CHAPTER 1 #4
He helped me out of my underwear, and then I was completely bare beneath him. He sat back on his heels, still in his jeans, and just looked at me for a long moment. I felt exposed and seen and wanted, all at once.
“What about you?” I asked. “You’re still dressed.”
“I’m committing this to memory.”
“Committing it faster.”
He laughed, the sound low and warm, and unbuttoned his jeans. I watched as he pushed them down, and then his boxers, and then he was as bare as I was, his cock thick and hard against his stomach. The sight of him made my mouth go dry.
“Come here,” I said.
He did, lowering himself between my thighs, and the first press of him against my core made us both groan. I reached between us, wrapping my hand around his length, and he shuddered.
“Beckett.”
“Yes?”
“I need to know if you—” He broke off, his forehead dropping to mine. “I need to know what you want.”
“I want you inside me,” I said, stroking him once, twice. “I want you to fuck me in this ridiculous panic room under your bar. I want you to make me forget everything except the shape of you.”
His breath shuddered out. “Okay,” he said, and then he was reaching down, positioning himself, and the head of his cock pressed against my entrance.
He pushed inside slowly, giving me time to adjust, and I felt every inch—the stretch of him, the heat, the relentless press of his body into mine. My hands gripped his shoulders, fingernails digging in, and he paused.
“Okay?” he asked.
“More than okay. Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He sank all the way in, and for a moment we just lay there, joined, breathing the same air. Then he moved, a slow roll of his hips, and I moaned into his mouth as he kissed me again.
The rhythm built gradually—not frantic, but deep, each thrust pushing me further into the mattress, each withdrawal making me chase his body with my own.
He was murmuring something against my throat, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Only the cadence of them, the way they matched the movement of his hips.
“Harder,” I gasped, and he obliged.
The sound of skin on skin filled the small room, mingling with the hum of the ventilation system and our ragged breathing. I hooked my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and he let out a sound that was almost a growl.
“You feel so good,” he said. “So fucking good.”
His hand found my clit, and I cried out. His thumb circled, pressing exactly where I needed him, and the sensation was like lightning. My whole body tensed, the pleasure building and building, no longer something I could control.
“Right there,” I said. “Don’t stop, right there, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He kept thrusting, kept circling, kept his mouth on my neck, and then the world went white and silent.
The orgasm hit me like a wave, like the moment of zero gravity in a dream of falling, like nothing I’d ever felt before.
My body arched off the bed, my hands scrabbling for purchase, and I heard myself cry out his name.
He followed me over the edge—I felt him stiffen, felt the heat of him spill inside me, heard the broken sound he made against my shoulder. We shuddered together, locked tight, and then he collapsed, his weight a welcome anchor.
For a long time we lay there, recovering. The ventilation system hummed. The fern watched. Leo’s heart beat against my chest, slowing, steadying.
“So,” I finally said, my voice hoarse. “That’s the panic room.”
He laughed, a spent and satisfied sound. “Told you it had amenities.”
“You did not mention these specific amenities.”
“I’m not a detail guy.”
He lifted his head, and the look he gave me was so tender it made my chest hurt. He kissed me once, soft and lingering, then pulled out and rolled onto his side, pulling me with him so we were face to face on the narrow bed.
“Stay,” he said. “Not just a few weeks. Stay as long as you need.”
I traced the scar through his eyebrow. “What if I need a long time?”
“Then stay a long time.”
“What if I never leave?”
He smiled, that real smile, the one that reached his eyes and made him look like the man who’d pulled me from a wrecked car and taught me how to muddle and waited until four in the morning to tell me the truth.
“Then I’ll learn to share the fern,” he said.
And somewhere above us, in the empty bar, a door slammed shut—a sound that should have been nothing but the building settling on its old bones, except that I saw the change in Leo’s face. The smile vanished. His whole body went still.
“What?” I asked.
“Someone’s in the bar.”
“The door’s locked. There’s a buzzer.”
“I know.” He was already reaching for his jeans, pulling them on with the efficiency of a man who’d spent two decades preparing for worst-case scenarios. “Stay here.”
“Like hell I’m staying here.” I yanked the quilt around me and started grabbing my own clothes. “Leo, what’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer. He just looked at the door, his jaw tight, and reached for something on the shelf above the bed—something I hadn’t noticed before, dark and heavy and unmistakable.
A gun.
“You keep a gun in your panic room,” I said.
“That’s the definition of a panic room.”
The footsteps above us were growing louder. And then the lights went out.