28. Quinn #4
The care stayed, but the leash on his wanting loosened.
His hips moved with more certainty. His mouth found mine, then my jaw, then the corner of my eye when the pleasure grew so sharp it turned emotional.
I laughed once because it was too much and somehow not enough, and he smiled against my skin as if the sound had done something irreversible to him.
His hand slid beneath my hip, angling me up, and the next thrust made both of us groan. Rafe held me as if he had spent his whole life being careful and had finally found something worth the risk of wanting.
The second time, pleasure came slower and deeper.
It built through every place he touched me: his hand at my hip, his mouth at my throat, his body moving inside mine with increasing loss of control.
I could feel him trying to wait for me. The effort in his jaw.
The tremor in his shoulders. The way his breath turned uneven each time I tightened around him.
“Rafe,” I said, and this time I didn’t hide the sound.
His control broke enough for me to feel it.
His hand was gripping my thigh as he moved with me, his mouth against my ear, my name a low, broken sound in his throat.
I came again with my face turned into his neck, no hand over my mouth this time, no dignity left to defend.
He followed a moment later, burying his face into my shoulder, his body going rigid over mine as my name broke from him like he had been keeping it locked behind his teeth for weeks.
He lowered himself carefully, keeping his weight from crushing me while still covering me enough that I felt surrounded.
His breath warmed my neck. My hand moved over his back without conscious permission, tracing the muscles there, the small marks my nails had left, the living proof that he had been real under my hands.
For once, I didn’t try to make myself useful.
I didn’t reach for my phone. I didn’t apologize for taking up space. I didn’t calculate the cost of the sheets, the room, the future, the heartbreak waiting around any corner if life decided to be life.
I let myself be held.
Rafe kissed my forehead.
“You’re thinking,” he said.
I tucked my face against his chest. “I’m thinking Max is going to be unbearable after sleeping on a dragon bed.”
“He earned it.”
“He’s going to expect one at home.”
“We’ll get him one.”
I lifted my head. “Rafe, my bed barely fits in my apartment.”
“We’ll discuss options.”
“That sentence sounds expensive.”
“It often is.”
There were harder conversations coming. The case. The firm. My job. His family. The fact that loving a dragon didn’t magically pay student loans or repair every old fear inside me. But for that night, the world was smaller.
A quiet room.
A steady heart beneath my cheek.
A dog snoring somewhere downstairs, on furniture worth more than my entire building.
And Rafe’s arms around me, holding me like staying wasn’t an accident. Like it was something we had both chosen.
My body felt loose and heavy, my thoughts pleasantly ruined. Every time his thumb moved over the inside of my wrist, I had to remind myself that I was a grown woman with student loans and not a house cat being slowly converted to indoor life.
His mouth brushed the top of my head.
“Quinn.”
“Mmm.”
“I need to ask you something.”
I opened one eye. “If this is about Max’s dragon bed, I stand by my concern that he’ll never emotionally recover from returning to my apartment.”
“It’s not about Max.”
His arm tightened slightly around me, then eased, like even now he was careful not to hold more than I gave him. “The relics have all been recovered.”
My sleep-soft brain took a second to catch up. The necklace. The sword. The mirror. The comb. The incense burner downstairs in its padded case, finally home where it belonged.
“So they have,” I said quietly.
“And the case is effectively concluded. Which means our professional relationship, such as it was, no longer exists in the same way.”
I turned in his arms until I could see his face. “Such as it was?”
His mouth softened. “It became difficult to categorize somewhere around the bribed auctioneer.”
“I feel like the dragon flight also made HR paperwork complicated.”
“Very.”
I smiled, but my throat had gone tight.
Rafe lifted one hand to my face, his fingertips touching my cheek with a tenderness that made all my jokes crowd near the exit.
“I would like to take you out. Properly. On a date that doesn’t involve legal strategy or armed thieves.
No phoenixes unless one happens to be at the next table and behaves himself. ”
“That’s a lot of restrictions for New York.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
I traced the edge of his jaw, feeling the faint roughness there, the living warmth of him beneath my hand. “Are you asking me on a date, Rafe Virelli?”
“Yes.” His gaze held mine, composed and impossibly serious. “I am asking you on a date. And then, if it goes well, I intend to ask for another.”
My heart did something soft and reckless. “What if it goes terribly?”
“It won’t.”
“So confident.”
“No,” he said, and kissed the inside of my wrist. “Hopeful.”
I leaned in and kissed him, slow and smiling. “Then yes. I’d love to go on a proper date with you.”
His relief was quiet, but I felt it in the way his body settled around mine.
“Good,” he said.
“Good?”
“Excellent.”
“That’s better.”