Her lips are a breath from mine, and my hand descends the length of her leg. I pull her further down the bed, our noses brushing while I stay close.
The air around us has a pulse. My blood pumping with each heavy beat, and our eyes dive deeper. Grasping something crucial, something critical that neither of us is saying yet.
A feeling.
An emotion, and I shouldn’t touch it. Shouldn’t near it.
Bearing my weight on my forearm, I hover over Jane. My large frame shielding her, our legs woven, our lips skimming like a hot breath over the surface of a steaming lake.
Her small hands roam my cut muscles, then linger on my ass.
I whisper against her lips, “My cock isn’t going in your pussy yet, Jane.”
Her breath shallows. “Yes…not yet.” But our carnal eyes want deeper physically. I tuck her against my build, and I sink my shoulders back into the pink duvet. My head on the pillow.
She nestles into the crook of my arm while I hold her. Her warm freckled cheek on my chest, she eyes the radio on my waistband and the cord that runs to my earpiece.
Comms are still on. An SFA argument is still in my ear, regular background noise in my life. Just like camera clicking and paparazzi screaming are hers. “I can’t turn off comms until I get word about Nate,” I explain to Jane.
Her lips rise, but just for a moment. “Do you think of the night often…the one where Farrow caught…” She takes a measured breath and looks up at me, resting her chin on her arm. Which is across my chest. Her voice softens to a whisper. “Where he caught Nate destroying Moffy’s room?”
Blood.
There was blood everywhere. I can still fucking see Farrow and Nate covered in it. Animal blood.
“Yeah. I think about it.” My eyes sear, but I have trouble letting emotion through. “The worst nights of my life tend to stick around.” I think she needs me to go first. I see this look in her eye like she’s afraid.
But she wants to talk about Nate, and I’d rather crawl through barbed wire first and push it out of the way.
So I don’t ask her anything yet. I keep my arms wrapped around her shoulders and lower back. Waiting for her next question.
She searches my gaze. “What was the worst part about it for you?”
“Having to leave with security once the house was secured. Not being able to be with you after.” I breathe a constricted breath, my nose flaring, and I know she can feel my muscles clenching. “But I couldn’t be with you like that.”
She knows why.
Her eyes redden more. “Just knowing…” She swallows. “Knowing that you wanted to be next to me, that means a great deal.”
I nod and brush her damp hair off her cheek, strands already frizzing.
“It’s not what I thought you were going to say,” she admits. “I thought the worst part would be confronting Nate.”
“It’s up there.” I blink back the image. Blood. Farrow. Nate unconscious on the fucking floor. I train my focus on Jane, and I say what I’m thinking, “I should’ve ripped his head off his neck.”
But that night was more complicated than my anger, her hurt or his hatred.
“What stopped you?” she murmurs.
I wish I could say morality . But outside of the civilian world, morality means something else and I have blood on my hands from war.
“Protocol,” I answer. “The target was already neutralized.” I pause. “But I’d be lying to say it didn’t cross my mind. I was left alone in the attic with him.”
I remember how Farrow and Maximoff went to go shower. To wash off the blood. And Farrow needed to leave the scene. He was shaking with adrenaline, and he knew it.
It was just me and an unresponsive Nate. “Quinn knocked on the door, and I wouldn’t let him in.” I hold her gaze. “I didn’t want any of the men to see the scene until it was cleaned. That was my focus.”
She opens her mouth, tentative to ask something else. “Is it so bad to say that I don’t think I want to know exactly what it looked like?”
She never saw the room.
I wouldn’t let her.
“No. I don’t want to paint the picture for you,” I tell her.
Jane exhales deeper, seeing that we’re on the same page.
Police took photos, cuffed Nate, and I knew Jane wouldn’t want more strangers walking through her house. Not that night. So no one called a cleaning company.
I scrubbed the floorboards while Moffy was with Jane. Farrow came in and helped me.
In dead silence we cleaned the attic room and threw out the shredded mattress. Hauled in a new one that Quinn went out and bought.
So it looked like nothing ever happened.
It was our responsibility, and we’d do it all over again. In a heartbeat.
Jane sits up to see me better, and I follow suit, my shoulders against the headboard. My arm stays around her waist.
“I think about that night often too.” She rubs her lips together, her bloodshot eyes on me, and she’s close enough where her fingers trace the gold chain around my neck.
I have to ask her. “What was the worst part?”
Her eyes immediately flood. “The feeling. So painfully invasive. The break-in tonight reminded me of it.” She motions to her body. “My skin crawling and an eeriness lingering around me, and the only thing that seems to make me feel better are people I love.”
She pauses on that.
And then speaks even faster. “And he wasn’t just a stranger. He was someone I trusted with everything in me, and I let him in. I let him in. ” Her face twists in pain, chin trembling—tears dripping down her cheeks.
Instantly, I hug her against my body. Strongly. Protecting this girl with everything inside of me, giving her all that I fucking have.
My hand on the back of her head, she cries into my chest, “I had sex with him.” Her whole body shudders in a sob. “I never told anyone, the night where he came over—we had sex before he destroyed Moffy’s room.”
Something wrenches my stomach. Pain.
Rage.
Guilt.
And what I feel for her—it’s suffocating. I press a kiss to her temple, and I whisper, “He’s never going to hurt you again.”
There is no way in hell I’ll ever let him near her.
* * *
; I finally unclip my radio. Just got word that Nate doesn’t have a substantial alibi. I’ve been ordered to keep him on my radar. Regardless if he was a part of tonight’s break-in or not, he’ll always be in my line of sight.
Jane and I are quiet in the next hour. We have to be.
Wax-dripping candles lit on the vanity, firelight flickering. Our shadows dance along the walls while our hands travel. While we undress one another, while our lips skim, and I have her bare and soaked beneath me.
Coated in sweat, I support my weight on my forearm, my other hand between her legs—and I kiss her strongly, each one welding our bodies. Our tongues tangling, and I feel her explore my build like we’re on day one.
All heat. All visceral desire torching us in the night.
My muscles tighten as she grinds up into me. Our movements are somehow slow and scorching but combustible and urgent. I pulse my fingers inside her tight warmth.
Pleasure tremors her limbs, and she tries to shelter a gasp. “Oh…God. ”
“Softer,” I whisper against her lips. My cock is begging to fill Jane. Throbbing. Blood blistering.
She bucks upward again.
Fuck. I stifle a guttural groan. Gritting down. My muscles tighten while her heat clenches. She’s been riding more than one orgasm to shore, and I need in.
I break apart her legs even more. Spreading her open so I can thrust inside her pussy. Her head falls back in a whimper. “Yes .” She grips my hair with eager fingers.
I run my hand along the softness of her thigh, and we stare deeper, deeper and my mouth moves to her ear.
“Jane,” I breathe. “I’m going to push into you. Tell me if you’re not ready.”
“I’m ready, please. Please ,” she pants, squirming beneath me in want.
I grip my rock-hard erection, veins bulged with hot need. We keep our eyes on each other as I carefully slide into her heat. Watching her reaction.
Her lips break apart in a short gasp. She clutches my ass with two hands—and I begin to add friction. Rocking between her legs, the pressure around my cock is fucking heaven on Earth.