The thick, hot mess of my release immediately began to spill out, running down the inside of his thighs. I spread him wider with my thumbs, watching it flow. His entrance was swollen, reddened, unmistakably used. I pressed gently, and more of my release leaked out.
It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
"Stop." Lorenzo squirmed away. "We need to go back inside before one of us catches our death out in this rain."
I helped him pull his jeans back on, my hands gentler now. He winced as the denim slid over sensitive skin. I tucked myself away, and we stumbled toward the cabin door together, both of us unsteady on our feet.
Inside, the silence felt deafening after the downpour.
Jasper stood by the door, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He took one look at us—soaked, covered in mud and blood, reeking of sex—and snorted.
He didn't say a word. Just grabbed two towels from the stack beside him and threw them at our heads. Then he turned, walked to his makeshift desk in the corner, and sat down in front of his laptop. Headphones went on. A moment later, industrial music blared loud enough that I could hear the distorted beats even from across the room.
Water dripped from our clothes onto the floor. Lorenzo turned to face me, towel hanging forgotten in his grip. The split in his lip had opened again, blood mixing with rainwater on his chin.
"So," he said, that familiar dangerous smile creeping back despite how wrecked he looked. "Was that everything you fantasized about?"
I reached out and cupped his jaw, careful of the injury. "That was better than any fantasy."
His smile widened, but I could see the tremor in his hands as he lifted the towel to wipe his face. "Good. Because I want to do it again."
"You're injured," I reminded him, using my own towel on my hair.
"I'm always injured," he said, though his fingers shook where they gripped the damp fabric. "Comes with the job. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop living."
Living.
The word settled into my chest like a second heartbeat. Lorenzo didn't mean surviving. He meant this—rain and mud and blood and fucking against walls in storms. He meant taking what he wanted when he wanted it, consequences be damned. He meant choosing to feel everything, even when it hurt, especially when it hurt.
And I realized with sudden, terrifying clarity: that was what we'd have. Not peace. Not safety. Not the quiet domesticity I'd once imagined a life with someone might look like.
Just living. Raw and messy and probably short, stolen in moments between missions and injuries and all the violence that defined us both.
And I wanted it. God help me, I wanted every brutal, beautiful moment of it.
Alaska in October meanteighteen hours of darkness. Good for killing, bad for staying sane. The last time I'd been here, I'd been in and out before the bodies went cold. This time I'd have to be careful not to burn the whole facility down with everyone inside.
"Final altitude check, preparing for jump in three minutes," the pilot shouted over the deafening roar of the tiny prop plane's engine. Diego had somehow convinced an old contact to fly us in covertly. No flight plan, no radio contact, high enough to avoid conventional radar. "Oxygen check!"
Northern Alaska lay dark and vast below us, the landscape spread out like a void. Somewhere in that frozen wilderness was the Project Icarus facility.
I double-checked my oxygen mask and the seal on my pressure suit. The thin air at thirty thousand feet would kill us in minutes without it. Free fall had a way of narrowing your priorities. Save those kids. Everything else was noise.
"This is my favorite part!" I shouted to Rafael, who was gripping the metal bench tightly. "First HALO jump?"
"Is this really necessary?" he yelled back, eyeing the open door. The wind whipped through the cabin, freezing cold at this altitude despite our pressure suits and thermal layers. "Couldn't we have driven?"
Diego laughed, the sound barely audible over the engine and through his own oxygen mask. "Where's your sense of adventure, Padre?"
Across from us, Jasper checked his oxygen levels like we were waiting for a bus.
"He's done this a hundred times," Diego called, catching my questioning glance at Jasper. "My man loves jumping almost as much as he hates talking."
Jasper rolled his eyes but didn't deign to respond. Instead, he simply checked his altimeter and held up two fingers. Two minutes to drop.
Diego cleared his throat, patting his pressure suit. He mimicked holding an invisible microphone, his voice muffled but still audible through his oxygen mask.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," Diego announced, mimicking the soothing tones of a commercial airline pilot.
