Chapter 20 #2
At the compound last night he'd said take her home. This is different. This is a man asking another man to do the one thing he's finally admitted he can't do himself.
"I intend to."
He nods once, lets the door close, and walks off the porch. His truck disappears down the drive, and the dust settles behind it.
Raven stands at the kitchen sink for a long time, her back to me.
When she turns around, her eyes are dry and her expression is calm in a way that tells me she's made peace with something that's been eating at her since the speakerphone call in this same kitchen weeks ago.
She splashes water on her face, and when she straightens, the movement pulls her shirt tight across her back and exposes the line of her spine above the waistband of her jeans.
My hands itch to close the distance. I stay where I am.
She sits on the stool across from me at the island, the same spot where she first read Carmichael's files, where she first learned the scope of the lies that built her career.
The morning light catches the gauze on her arms and the fading bruise at her temple, and when her knee brushes mine under the granite, neither of us pulls away.
"You arranged the shadow operatives through Uncle Robert," she says. "Before I walked into Maria's, before the compound. You had a backup plan you never told me about."
"Yes."
"And the night Uncle Martin died, you made the deal with Uncle Robert before you came back for Bo." Her gaze holds mine. "You already knew you were trading your freedom for mine before you pulled the trigger."
"I knew what it would cost. I made the call anyway."
"Ten years, Jesse." Her voice is quiet but it fills the kitchen. "You gave up ten years."
"I'd give up ten more." The words come out flat and absolute, no hesitation, no qualifier. "I'd give up every year I have left if it meant you were breathing. That was true when I made the deal with your uncle and it's true right now. Nothing about it has ever been complicated for me."
Her breath catches. The coffee mug sits untouched between her hands.
"You could have told me. Any of it. All of it."
"And what would you have done? Refused to leave? Gone back for Martin yourself?" I hold her gaze. "You were nineteen years old with a dead uncle and a cartel hunting you. I did what needed doing. The details weren't yours to carry."
"They were mine to know."
"They are now." I lean forward, my forearms flat on the granite. "Every piece of it. The deal, Shadowland, the shadow assets, the years I spent tracking your career through Carmichael's updates because it was the only way I could know you were alive. All of it's yours."
The kitchen is quiet except for the fire settling in the hearth and the wind against the windows. Raven studies my face with an intensity that would make a lesser man look away.
"I spent a decade hating you," she says. "Convincing myself you were a ghost from the worst night of my life. And the whole time you were out there, trading pieces of yourself to keep me safe."
"I don't need your gratitude, Raven."
"Good. Because what I'm giving you isn't gratitude." She reaches across the island and puts her hand over mine. Her fingers are warm, steady, certain. "I forgive you. For the deal, for the silence, for the ten years. All of it. I understand why you did it, and I forgive you."
Something cracks loose in my chest. The quiet release of a weight I've carried so long I'd stopped noticing it was there.
"Are you going back to Virginia?"
"No."
"Are you staying in the Hill Country?"
Her mouth curves, and the warmth in it cracks through every wall I've ever built. "I'm staying right here, Jesse. In this cabin, on this land, with you. If that's what you're asking."
I come around the island. She turns on the stool to face me, and I step between her knees the way I did yesterday on a roadside with blood on her arms and Harlan dead on the gravel behind us. My hands frame her face, thumbs tracing the line of her jaw, and her pulse kicks hard against my palm.
"I love you." Three words. No preamble, no qualification, no speech.
I say it the way I pull a trigger, with absolute certainty and zero hesitation.
"I have loved you since I was twenty-eight years old, standing on a porch watching you tell my father to go to hell.
I loved you on that tarmac, and I loved you every day in Shadowland, and I love you right now with your blood still on my hands and bruises on your skin.
And I will love you until they put me in the ground, Raven Bishop.
That is the only truth I have that's never changed. "
Her eyes are bright and fierce, full of everything she hasn't put into words yet. She doesn't cry. Raven Bishop doesn't break when the world falls apart, and she doesn't break now. Instead she pulls me to her by the front of my shirt and kisses me with a ferocity that says it all for her.
