24. The Turn Back #2
"I do not build these alone anymore. I told you that. And I am done being interrupted, Travis. The Deputy is falling, my mother is coming home, and for once in three years there is nothing in this room but us and the thing we have been holding since a courthouse corridor."
I pull him down. "You stopped keeping the distance last night and the world ended before I could have you. The world can wait its turn now. Come here."
And this time nothing takes it back. The wall we have both leaned on from opposite sides for eleven weeks does not just come down, it is gone.
There is only him, and the door closing with a soft, final click, and the eleven weeks and the whole long war of it giving way all at once to the one thing the machine could never take.
His hands frame my face first, thumbs brushing the dried streaks of dust and exhaustion from my cheeks like I am something precious he has carried through every firefight.
Nolan's eyes, those steady, storm-gray eyes that have tracked my every move for months, darken with a hunger that mirrors the ache low in my belly.
"Voss," he murmurs, voice rough as Southern gravel after a long night, "you sure? "
I answer by rising onto my toes and kissing him.
Not the careful brush from the corridor or the desperate graze last night, but a full, claiming press of lips that says every unsaid word between us.
He tastes like adrenaline and the faint salt of sweat, like the man who just stormed hell to bring my parents home.
My fingers curl into the lapels of his jacket, tugging it open as his arms band around my waist and lift me against him.
We stumble toward the bed in the safehouse room, plain, functional, lit only by the gray light bleeding through half-drawn curtains.
It does not matter. Nothing matters but the heat of his body against mine.
He sets me down gently, but there is nothing gentle in the way his mouth trails from my lips to the line of my jaw, then lower to the sensitive spot beneath my ear.
A shiver rolls through me, pulling a soft sound from my throat that makes his grip tighten.
"Eleven weeks," I whisper against his neck, hands working the buttons of his shirt with impatient fingers.
The fabric parts to reveal the hard planes of his chest, the faint scars I have only glimpsed before, maps of the wars he has fought long before me.
I press my palms flat there, feeling the thunder of his heart. "I thought about this every night."
Nolan shrugs the shirt off his shoulders in one fluid motion, then his hands find the hem of my tactical top.
He peels it away slowly, reverently, eyes tracing every inch of skin revealed like he is memorizing me for the first time.
Cool air kisses my bare shoulders, but his gaze warms me faster than any fire.
"Been thinkin' on you longer than that, darlin'." His drawl thickens, the protector melting into something raw and possessive. "Every time you looked at me like I was more than the job."
His fingers skim down my sides, unhooking my bra with quiet efficiency that sends heat pooling between my thighs.
I arch into him as he cups my breasts, thumbs circling the sensitive peaks until I am gasping his name.
Nolan lowers his head, mouth following the path of his hands, hot, wet, deliberate.
Each pull and swirl draws me tighter, winding the tension that has been coiled in me since the moment I realized love was not a liability but a weapon.
I reach for his belt, our movements growing urgent yet unhurried, a dance we have practiced in every charged glance and near-miss. His trousers and boxers join the growing pile on the floor, and then it is skin against skin, the solid weight of him pressing me into the mattress.
Nolan's thigh slides between mine, the friction exquisite, pulling another moan from me as I rock against him. His hand slips lower, callused fingers exploring with devastating patience, finding the slick heat of me and stroking until my hips buck and my nails dig into his back.
"Travis," I breathe, the name a plea and a prayer.
He kisses me deeply, swallowing my sounds as he shifts, settling between my thighs.
The first slow push of him inside me steals my breath, full, stretching, perfect.
We both still for a heartbeat, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air.
Eleven weeks of fear, of almosts, all pouring into this single moment of connection.
Then he moves, and I move with him, a rhythm that builds like the tide coming in after a storm.
Our bodies know this language even when words failed us.
Every thrust draws me closer to the edge, his low groans mingling with my gasps.
His hand finds mine, fingers lacing tight as the pleasure crests, sharp and sweet and overwhelming.
I shatter around him with his name on my lips, and he follows moments later, burying his face in my neck as release claims him, groaning.
After, in the quiet, with the gray light gone gold at the window and his heartbeat under my ear, the thing these eleven weeks have been trying to teach me finally lands.
Eli drew a line once that said a man who loves the principal is the soft place in her defense.
He was wrong, and I am living the proof of how wrong.
The love was not the weakness the machine could use.
The love was the thing that turned the bottom, the fire that found the way through when the analyst had run out of branches.
Every person who chose me turned the night, and the man whose arms I am in turned it most of all, and none of it happened despite the love. All of it happened because of it.
Nolan's fingers trace lazy circles on my bare back, his other arm a heavy, comforting weight around me. I nestle closer, inhaling the scent of him, clean sweat, gun oil, and that indefinable something that is purely Travis Nolan. My protector. My partner. Mine.
"You still with me?" he asks softly, voice rumbling through his chest.
"Always," I murmur, pressing a kiss to the warm skin over his heart.
Outside, the world might still be spinning with fallout from the rescue, but in here, time slows to the steady beat beneath my cheek.
For the first time in years, I let myself believe we earned this.
The rescue succeeded not in spite of us, but because we refused to let the machine steal what mattered most.