CHAPTER 35
Jameson
Swiss Alps, Switzerland
Night Three Off Grid
By two in the morning, I’d memorized every sound the safe house made.
The low pop of the dying fire in the room below. The old timber settling in the cold. The faint drag of wind against the sealed shutters.
And Brynn’s silence on the other side of the door.
I sat on the hallway floor with my back against the wall, one knee bent, one leg stretched out in front of me, my hand resting loose near the weapon at my side.
Close enough to reach her if the house was breached.
Far enough away that I could pretend I was respecting the line she’d drawn in the kitchen.
When I finally went back inside, Brynn had been standing at the kitchen sink with a glass of water held close to her chest. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, but there was nothing soft in the way she looked at me.
“Please stay,” I’d said, because every other word in my head sounded too much like begging. “Let me protect you. Let me help you expose whoever is trying to drag Mirrorstream back into the world.”
Her face changed at the word protect.
“If I stay, you don’t get to handle me.”
I held still. “Handle you.”
“Manage me. Move me. Decide what I can know because it makes your job easier.” Her voice shook, and she hated that. I could see it in the way her chin lifted before she kept going. “I want full disclosure. I want to know what you know, especially if you’re actually going to help me.”
A tight vise gripped my chest.
“Not protect me from it,” she said. “Not bury it cleanly. Expose it.”
My throat moved once. “All right. No more handling you. I tell you what I know. If something creates an immediate risk, we decide together how to handle it. And if we find proof, we bring it into the light.”
Her eyes stayed on mine.
“Good,” she said. “Because if I stay, I’m staying for the story. Not for you.”
She was tired. Angry. Barely standing. And if telling herself this was only about the story kept her from walking into the dark alone, I could live with it.
I could live with almost anything, apparently.
Which was how I ended up on the floor outside her bedroom door, certain I was no longer welcome inside and unable to make myself go any farther away.
I told myself it was tactical.
The hallway gave me a clean line of sight to the door. The windows were sealed, but not impossible to breach. The room I’d assigned her had only one door, which meant I could keep myself between her and any threat.
All true.
None of it was the reason my chest hurt every time I imagined her slipping past me before dawn.
She might leave.
She might actually leave.
The thought looped until it stopped being a thought and became a pulse behind my eyes.
My brain didn’t do calm the way other people’s did.
It measured possibilities. It mapped failure points.
It turned fear into a current under my skin and refused to power down until every threat had been named, ranked, and contained.
Brynn Hunt could not be contained.
That was part of the problem.
I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. The wood was cold through my shirt. I had one hand in my hair, fingers locked too tight near the roots, pulling just enough to give the storm in my skull a single point of pressure.
Do not handle her.
Do not manage her.
Do not make her a problem to solve because wanting her has made you stupid.
The door clicked open.
For a fleeting second, the world around me seemed to freeze.
Then her bare feet barely whispered as they moved into the hall.
I didn’t look up at first. I knew it was her. I knew the outline of her even before her shadow fell across me.
She stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her body through the cold hallway, close enough that every part of me wanted to reach and every disciplined part of me ordered my hands to stay exactly where they were.
“Brynn.”
Her name came out rougher than I intended.
She crouched in front of me, shoulder-length hair falling forward, face soft with sleep and something that looked too dangerous to call tenderness.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
I could’ve lied. Security. Perimeter. Risk assessment. Any of the useful words. Any of the clean ones.
Instead, I looked at her and lost the ability to be useful. “I was afraid you’d leave.”
Her throat moved.
I forced the rest out. “…Leave me.”
The silence after that was worse than the confession.
Her eyes searched my face, and I let her. I’d already given away too much tonight. There was no point trying to salvage the part of me that knew how to disappear behind control.
She lowered herself to her knees.
I watched her hands reach for mine.
Slowly.
As if I were the one who might bolt.
Her fingers closed around my wrists and pulled my hands down from my hair. The loss of pressure made the noise in my head spike for half a second, intense and white, until her thumbs moved over the inside of my wrists.
