Chapter 19
EMILY
She was on the back porch at nine that night when it happened.
Not anything dramatic. There wasn’t a crisis, phone call, or emergency.
Just the compound settling into its evening rhythm around her, and Clover asleep across her feet, and the Colorado sky doing the thing it did at night out here where the stars were unreasonably present and the dark was actually dark and not the orange-gray murk of city sky. Crystal clear.
She'd been thinking all day.
About forty-eight hours and going home and the word yet and the specific way he'd said it will always be your choice like the choice being hers was not a consolation prize but the whole point.
She'd been thinking about Makenzie's face when she talked about Irish.
About Savannah's voice when she said this place is mostly just people looking out for each other.
About the morning she'd bought the coloring book in the Grand Ridge and stuffed it in her tote bag like a secret, and how it had turned out not to be a secret at all, just a thing she needed, and nobody here had made her feel anything other than completely fine about needing it. There were stuffed animals and little toys all over the clubhouse. The girls had playdates and pizza parties and weekend slumber parties. They’d told her about a local BDSM with a monthly DDlg event that sounded amazing.
She'd been thinking about Rampage. His quiet confidence that made her feel secure. The way he didn’t push her into things.
How for the last week his hand would settle on the small of her back when they walked, and how they’d started to kiss before bed every night.
He was taking things slow, almost painfully slow, but in a respectful way.
In a way that allowed her room to think and process and decide for herself.
There was no pressure from him. It felt like he already knew.
Knew she was his and he was waiting for her to come to the same conclusion.
His kisses made her want more. She wanted to feel his fingers and lips on her body again, the way she had in the shower.
But, without being sure of what was to come, she didn’t want to risk having to say goodbye to him after taking that step.
She had a feeling, deep down, if she were to sleep with Rampage, she wouldn’t ever leave this place.
Rampage came out at half past nine. She heard the door, heard him cross the porch, felt the particular shift in the air that meant he was close.
He didn't sit. Stood at the porch rail, looking out at the tree line like he was reading it. He was nothing if he wasn’t intense.
"You've been thinking hard today," he said.
"Is it visible?"
"To me."
She looked at the sky. "I've been thinking about what you said this morning. About it being my choice."
He didn't answer. Just waited with that complete, unhurried patience. He was an expert at silent strength.
"I've spent a lot of my life," she said, "making choices because they were the sensible thing.
The independent thing. The thing that proved I didn't need anything from anyone.
" She pulled her blanket tighter. "And I'm starting to wonder how many of those choices were actually about what I wanted versus what I thought I was supposed to want. "
The porch was quiet.
"What do you want?" he asked. Low. Direct.
She looked at him. He'd turned from the rail and was watching her with that level, certain intense attention that she no longer flinched from, that she had started, somewhere in the last two weeks, to move toward instead.
"I want to stay," she said in a whisper.
"I want… I want the thing I've been reading about and thinking about and telling myself was just a preference for fiction.
" She held his gaze. "I want what the others have.
What I've been watching all week. The structure and the safety and the—" She stopped.
Steadied. "I want someone to tell me I'm good when I've been good and I want someone to deal with me when I'm not and I want to not have to carry everything by myself all the time.
" She takes a breath. "And I want it to be you.
Specifically. Which I know is…it's fast and it's a lot and I'm still—"
"Emily." His voice was quiet.
She stopped.
He came to the chair beside her and sat.
"I know it's fast," she said.
"I know."
"And I know this started in a crisis, and I know all the reasons it should be—"
"Emily." This time it stopped her completely. "I'm not looking for reasons, excuses or justifications for us."
She looked at him and blinked slowly.
"I know what this is," he said. "I've known since I met you at The Rusty Crab, it was confirmed in the parking lot.
The reasons you're naming aren't things I'm concerned about.
They're things you need to say out loud so you can hear them and decide they're not enough to walk away from what you want. " He held her gaze. "Are they?"
She thought about it. Genuinely. Held it up and looked at all its sides.
"No," she said.
"Okay."
"Okay," she said. "So. What now?"
"Now," he said, "I'm going to start taking care of you.
Properly. And you're going to tell me when something is too much and when something isn't enough and we're going to figure out what this looks like specifically for us and not anyone else.
" He paused. "And you're going to stop apologizing for what you need. "
She absorbed that. "That last one might take some work."
"I'm aware. I'm patient."
"You're going to have to remind me sometimes."
"That," he said, "is something I'm very prepared to do. Even if it means another trip over my knee."
She looked at him for a long moment. The porch light, the stars, the solid specific reality of him in the chair next to her.
He moved off the chair and sat next to her. His arm came around her. Not careful, not tentative. Certain. He squeezed her shoulder and she rested her head on his.
She exhaled.
It was nothing like the books. It was so much more than the books. It was a porch swing under the magnificent Colorado night sky, Clover snoring and his arm around her and the feeling, the specific complete feeling, of being somewhere she was supposed to be.
"Hi," she said softly, to nothing in particular.
She felt the low rumble of something in his chest. Not quite a laugh but close.
"Hi," he said.
They sat there for a long time before he kissed her. His hand moved from her shoulder to her jaw, tilting her face up toward his in the dark, and she felt the intention of it before his mouth touched hers.
When he kissed her, it was nothing like the kisses they’d shared throughout the week.
This was an absolute claiming. He was making a statement that couldn’t be denied.
His mouth covered hers fully, one hand cradling her jaw and the other pulling her in at the waist, and she felt the whole focused weight of him in it.
She felt everything. It was an end of his patience combined with every good girl that he’d praised her with.
It was every ounce of sexual chemistry they’d been feeling and the emotional connection at once, delivered without rushing, thorough and certain and devastatingly specific to her.
She made a sound she hadn't planned. He swallowed it.
His thumb traced her jaw while he continued to kiss her, slow and deliberate, and she gripped the front of his cut with both hands and held on.
He kissed her like he had all the time in the world.
Like he intended to do this properly and nothing in the world was pressing enough to interrupt. No one better interrupt.
She pulled back for air.
He let her breathe for exactly one second and then kissed her again, deeper this time, his hand sliding into her hair, fisting behind her head, and she felt the warmth of it move through her from the point of contact outward, down her chest, into her stomach, all the way to her hands still gripping his cut.
When he finally lifted his head they were both breathing differently.
"Emily," he said. Low. Into the small space between their mouths.
"Yeah." She couldn't manage more than that.
"You're mine." He said not possessive in the cold sense but in the warm, absolute, load-bearing sense. The kind of claim that didn't cage. The kind that meant I will put myself between you and everything. "You know that."
She looked at him in the dark. At his face, at the warm certain weight of his eyes on hers.
"Yes," she said.
“Say it.”
“I’m yours.”
He kissed her again, and this one was slower, deeper, his hand fisting the back of her head and holding it in place. He kissed her like she was something that mattered, that had enormous value to him. His chest was warm against hers, and she stopped holding anything back.
She kissed him with all she had. With the passion she’d been holding back every night she'd fallen asleep knowing he was there on the other side of the wall and wishing he was in bed with her instead.
She put all of it into the kiss and felt him receive every bit, his arms tightening around her, pulling her fully against him until there was no space between them worth naming.
When they finally broke apart she pressed her forehead against his jaw and caught her breath.
"Daddy," she said softly.
His arms tightened.
"Yeah, baby girl," he said. Into her hair. "I've got you."
She believed him completely.