Chapter 6 #2
I release her wrists long enough to strip her jeans and underwear down her legs in one pull.
She's bare on the quilt, flushed and breathing hard, watching me with those amber eyes that don't flinch from anything.
I unbuckle my belt, shove my jeans down, and her gaze drops.
Her lips part. The hunger on her face feeds something dark and territorial in my chest that I stop trying to fight.
I spread her thighs with my knee and settle between them, my weight pressing her into the mattress. She hooks one leg over my hip, tries to pull me closer, but I hold back. I let the head of my cock slide against her, through the wet heat of her, not inside. Not yet.
"Grant." Her voice is raw. Stripped of the armor she wears everywhere else. "Please."
"Please what?"
"You know what."
"I want to hear you say it."
Her jaw tightens. Defiance, even now. Even pinned beneath me with her body begging for something her mouth won't ask for. I drag the head of my cock over her clit, slow and deliberate, and watch her composure crack.
"I want you inside me." The words come out rough, almost angry. "Now. Right now."
I slide into her in one long stroke and her back bows off the mattress, a sound tearing out of her that hits the walls and comes back to both of us. She's tight and hot and drenched, and the feel of her body gripping me, pulling me deeper, makes my vision narrow to the two of us and nothing else.
I set the pace. Slow and deep, each thrust deliberate, bottoming out and holding there long enough to feel her pulse around me before pulling back.
The iron bed protests every movement, a steady metallic groan that keeps time with us.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, nails cutting crescents into the muscle, and the sting of it sharpens everything.
"Harder," she says.
This time I give it to her. I grip the iron headboard with one hand and drive into her with the full weight of my hips, and the bed slams the wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.
She wraps both legs around my waist and tilts her pelvis, takes me deeper, and the angle change pulls a groan out of me that I feel in my teeth.
I slide my free hand between us, find her clit, and work it with my thumb while I fuck her hard enough that Flint's old house protests every impact.
She's making sounds she can't control now, her head thrown back, throat exposed, and I lower my mouth to that throat and bite down on the tendon where her neck meets her shoulder.
Not enough to break skin. Enough to mark.
"Mine," I tell her, my mouth against the bite, my hips driving forward. "Everything they broke, everything they took from you. I'll burn them all down. Nobody touches you."
"Prove it," she breathes, and the challenge in her voice even now, even with me buried inside her and her body shaking apart, is what sends me over the edge of controlled into something else entirely.
I hook my arm under her knee, press it back toward her chest, and the new depth makes her cry out.
I can feel her getting close, the way her inner muscles flutter and tighten, the way her breathing fractures into sharp, desperate sounds that match the rhythm of my hips.
I keep my thumb on her clit, keep the pressure steady, and watch her face as the orgasm builds.
"Eyes open," I say.
She looks at me. And I watch her shatter.
The orgasm rolls through her in waves, her body clenching around my cock in rhythmic pulses while her nails rake down my back hard enough to draw blood.
She says my name like she's cursing me, like she's thanking me, like she doesn't know the difference anymore.
I last three more strokes. The orgasm tears through me, a full-body detonation that empties me into her while my face is buried against her neck and my arms are locked around her and the taste of her sweat is on my tongue.
For a few seconds the world goes white and quiet, and everything outside this room stops existing.
We stay tangled together while the aftershocks roll through, small tremors in her thighs, my cock pulsing inside her, both of us slick with sweat and breathing like we just went eight seconds on the highest ranked bull in the pen.
My hand rests on her ribcage, counting her heartbeats as they slow from sprinting to jogging to something that resembles calm.
Afterwards, we lie there catching our breath, tangled together on a bed that will never be level again.
"We need a plan," she says. "A real one. Not just riding bulls and hoping something shakes loose."
"I know."
"Merrick has resources. Money, connections, people willing to pull triggers for him. We have some photos and a theory."
"We have your photos of Vic with the syringe. What Flint told us about Thornton Livestock. The money trail. It's enough to get someone's attention."
"Whose? The local cops? A man like Merrick, who knows if they're in his pocket. Circuit officials? Same problem."
I stare at the ceiling. "Feds. FBI. Flint told me about a woman agent at the Albuquerque field office. Someone who looked into his son's death years ago. Told him to come back if he ever found a pattern."
"You think she'll take this seriously?"
"She will if we give her something solid. And what we've got is solid."
She rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand. The quilt pools around her waist, and in the dim light she looks like something out of a painting. Something worth fighting for. Something worth dying for.
I push that thought away. Hard.
"Tomorrow," I say. "We talk to Flint. Make copies of everything. Photos, financial records, all of it. We put it somewhere safe. Then we go to the Santa Fe event, and I ride, and you document, and we act like nothing's changed."
"While trying to take down the most powerful man on the circuit."
"That's the general idea."
She studies me for a long moment. "You know what happens when we do this. When we confront Merrick, or hand evidence to the feds, or go public."
"He comes for us."
"He comes for us harder than he already has. Tonight was a warning shot. Literally. The next one won't miss."
"Then we'd better be ready."
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I reach for it, expecting Colt or Kenna or one of a dozen people I've been ignoring.
Unknown number.
I open the message.
You have 24 hours to walk away. After that, what happened to Tyler Brennan will look like mercy.
Someone sent shooters after us three hours ago, and now a polite warning with a deadline.
Different parts of the operation. The muscle acts, and then the money tries to clean it up.
Which means whoever sent this text doesn't know about the shooting that failed, or doesn't care, or is playing a different game than the man with the gun.
I show Rainey. She reads it twice, and I watch the fear cross her face, followed by something harder. Something that looks like the expression I see in the mirror every morning.
Resolve.
"Well," she says. "Guess that answers the question of whether or not they know what we’re up to."
"Guess it does."
"You going to walk away?"
I set the phone down. Look at her. Pull her against me, skin to skin, her heartbeat against mine.
"Not a chance in hell."