Chapter 24 #2
"You're staring," she says, echoing words she's thrown at me a dozen times this week, except now there's no laptop between us, no mission, nothing to hide the fact that I'm doing exactly that.
"I'm observing."
"That's a very professional word for what you're doing."
"It's not professional at all. This isn’t professional, and if it feels professional, I’m doing something very wrong."
That gets a laugh out of her, breathless and real, and I catch the sound with my mouth before it finishes leaving her, walking her backward until her legs hit the edge of the bed.
She sits, pulling me down with her, and then it’s just her hands mapping the same territory mine are mapping, both of us learning each other by touch.
"Dozer."
"Yeah."
"I need you to know I don't do this—" she gestures vaguely between us, breath uneven "—casually. Whatever this is. I need it to mean what I think it means."
I stop. Look at her. Make sure she sees exactly how much I mean it before I say it.
"It means everything I've got left to give somebody. Which isn't much. But it's yours."
Her eyes go bright, and instead of answering with words she pulls me down onto the bed, and the last of the careful distance between us disappears completely.
I take my time with her, learning the landscape of her body like a map I’ve been trying to read all week.
The scent of her skin, clean sweat and the faint, sharp sweetness of the safe house’s shampoo, fills the space between us.
My mouth finds the hollow of her throat, then the ridge of her collarbone, tasting salt and heat.
Her breath hitches when I trace the curve of her breast with my thumb, and I linger there, committing the sound to memory.
Her hands move restlessly, first gripping the sheets until her knuckles pale, then tangling in my hair with a gentle urgency, finally splaying wide across my back as if trying to pull me closer than skin allows.
Each shift tells me more than words ever could.
She’s into this as much as I am. Does she know she’s about to become mine and nothing will ever change that?
"Please," she whispers, voice frayed at the edges, all her usual cleverness stripped away.
"Please what?"
"You know."
"Say it."
“Please f-f-fuck me,” she stammers. “Now!” She cries out with frustration after saying the words.
It’s a raw, honest sound that goes straight through me.
I give her what she asks for, my eyes never leaving her face.
I memorize the flutter of her lashes, the part of her lips, the faint line that appears between her brows just before she closes her eyes and the pure, feral sound that comes out of her when I pump my hips and enter her.
I’ve watched every expression she wears over the last week; this one, her undone and trusting, is the one I’ll keep the closest.
I pull out of her briefly and her legs come up around my waist, her hands framing my face like she needs me looking at her, and I still for one second just to feel all of this.
Her heartbeat is thrumming under my palm.
It’s not lost on me how a mission that started with a dead body somehow ended here, with her.
"Dozer."
"I'm here."
"I know." Her hand slides into my hair.
"You’re mine now, Kenzi. I’m not going anywhere."
I move, and she meets me, and for a long time there's nothing between us but heat and breath and the low, broken sound of my name in her mouth every time I give her a reason to say it.
I reach below her and grasp her hips, holding her still as I drive deep into her tight wetness.
She gasps, and the sound goes straight through me.
Her nails dig into my shoulders, and I feel the exact moment her body stops trying to be careful about this.
Her hips lift into mine, chasing the next thrust, and I hold her right where I want her and give her the pace she's been begging for.
"God — Dozer—"
I know how she likes it. I learned it three minutes ago and I intend to never forget it.
Deep and slow, all the way to the end of her, and then that half-second pause before I do it again, because it's the pause that is undoing her.
Her mouth falls open and her fingers scrabble at my back, finding the tape at my side and flinching away from it even now, even lost, even with her thighs shaking around my waist.
"Don't," I tell her, low. "Don't be careful with me."
"You're bleeding—"
"I'm not." I catch her wrist, bring her hand up between us, press her palm flat over my heart so she can feel what she's doing to it. "Feel that? That's not blood loss."
She makes a sound like a laugh that turns into something else halfway out. Her hips roll up. I answer them with a deep thrust. The bed frame gives a soft complaint against the wall and neither of us cares.
