Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
“I need you” he says, his voice pure gravel.
“I need you more,” I pant. He fists his cock with one hand, and then he strokes his hands up my calves to my knees, lifting my legs over his shoulders like I’m weightless. The stretch is exquisite. He positions, pauses—eyes locked to mine.
“You’re mine,” he rasps.
“Yes, all yours.”
He thrusts slow but deep as my breath catches, stars scatter behind my closed lids. He stills, letting me adjust, then withdraws, sliding back in with greater force. Pleasure spirals hot. The table creaks.
Our pace finds a rhythm—urgent yet drawn-out, each roll measured so every nerve registers. My legs slide from his shoulders, and wrap around his waist for leverage, meeting each thrust. He groans my name like a confession.
Pressure builds, coils, luminous. His thumb circles where I need him most. My hips jerk. I teeter on the brink, and he thrusts harder—once, twice—and I tumble over, gasping his name, every muscle clenching tight. He follows with a guttural exhale, riding the wave, spilling into a praise-laced murmur against my ear.
We collapse together, sticky with sweat and paint, lungs heaving. He peppers kisses along my hairline, whispering, “You okay?”
“Beyond.” My laugh is shaky joy. “We ruined the table.”
He glances at cobalt fingerprints dotting the plank. “Battle scars.” He lifts his crimson-blue-smeared hand, studies it like a masterpiece. Then slides a fingertip across my cheek, leaving a streak. “Yours now.”
I cup the back of his neck, and pull him into a soft, lingering kiss tasting of satisfaction and promise. Outside the windows the last of dusk bleeds pink over distant peaks, humanity nowhere else in sight.
Later we’ll wipe the floors, decode new police intel, and plan a strategy. But right now the only strategy is entwining limbs, curling on the paint-spattered rug, and drifting into drowsy contentment while the wind sighs through pines and the world holds its breath just for us.
If this is what normal can look like—brushstrokes, breathless laughter, skin against skin—then I’ll fight gallery openings, bomb scares, and jealous tabloids for it. I’ll paint a thousand walls until they mirror the sky Sawyer just carved across my canvas skin.
And he? He’ll stand guard not just with weapons but with overwhelming love that feels as indelible as the stains now swirling purple on our chests.
19
Sawyer
The safe-house feels different now that we’re packing to leave—like it’s exhaling after holding its breath for forty-eight straight hours. Every plank and beam still hums with the memory of color-splashed kisses and skin-on-skin confessions, but practicalities elbow romance aside as flight cases and gun bags clutter the foyer.
I crouch beside a pelican case, securing the foam cradle that keeps our encrypted laptops from jostling. My mind drifts backward: Cam’s laughter echoing through the A-frame, the neon-blue streak she left on my ribs, slow mornings tangled in linen while fog rose out of the pines. Forty-eight hours off-grid and I’ve tasted a life I didn’t realize I craved. Now I have to shove us both back into the chessboard where someone’s still trying to knock her off the squares.
Footsteps crunch on gravel outside. Andersson’s voice booms: “Fuel topped, convoy green.” Rae chimes through comms inside, “Perimeter drones docking.” The house is orchestrating its own goodbye.
Cam appears at the top of the stairs with an armful of supplies—sketchbooks, a quart jar of brushes, tubes rubber-banded in a bouquet. She wears jean shorts, hiking boots, and my black BRAVO hoodie four sizes too big, sleeves shoved past paint-speckled elbows. A sadness flickers behind her smile.
“This place was starting to feel like a studio retreat,” she says, descending. “Back to reality.”
“Kingsley House won’t know what hit it,” I answer, closing the case. “Paint stains on every imported rug.”
“Gregory will faint.” She tries for levity but it lands shallow. She drops her supplies into a tote, then runs a thumb along a fresh bruise on her thigh—proof of yesterday’s “lesson” on disarming a wrist-grab that turned into something else entirely. A flush rises on her cheeks at the memory.
I slip closer, and hook a finger under her chin. “You okay?”
She eyes the door, voice low. “What if we go back and the note … or worse … happens again?”
“It might,” I admit, because false comfort is toxic. “But I’ll catch them.”
She searches my face. “And if I’m the bait again?”
“Then I’ll be the trap. We drew them out once. We'll finish it.” I stroke her jaw. “Walls and doors, remember?”
Her shoulders lower. She nods, leaning into a quick kiss that tastes of anxiety trimmed with trust.
Anderssen barges in, lugging a crate of shotgun shells. “Birds are singing, coffee’s brewed, and our prints are wiped. Let’s bounce before paparazzi sniff the ridge.”
“Kingsley House is buttoned?” I ask.
He sets the crate down. “Dean flew in a private security contractor to harden Level-I glass on every ground-floor pane. Extra K-9s sweep the exterior hourly. Hartley’s undercover unit will tail the perimeter for seventy-two hours. If the mole twitches, we’ll know.”