Once, then again.
A small, grounding stroke.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” she whispered.
I couldn’t breathe right.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth and came back up. “That we were only fucking.”
I went still beneath her.
“I said it because I was scared,” she said. “Not because it was true.”
My fingers flexed under hers.
“I knew it was cruel the second it came out. But I think... I think I wanted it to hurt in that moment.” Her voice thinned around the admission. “I’m sorry.”
The apology found the raw place she’d left behind.
It didn’t close it, but it reached me anyway.
“Brynn.”
“I know.” She looked down at our hands. “I know sorry doesn’t fix it.”
“No,” I said quietly. “But I needed to hear it.”
Her eyes lifted to mine again as her hands slid from my wrists to my forearms, then to my shoulders.
She pressed gently until my bent knee lowered and my leg stretched out beside the other.
The movement left me open against the wall, no angle to hide in, no posture that let me pretend I was unaffected.
She climbed into my lap.
My hands lifted, then stopped an inch from her hips.
Her oversized shirt rode up her thighs as she settled over me.
My shirt.
The fact registered with more force than it should have.
Thin cotton separated us. Her body was warm against mine, and my control immediately became theoretical.
I drew in a breath. Laundry soap. Warm skin. The faint sweetness of her shampoo.
“You can touch me,” she whispered.
My hands settled on her carefully.
She leaned closer, her fingers sliding into my hair. Not pulling this time. Soothing. Carding through the strands until the pressure inside my skull began to ease.
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Her mouth brushed one cheek, then the other.
The affection reached places hunger never did. Hunger I understood. This was harder.
I turned my face toward hers.
Our foreheads touched.
“I still don’t know if I forgive you,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“But I’m here.” Then she kissed me.
Slow at first. Barely there. A question pressed to my lips.
I should have let her keep it gentle.
But her fingers tightened in my hair, and the sound she made was small and broken, and something in me came loose.
I kissed her back.
Her body melted into mine with a soft exhale. My hands slid from her hips to her lower back, pulling her closer as the kiss deepened. She tasted faintly of water and toothpaste. Her tongue touched mine, and every nerve in my body answered.
She shifted in my lap.
I groaned into her mouth.
The friction was almost nothing, just the press of her through cotton, the grind of her body over mine, but I’d been wound too tight for too long. Want moved through me fast, hot and punishing.
She felt it.
Her hips moved again, slower this time.
Testing.
My grip tightened before I could stop it.
She broke the kiss just enough to breathe my name. “Jameson.”
I opened my eyes.
My fingers found the hem of her shirt.
I paused there.
She lifted her arms.
I pulled the shirt over her head and let it fall beside us.
Goosebumps rose over her skin in the cold hallway. Her breathing had quickened, and her pupils were wide enough that only a thin ring of color remained.
I looked too long.
She shifted under my attention. “What?”
I dragged my gaze back to hers. “You make it hard to think.”
Her face changed.
Not with doubt. With a smile that started small and then turned devastating.
“That might actually be better than being called beautiful,” she whispered.
I leaned forward and took one nipple into my mouth.
Her spine arched, and her nails pressed into my shoulders.
The sound she made was quiet, trapped between her teeth, but it hit me everywhere.
I sucked gently, then harder when her hips moved against me.
Her head tipped back, throat exposed, one hand still buried in my hair as if she needed me fixed there.
I gave her what she asked for without words.
Mouth. Tongue. Teeth, careful enough not to hurt until she made a sound that told me careful wasn’t what she wanted.
My hands moved over her back, her waist, the curve of her ass. Every place I touched, she seemed to come alive against me. Heat and skin and the soft scrape of her nails through my hair.
She tugged at my shirt.
I pulled back long enough to let her drag it over my head. The cold hit my skin first, then her hands, warm and impatient over my shoulders, my chest, the ridges of old scars she didn’t ask about.
Her hands moved between us, fingers slipping beneath my waistband. I lifted my hips, and she pushed the fabric down just enough to free me. The cold air hit first, then her palm wrapped around me.