Then she pulls back just far enough to speak against my mouth.
"I love you, Jesse Hollister." Her fingers tighten in my shirt. "You're mine. And I'm done pretending otherwise."
Those words detonate in my chest.
I lift her off the stool and she wraps around me, legs locked at my waist, arms around my neck, her mouth hot and open against mine. The bedroom door hits the wall when I kick it open, and the morning light floods the room as I lay her back on the bed and follow her down.
This is different from every time before. The first night had been raw and urgent, driven by years of want and a war still raging around us. The night before the operation had been dark and claiming, fear and fury channeled into possession. This is neither of those things.
This is what happens when there's nothing left between us. No secrets. No walls. No mission waiting on the other side of sunrise.
I undress her slowly, peeling away the bloodstained shirt, the jeans, and my mouth follows the map of damage Harlan left on her body.
The bruise at her temple where he slammed her into the doorframe.
The raw welts at her wrists where the zip ties bit in.
The shallow cuts carved into her forearms. My lips trace each one, pressing heat into skin that someone else tried to ruin, until every mark on her body has my mouth's memory instead of Harlan's knife.
She shivers under the touch, her fingers threading through my hair, and a small, wrecked noise escapes her throat that's pure trust and nearly undoes me.
I unwrap the gauze from her forearms with careful fingers and press my mouth to the cuts beneath, tasting antiseptic and skin and the faintest trace of salt.
Her breath hitches on my name. Her hands go to my shirt and pull it over my head, her palms spreading flat across my chest, and the hunger in her touch tells me the tenderness has a shelf life.
I unclip her bra and close my mouth over her nipple, my tongue circling slow and wet while my hand works the other breast, rolling the peak between my fingers until she's arching into me.
She moans, low and breathless, and her hips grind up against mine with enough friction to make my cock strain against my jeans.
"I need to feel you." Her voice is choked, the words coming out barely above a whisper.
Her fingers work my belt open and shove my jeans down, and when her hand wraps around my cock the breath punches out of me.
She strokes me root to tip, her thumb dragging across the sensitive head, and the groan it pulls from my chest is raw and unguarded.
I catch her wrist and pin it above her head, not hard, just enough to still her. "You keep doing that and this ends before it starts."
Her gaze is hot with desire but the corner of her mouth twitches up as she replies, "Then stop making me wait."
I strip her underwear off and settle between her thighs, my mouth tracing a path down her stomach, over the curve of her hip, along the inside of her thigh where the skin is softest.
Her legs fall open and the scent of her arousal hits me like a fist. I press my mouth against her pussy in a slow, open-mouthed kiss, and the sound she makes is worth every year I spent in the dark without her.
Her fingers twine through my hair and hold my head in place.
My tongue drags through her folds, flat and slow, tasting her from entrance to clit, and her hips buck hard against my mouth.
I pin her down with one forearm across her midsection and take my time, circling her clit with the tip of my tongue, sucking it between my lips, sliding two fingers inside her while my mouth works her over.
She's soaking wet and clenching around my fingers, and the sounds pouring out of her are hungry and beautiful and mine.
"God, Jesse, right there." Her hand fists in my hair. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
I curl my fingers against the spot that makes her body lock up and suck her clit harder, and the orgasm tears through her with a cry that echoes off the cabin walls.
Her thighs clamp around my head and her pussy pulses around my fingers and I ride her through every wave, my mouth relentless until she's shaking and gasping and pulling at my hair to bring me back up.
I strip the rest of my clothes and settle over her, the head of my cock notching against her slick entrance. Her legs wrap around me, her heels pressing into the small of my back. My forehead drops to hers.
"Look at me." The words come out rough and low.
Her dark eyes lock onto mine, and the vulnerability in them mirrors something I've never let another person see.
I push inside her in one slow, steady thrust, feeling her stretch around me, tight and hot and wet, until I'm buried to the hilt.
The sound she makes guts me. Half gasp and half moan, her back arching off the mattress as her body stretches to take all of me.
"You feel that?" My voice is stripped raw, all pretense gone. "That's where I belong. Inside you. With you. For as long as you'll have me."