21. Sophie
SOPHIE
Acouple of days after the warehouse, the manor finally silences.
The captives are placed. The freed families are threaded out through Kian's routes and Kurtis' houses, papers moving, the network absorbing people overnight like it was always built to.
My cheek has closed to a thin scab I keep forgetting until I smile and it pulls.
Lucian's shoulder and flank healed before we reached home, which I'm still not used to, catching myself checking him for wounds that aren't there anymore.
The adrenaline that carried me through has finally drained out, and what's underneath it is shaking.
He finds me on the back terrace at dusk, wrapped in a blanket, staring out into darkness where the wolves walked forty people to safety.
"You've been out here an hour," he says, settling beside me without asking. "Talk to me."
"I keep doing the calculations. Forty-odd out. The Dakotas family still missing. The database still in a truck somewhere getting slowly cracked. Some nights the ledger balances and some nights it doesn't, and tonight it won't sit still."
"You saved everyone."
"I know. I do know that." I pull the blanket tighter.
"It's not the losing I can't settle. It's that I care this much.
Six months ago I'd have filed a case and slept fine and let the chips land wherever.
You gave me a whole town, a network, and multiple faces, and now I lie awake counting them all.
I wouldn't trade it, but it is exhausting. "
"You said something to me once. That being strong from a distance was exhausting. This is the opposite of that. This is what it costs to be close. It's a worse ache, but a better life. I've had it for years. I'd have told you it wasn't worth it, right up until you showed me it was."
I gaze at him, the golden man that protected me from a window smashing on day one and has never once mentioned it since, and what I've been circling for weeks finally lands somewhere I can say it.
"I don't think of this place as a stop anymore.
" The words come slow, because they're true and true things are heavy.
"I came here to get quiet. Somewhere, this became a place that I like that felt like…
It feels like home, Lucian. Not just you, the town, the pride, the ridiculous cider donuts.
I've not had a home I chose. I have one now. "
His face adjusts, contentment I've never noticed before.
"Then I'm going to say what I've been holding since the overlook," he says. "I fell in love with you a long time ago" His hand finds mine under the blanket. "I want my future to have you in it. Beside me. Five years from now, fifty. I don't want to picture a single day of it without you."
The terrace is very quiet, and the wind's stopped. My chest has started doing something it has no authorization to do.
"You picked a hell of a time," I whisper. "There's a traitor we have to catch."
He almost smiles. "I'm done waiting for the right moment that hasn't arrived. I love you, and you should know that regardless of whatever happens next."
I don't say it back with words. I've never been good at words, only for evidence. Instead, I close the gap and kiss him, and he makes a low sound against my mouth and pulls me a little distance until the blanket falls away and there's nothing careful left.
He gets me up off the terrace bench and against the warm stone wall of the house, his mouth never leaving mine, and I fist both hands in his shirt and drag it up over his head.
His skin is hot under my palms, the faint lines of scars that were fresh two days ago and are already gone.
I trace where they were anyway. He growls into the kiss when my nails scrape down his chest, and the sound goes straight through me.
His hands work my shirt open, unhurried and then not, and cool evening air hits my skin a breath before his mouth does, throat, collarbone, lower.
He yanks the fabric off my shoulders and pulls me back against him, skin to skin, and I feel exactly how much he wants this pressed hard against my hip.
I reach between us and free him, stroke him once, and the noise he makes is worth every careful word he's ever swallowed.
I drop to my knees on the cold stone, the blanket still half-tangled at my feet.
His cock juts out thick and heavy, and I wrap my hand around the base and tilt my head, taking him into my mouth in one slow slide.
His hips jerk once before he locks them still.
I suck hard, cheeks hollowed, tongue working the underside while I stroke what I can't fit.
His hand fists in my hair, not guiding yet, just holding.
A low rumble rolls out of him when I take him deeper, nose brushing his skin.
I pull back, swirl my tongue, then sink down again until my throat tightens around him.
"Fuck, Soph…" He whispers.
He grabs my hair, and pulls my head up to face him making his cock leave my mouth. I gaze up at him, smile with my lips swollen, and he hauls me to my feet.
He spins me so my back hits the stone wall again.