I brace on one forearm beside her head so I can watch her because I want to. Her eyes are half-shut. Her hair's stuck to her temple. There's a flush going down her throat and across her chest that I put there, and the knowledge of that does something primal to me.
"You're staring again," she manages.
"Yeah."
"That's — oh—" Whatever she was going to say gets lost when I shift my angle, and her whole body arches under mine.
"There’s your spot," I say.
"Yes, right there," she agrees, ruined.
I keep hitting her there. I don't get clever.
I don't vary it because I want to feel smart.
I take the one thing that makes her stop breathing and I do it over and over with the patience of a man who has waited out longer sieges than this, until she's not saying words anymore, just my name and the first syllable of God, and her legs have locked so tight around my waist that I can feel the tremor running through the muscles of her thighs.
"Let me hear it," I say against her jaw. "The whole place is empty. Nobody but me to hear you scream."
"You want—" She swallows. "You want me loud."
"I want you honest."
She turns her head and bites my shoulder, and the sound she makes into my skin isn't loud but it's the most honest thing I've ever heard, so I'll take it.
I get a hand between us. Find her clit with my thumb, and she jolts like I've put current through her.
"Oh — no, that's — that's not fair—"
"Never claimed to be fair, Kenzi."
"Dozer—" Her hand slaps down over mine, not to stop me. To keep me there. To hold me exactly where I am while her hips work against the pressure, greedy, all the wit and the deflection burned off her until there's nothing left but need with my name on it. "Don't stop. Don't you dare…don’t stop…"
"Not going to stop."
She comes apart underneath me and I feel every second of it.
It starts in her thighs and rolls up through her, and her body clamps down around me so hard I have to stop, jaw locked, forehead pressed to hers, riding it out with her because moving now would end me and I'm not finished.
Her mouth is open against my cheek. She's saying something that isn't words.
Her nails have found the back of my neck, and I'll wear those marks for a week and be glad about it.
When she finally goes slack, she laughs, a wrecked, wonderful little sound.
"Holy hell." She says when she finally gets her words back.
"Yeah."
"That was—" She drags in a breath of air. "That was rude, actually. To be that good at sex with me that quickly."
"Told you I don't rush things that matter."
"That was not slow, Dozer."
"That was slow." I kiss the corner of her mouth. Slower than I’d like. It took everything in me not to come with her. "I've got slower. This was efficient for our first time."
"Oh my God, shut up." She's still shaking. She hooks her heel behind my thigh and pulls, and I sink deeper into her, and both of us make a sound at the same time. "Again."
"Give yourself a second."
"Don't want a second." Her hands come up to my face, thumbs at my cheekbones, and even flushed and wrung out there's steel under it. "I've had a week of seconds. I've had a week of you being careful. Do it again."
There's not a man alive who could argue with that.
I get an arm under her back and take her up off the mattress with me, sitting back on my heels, and she comes with a startled little "oh" and then she's in my lap with her knees on either side of my hips and her arms around my neck, and the angle drives me into her so deep she has to press her mouth to my shoulder just to breathe.
"Okay," she says, muffled. "Okay. That's — okay."
"You set the pace."
"I—" She lifts her head. Blinks at me. "You're giving me the wheel."
"You've had the wheel all week."
"I have not—"
"Kenzi." I run my hand up her spine, slow, until she shivers under it. "You've been driving since the rest stop. I've just been keeping the road clear."
Something goes soft in her face for a second. Then she rolls her hips and takes me apart with it, and I decide the sentimental part of the conversation can wait.
She's better at this than she has any business being.
She finds her rhythm fast, hands braced on my shoulders, using me as leverage, and I let her do it.
I let her set the depth and the speed and the cruel little grind at the top of every stroke because watching her take what she wants is better than anything I could have engineered myself.
Her hair falls forward. I get a fistful of it and hold it back off her face because I want to see, and the small sound she makes at the pull tells me she likes it, so I keep it.
"You like that," I say.
"Shut up."
"That's not a no."
"It's not a no." She's breathless. Her forehead comes down against mine. "You've got a whole thing, don't you. Under the stoic thing. You've got a whole thing."
"Some."
"Show me."
So I do.