My vision sparked at the edges.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
Her mouth curved against my jaw. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all night.”
A laugh scraped out of me, rough and almost painful.
Then she stroked me, and whatever answer I might have given disappeared.
My hand closed around her wrist, not stopping her. Holding on. Her grip was firm, slow, maddening. Every stroke dragged heat up my spine and left me fighting the urge to thrust into her hand like I had no control left at all.
Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’d used the last of it on the porch.
“Brynn,” I said against her throat.
She hummed in answer.
“I need you,” I said.
Her hand stilled.
I hated the loss immediately.
Then she rose onto her knees, shifted the cotton aside, and guided me beneath her.
I held still.
Let her choose the pace. The angle.
Me.
Her eyes held mine.
She sank down slowly.
Heat closed around me, wet and tight and so perfect my fingers dug into her soft skin. We both went still when she took me fully. Her forehead dropped to mine. Her breath broke. Mine followed.
The hallway floor was hard beneath me. The wall was cold against my back. Her body was warm around mine, trembling slightly as she adjusted to the fit.
I had been inside her before.
This felt different.
Maybe because she’d come to me.
Maybe because I was on the floor outside her room like a man waiting for judgment and she’d chosen me anyway.
Maybe because I could still hear her voice in my head.
Not for you.
She moved first. A slow roll of her hips pulled a groan from deep in my chest.
I gripped her harder. “Do that again.”
She found a rhythm over me, not hurried at first, just a steady grind that made every breath harder to control. I watched her face as she moved. The tension in her mouth. The slight crease between her brows. The way her lashes fluttered when the angle caught just right.
I slid one hand up her spine and wrapped the other around her thigh, helping her move without taking over.
I wasn’t handling her.
I was following.
She braced one hand on my shoulder, the other against the wall beside my head, and rode me harder.
The sound of our bodies filled the hallway. Quiet, wet, intimate. Too exposed and not exposed enough. My breathing turned rough. Hers broke into soft little sounds she kept trying to swallow until I kissed them out of her.
“You don’t have to be quiet,” I said against her mouth.
Her eyelids fluttered, and her eyes slowly opened to hold mine.
Then she moved again, slower, deliberate, and this time when the sound escaped her, she let me hear it.
My control buckled.
I thrust up into her, once, then again, matching her rhythm. Her nails dug into my chest. Her mouth opened against mine. I slipped a hand between us and found the slick heat of her, circling with my thumb until her entire body tightened over me.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
I nearly broke from that alone.
“Look at me,” I said.
Her eyes found mine again.
I held them as I touched her, as she rode me, as the hallway disappeared around us and the only real thing left was the place where our bodies met. She was shaking now, thighs tense on either side of me, her rhythm starting to break.
“That’s it,” I murmured. “Stay with me.”
I meant so many things in that moment.
Her forehead pressed to mine.
“Okay,” she breathed.
I pressed my thumb a little firmer, and she shattered.
Her body locked around me, tight pulses dragging me right to the edge. She buried her face in my neck to muffle the sound, but I felt it against my skin. Every tremor. Every broken breath. Every desperate little movement as she rode it out.
I held her through it until holding was no longer enough.
Then I gripped her hips and thrust up once, twice, a third time, and followed her over.
My head fell back against the wall. My hands locked on her as I released deep inside her, breath leaving me in a rough sound I couldn’t have stopped if I tried.
Brynn collapsed against my chest, warm and boneless, her face tucked into my neck. I wrapped my arms around her, maybe too tightly, but she didn’t pull away. Her breathing slowed against my skin. Mine tried to match it.
The hallway was still cold.
The floor was still unforgiving.
My mind, which had spent hours tearing itself apart in loops and contingencies, finally went quiet.
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t ask her to define it. I didn’t measure the promise for weak points or ruin it by trying to make it safer than it was.
I held her in the narrow hall outside the bedroom, the safe house locked down around us and her breathing warm against my skin. The old timber settled. Wind dragged against the shutters.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.