My remaining clothes come off in rough tugs, bra unhooked and dropped, pants shoved down and kicked away.
Cool evening air kisses my bare skin, nipples tight.
He drops to his knees this time, hooks one of my legs over his shoulder, and drags his tongue straight up my pussy.
I gasp, head thudding back against the wall.
He licks me in long flat strokes alternating with pointed flicks over my clit.
Two fingers push inside, curling, while his mouth stays locked on my swollen bud.
My free hand clamps onto his shoulder for balance.
The night insects are the only noise surrounding us until I start moaning, open and raw.
He works me harder, sucking my clit between his lips, fingers thrusting deep.
The first climax hits sharp and fast, my thighs shake around his head and the sensation rushes through me abruptly.
He doesn't stop until the last tremor fades, then stands smirking at his conquest. He's already stripped his clothes off, while he was down there, his shirt off, and his pants at his ankles.
I giggle at him, and he immediately lifts me, both hands under my ass, and I lock my legs around his waist. The head of his cock notches against me, twitching. One hard upward thrust and he's inside me deep, stretching my pussy wide around his thickness.
My head tilts back, and the stone wall scrapes my back with every drive.
He fucks me standing, deep and relentless, each stroke grinding my clit against the base of him.
I dig my nails into his shoulders and meet every thrust, heels pressing into the small of his back.
His mouth finds the side of my neck, teeth grazing, then biting down leaving a sting.
The pain sparks straight to where we're joined.
He shifts his grip, one arm banding under my ass, the other bracing against the wall beside my head, and pounds harder.
My second orgasm builds low and hot, and as I clench around his cock so tight and it's about to break, he snarls against my throat, and doesn't let me come down, pulling out.
He sets me on my feet and turns me, presses my palms flat to the warm stone, and kicks my feet wider.
Then he's back inside from behind, one hand in my hair pulling my head back, the other gripping my hip.
The new angle lets him slam deeper. I push back onto every thrust, greedy for the full length of him.
Night air cools the sweat on my spine while his body stays furnace-hot against mine.
He releases my hair, reaches around, and rubs my clit in tight, fast circles timed to his hips.
"Are you going to come Sophie?" He asks.
"Yes." I scream.
He instantly puts his hand over my mouth preventing me from being any louder, which turns me on even more.
The sliding getting easier as I'm getting more and more wet.
His other hand is still rubbing my clit, he's pounding harder, and the multiple stimulation between his fingers, his cock, and him covering my mouth drags a climax out of me that I'm unable to stop.
My pussy flutters, squeezes, loosens, and then repeats around him, he keeps driving into me, forcing me to explode, and he expands and twitches inside.
My legs buckle, and grabs my hip holding me up, and we both come, my moan and his groan echoing around the grounds.
He slows, and we drop to the ground, him still buried inside. Our breaths uncontrollable but easing. I turn to face him, and press my forehead against his. Both trembling against each other. He holds me tightly, and grabs the blanket, placing it around us.
The night air feels colder now that the heat is fading. Crickets pick up again in the quiet. I rest my cheek against his damp chest, listening to the gradual slowing of his heartbeat, the solid weight of him under me keeping the world from tilting too far.
I wake up in his bed wrapped together, questioning how I got here and realizing he must have carried me. I'm awake first, watching light climb the ceiling, when the piece I've been missing since the warehouse finally clicks into place.
"I know how we get him," I say.
Lucian stirs, one eye opening. "It's barely dawn."
"He escaped with an encrypted file he can't open fast." I sit up, the plan assembling itself the way they do, complete.
"He's spent years trusting Ashcroft's own financial channels, because they always kept him safe.
He still thinks they're his. So we don't chase him.
We feed his own system a lie so good he can't resist it, a buyer, a price, a place, and we let his greed walk him into an ambush and everyone he's selling to straight into one room of our choosing. "
Lucian's fully awake now, staring at me with something between love and awe.
"You're going to beat him with his own books."
"I'm gonna beat him with his own greed. Whatever happens next, Lucian, we do it together. Equals. I build the trap, you spring it."
He pulls me back down against his chest. "Together. Now come here. The trap can wait twenty minutes."