against her pulse, and the tenderness of it nearly undid her before he'd even touched her properly.
He stripped off the rest of his own clothes and stretched out beside her. His hand moved down her body—throat, collarbone, the valley between her breasts, her stomach—and everywhere it went, he watched her face. Not for permission. His eyes held hers, and nothing else in the room existed.
She felt the difference in how he touched her. A man could be cautious because he was afraid of breaking something. That wasn’t what this was.
Isaac was careful because he knew her. Knew where the damage was, knew where it wasn’t, and moved between those territories with a confidence that made her throat tight.
His mouth followed his hand. Her collarbone. The soft skin beneath her breast. Her hip. He moved down her body with a patience that made her want to scream, his lips and tongue finding every place that didn’t ache and paying it the kind of attention that turned her bones liquid.
When his mouth settled between her thighs, she arched off the bed.
His hands held her hips, firm but careful, keeping her steady while his tongue worked in slow, deliberate strokes that built pressure from the base of her spine outward.
She fisted the sheets with her left hand.
Her right hand found his hair, her fingers threading through it, holding on.
She came with his mouth still on her, her back bowed, her hand pulling his hair, a sound torn from her throat that she didn’t try to contain. He stayed with her through it. Steady. Present. His lips soft against her inner thigh as she came down, her body trembling in the aftermath.
He moved back up beside her. She reached for him. Her left hand wrapped around the hard length of him, and the sound he made against her neck—low, broken, grateful—sent heat flooding back through her before the last wave had fully receded.
“Condom,” she breathed.
“Nightstand.”
She found the drawer. Tore the wrapper. Rolled it onto him with her left hand while his forehead pressed against her temple and his breathing went ragged.
He settled over her between her thighs, his weight on his forearms, and she opened for him. He pushed inside her slowly. Inch by inch.
There was no pain or discomfort, only the full, stretching pressure of him filling her completely, and the look in his eyes as he did: raw, unguarded, a man with no walls left.
He moved with slow, deep strokes that she felt in the pit of her stomach. His hips rolled against hers in a rhythm that built without rushing, each thrust a deliberate act of attention. His hand slid beneath her lower back, changing the angle, and she heard herself moan.
She wrapped her legs around him. Her left knee protested and she didn’t care. She pulled him closer, deeper, her heel pressed into the small of his back.
His pace held. Steady. Controlled. The muscles in his arms trembled with the effort of not taking more than she could give.
She pressed her mouth to his ear. “I’m not going to break.”
His rhythm shifted. Deeper. His hand tightened on her hip. She felt the restraint crack, not into roughness, but into honesty. The careful distance he’d been keeping collapsed, and what replaced it was the full force of everything he felt, translated into the way his body moved inside hers.
She met him. Stroke for stroke. Her hand on his jaw, her eyes on his, no part of herself held in reserve. She’d spent her entire adult life calculating exits. Performing. Keeping some fraction of herself packed and ready to run.
Not tonight.
Tonight she gave him everything.
His forehead dropped to hers. Their breath mixed. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest, fast and hard, matching hers. The pressure built between them—slow, enormous, inevitable—and when it broke, it broke through both of them at once.
She came with his name in her mouth and his hands on her face.
He followed a breath later, his body shuddering against hers, his groan vibrating through her chest. They held each other through it, tangled together, the aftershocks rolling through them in diminishing waves until all that remained was the sound of two people trying to remember how to breathe.
He quickly disposed of the condom then lowered himself beside her. Gathered her against him, careful of her wrist, careful of her knee. She pressed her face into his chest and listened to his heart slow down.
They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.
He pulled the blankets over them. She felt his breathing deepen and even out. His arm stayed heavy across her waist.
She closed her eyes. Sleep pulled her under fast and completely, and the last thing she registered was the steady rise and fall of his breathing against her back, along with the weight of his arm holding her in place.
She let it.
She woke up slowly, her body pulling her to the surface in stages rather than all at once.
Fallon lay on her side, watching him sleep.
He was on his back, one arm flung above his head, the other resting where it had been all night—across the space between them, his hand open near her hip.
His face was slack, the stubble darker, the lines around his eyes smoothed out for the first time in days.
He’d barely slept since Chattanooga. She could see the deficit in how deeply he’d gone under, the way his body had surrendered to the mattress like it had been waiting for permission.
She eased out of bed without waking him. Her knee was stiff but cooperative. Her wrist throbbed at a low frequency she could manage. She pulled on his shirt from the floor and a pair of shorts she found in a drawer, and she went downstairs.
The kitchen was bright with early light. She found the coffee, figured out the machine, and stood at the counter while it brewed, looking out at the water through the window. The dock stretched into the flat surface like a line drawn toward the far shore.
Fishing cabin. Ha. She should’ve known immediately he had money when they pulled up to this elaborate lake house. Maybe she had. But she hadn’t been upset at all when he’d explained his background yesterday. She’d meant everything she’d said.
She poured a cup and sat at the kitchen table. Then she called Cassandra.
Cass picked up on the second ring. “Morning. How’s the body?”
“Functional. Isaac’s still asleep.”
“Mm-hm. And is he still asleep in the same bed you slept in, or a different one?”
“I plead the fifth.” Fallon took a sip of coffee.
“That’s what I thought.” Cassandra’s voice warmed. “Good for you.”
“It was good for me, Cass. I feel like everything about Isaac is good for me.” Even if she felt a little ridiculous saying the words out loud.