13. Zoe
Zoe
This is the last night before the world comes in and I don't want to spend it in separate corners of the same room.
Ryker’s at the sink washing the dinner plates with his back to me. He's been quiet all evening, the kind of quiet that means he's already deciding to sleep in the chair again.
I get off the stool. My ankle holds. I cross the kitchen and stop behind him, close enough that my breath moves the fabric between his shoulder blades.
He stops washing. His hands go still in the water. "Zoe."
"Don't say my name like it's a warning. Say it like you said it when you told me you wanted to kiss me."
He turns off the water and dries his hands but doesn't turn around.
"The team gets here tomorrow," he says, voice raspy. "Once they're here everything changes. Oversight. Documentation. If we do this tonight and it comes out, it compromises the case. It compromises you. I won't give Tyler's lawyer a single thread to pull."
"Look at me."
He turns, his expression a battlefield as duty and desire pull him in opposite directions.
"I've spent weeks having decisions made for me," I say.
"I'm done with that. Here's my choice. I'm choosing you.
Tonight. Not because you're the only option.
Because you asked before you kissed me and you stepped back when I needed space and you sleep in a chair three feet from my bed so you won't cross a line.
I'm choosing you because of who you are.
And if you can look me in the eye and tell me the badge outweighs that, then I'll go back to the bed and you'll go back to the chair.
But I don't think that's what you want. And I know it's not what I want. "
Silence settles between us. His breathing turns uneven.
"Zoe." He says my name differently this time. Like a surrender. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
He closes the distance hard. His hands come up to my face, both of them, cradling my jaw, and he kisses me like the last of his restraint just snapped.
The kiss is deep and hungry, nothing careful about it.
His hands slide from my face to my neck to my shoulders, then lower, gripping my waist hard enough that I can feel every finger.
"Fuck," he mutters against my mouth. "I've been wanting this for days. Wanting you. You’ve got no idea what you've been doing to me."
He lifts me onto the counter like I weigh nothing. Our faces are level now. He steps between my knees and pulls me forward until I'm flush against him and I can feel how hard he already is.
"Look at you," he says, voice rough. "Sitting there all pretty in my shirt, looking at me like that. You know what that does to me?"
I shake my head no.
He groans. “It makes me so fucking hard.” He grabs my hand, and places it over the ridge of his pants. “Feel that? That’s what you do to me.”
I unbutton the flannel with my other hand. He watches my face the whole time, eyes dark and hungry.
"You're looking at my face," I say.
"Because your face is where you are, baby." He leans in and presses his forehead to mine. "I'm nervous too. I don't want to get this wrong."
"You won't."
He kisses me again, hotter this time, mouth moving from my lips to my jaw to the hollow of my throat. His hands find the hem of the T-shirt and pause.
"Yes," I say before he can ask.
The shirt comes off. Cold air hits my skin for half a second before his warmth replaces it, his bare chest against mine, and the contact rips a sound out of me I don't recognize.
"Christ," he breathes. "Look at you. So fucking perfect."
He carries me to the bed and lays me down, then he follows, his weight settling over me on his forearms. The size of him is everywhere. His shoulders block the firelight. His body is a shelter I'm choosing.
He doesn't go slow anymore.
His mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, and then lower. His hands map every inch of me like he's been starving for it. When he finds a spot that makes me gasp he stays there, working it until I'm arching under him and gripping his shoulders.
"That's it," he murmurs against my skin. "Let me hear you. Don't hold anything back from me."
He works his way down my body with a focus that borders on worship, except the words coming out of his mouth are anything but soft.
"Been thinking about this," he says, voice ragged and filthy between kisses. "Every night in that chair. Thinking about how you'd feel under me. How you'd sound when I finally got my hands on you properly. You're even better than I imagined, baby. So responsive. So wet for me already."
I make a broken sound and his eyes flick up to mine, dark and satisfied.
"You like that," he says. Not a question. "You like when I talk to you like this."
"Yes."
"Good. Because I'm not done, little one.
" He crawls back up my body and kisses me deep while his hand slides between us.
"I want you calling me Daddy. Not like a real father, but a daddy who takes care of you. I’m gonna take care of you like you deserve.
Gonna make you feel so good you forget everything else exists. That okay with you?"
"Yes, please."
"Please what?"
"Please, Daddy. Please take care of me, Daddy."
He growls when I say Daddy. He works me with his fingers until I'm shaking, until the only words I can form are Daddy and broken little pleas, and the whole time he talks to me in that throaty, dirty voice that turns me on more than I thought possible.
"That's my girl. Look at you taking it so well for your daddy. Fuck, you're beautiful like this. All flushed and needy for me. Gonna make you come before I even get inside you. Want to feel it. Want to watch."
When I break it's with his name in my mouth and his eyes locked on mine. He works me through it until I'm trembling and soft, then reaches for the nightstand, grabbing a condom from a drawer.
"Still with me?" he asks, voice rough but careful under the roughness. He rolls the condom over his thickness. He’s so big I can hardly believe it.
"Yes. Don't stop. Please don't stop, Daddy."
He settles between my thighs and pushes in slow, giving me time to adjust to the size of him, and the stretch makes us both groan.
"Fuck, Zoe." His forehead drops to mine. "You a virgin? You’re so fucking tight. So warm. Don't know how I'm supposed to last when you feel like this."
“Yes, I’m a virgin.”
My answer makes him hiss through his teeth. “Fuck me,” he whispers out in a low groan. He starts to move, deep and controlled at first, but the control frays fast. His hands grip my hips hard enough to leave marks and his mouth finds my ear.
"You take me so well," he growls. "Look at you. Taking every inch like you were made for it. You have any idea how good you feel? How hard it is not to just bury myself in you and stay there?"
I dig my nails into his back and he makes a sound that goes straight through me.
"Harder," I whisper.
"Yeah?" His rhythm picks up, deeper, and less careful. "You want it harder, baby? Want me to fuck you like I've been thinking about for days?"
"Yes. Please. Daddy—"
"I've got you." His voice is wrecked now, all the restraint burned away. "I've got you. Not letting go. You're mine tonight. This tight little body, these sounds you're making, all of it. Mine."
The word should scare me. It doesn't. Instead, it lights me up.
He shifts the angle and hits something that makes my vision spark white. I cry out and he latches onto the sound, driving into that same spot over and over while his dirty mouth keeps going.
"There it is. That's the spot, isn't it? Fuck, listen to you. So loud for me. Gonna make you come on my cock just like this. Want to feel you squeeze me when you fall apart. Come on, baby. Give it to me."
I shatter with his name torn out of my throat. He follows a few strokes later, burying himself deep and groaning against my neck as he comes, his whole body shuddering over mine.
We stay like that for a long minute, breathing hard, his weight a warm, heavy comfort. Then he carefully pulls out and rolls to the side, bringing me with him so I'm tucked against his chest.
His heartbeat is fast under my cheek. His arm is tight around me. Neither of us says anything for a while. Then, he tosses the used condom into the trash, and pulls me closer to him.
"The chair is terrible," I murmur eventually. "I don't know how you've been sleeping in it."
"I haven't been sleeping in it. I've been sitting in it and staring at the ceiling and thinking about you. Those are very different activities."
I smile against his skin. Outside the last of the storm drifts away and the stars multiply until the window is full of them.
Tomorrow the world comes back. Tomorrow the road opens and the team arrives and the system walks through the door.
But tonight the stars are out and the fire is burning and the man whose heartbeat I’ll fall asleep to is here, holding me.
My eyes fall shut.
For the first time in a long time, I don't dream at all.