Chapter 21 #3
"That's the whole problem," I say. She laughs again and puts it on right there at the table. The pendant sits at her throat exactly where I imagined it would.
The suite door closes behind us and the whole day settles into something quiet and full between us.
I'm a man of my word. I have that dress off her before the suite door finishes closing, exactly like I promised, her back against the wall, my lips already at her throat before the zipper's fully down.
She laughs, breathless, both hands in my hair, and I take my time getting her the rest of the way bare, now that there's nowhere else either of us needs to be.
I move to the armchair by the window and wait, patient, watching her cross the room to climb into my lap.
She sets the pace, slow, her hands on my shoulders, my hands moving over her back and down. I think about the man who wanted her smaller. I think about her sitting across from me at dinner telling me she's spent her whole life proving people wrong.
I think: I want something that's only mine.
"Have you ever done this before?" Low, against her ear.
"What?" Her eyes lock on mine, uncertain, still not sure what I'm asking.
"I want to try something." I reach for the small bottle of lotion I set on the side table earlier, just in case, and slide my hand down over the curve of her ass, slow and certain, so there's no mistaking what I mean now. "This. If you want it."
She goes still around me, understanding landing all at once. "No. I haven't tried it."
Mine to give her first. Mine to be the only one who has. The thought lands somewhere deep and doesn't leave.
I warm a little between my fingers first, taking my time, then move lower, a single finger tracing back, careful, testing, watching her face the entire time for the flicker that would mean no.
When I push in, slow, she cries out, sharp and startled, her whole body clenching hard around my finger at once, her hips bearing down like she can't decide whether to pull away or take more.
"Relax into it." Low, steady, my other hand flat against her spine. "Slow. We're going to go real slow."
She breathes out, unclenches by degrees, and I don't move again until I feel her settle against me. She rocks down harder, and I understand, in that single second, that I have just found something that belongs only to us, something no one who came before me ever touched, and I am not letting it go.
I move my finger in deeper and she clenches around me in the best way, her body gripping mine like she never wants to let go.
Then it hits her all at once, an orgasm that slams through her harder than anything before it, her whole body shuddering, gasping, dragging both of us into a new realm of what we are to each other.
I follow her a moment later, my name breaking apart in her mouth this time instead of the other way around, both of us shaking.
She's boneless against me for a long moment before either of us moves.
I ease her off my lap, careful, and go wash my hands in the bathroom before I do anything else, because there's a right way to do this and I intend to get all of it right.
When I come back, she's still sitting in the chair, watching me with an expression I don't have a name for yet.
I carry her to the bed rather than let her walk, and she doesn't argue, just curls into my side once we're down, her head finding my chest like it belongs there.
Tangled together, her head on my chest, I trace the shape of the pendant where it sits against her collarbone and think about the fact that I have never once in my life wanted to keep something as badly as I want to keep this exact moment.
She wakes to my hands moving over her in the pink Missoula light, slow, the whole morning still ours.
Her phone buzzes on the nightstand while she's still catching her breath.
She reaches for it without thinking, the reflex of a woman who has never once let a threat wait for a better time. I watch her face change as she reads it.
"It's Halloway's office," she says. "My contact from the senator's staff.
" She sits up, sheet pulled around her, all the softness of the last twelve hours gone cold in an instant.
"McKenna's been lobbying quietly through three counties for over a year.
Nobody caught it because nobody was supposed to. "
"That's not new information."
"This part is." She turns the phone toward me, her jaw tight, the woman from last night already gone, replaced by the one who negotiates from the dirt. "They already have someone inside Rimrock, Knox. Somebody local. Somebody trusted."
I go still.
Ted's fourth name sits in my chest like a stone I haven't set down yet.
"Whose office?" I ask.
"He wouldn't say. Just that it's close." She's already reaching for her clothes, the morning over before either of us decided it should be. "Close enough that they've had eyes on both families for months and neither of us noticed."
I look at the pendant still resting against her throat, gold against her skin, and think about the name I haven't told her yet, and understand that whatever this morning was, it's already behind us.