"Enough." The word is a command, not a request. He hauls me to my feet, his mouth crashing into mine before I've fully found my balance. When he breaks the kiss, he strips my shirt over my head in one motion.
The rest of my clothes disappear in seconds. His hands are efficient and impatient, unhooking my bra, shoving my jeans and underwear down my legs without ceremony. He lifts me like I weigh nothing and carries me to the bed, lowering me onto the mattress with controlled force before he finishes stripping off his boots and jeans and follows me down.
His weight settles over me, and the solid press of his body against mine is grounding in a way that nothing else has been all day. His mouth finds my throat, teeth scraping down the tendon, and his hand slides between my thighs. His fingers push through my folds and I arch into his palm, a moan breaking free that I couldn't have held back if I'd tried.
"Fuck, you're dripping." His voice is a low rasp against my ear. "You been this wet through the whole debrief? Sitting there thinking about me bending you over that island?"
"Yes." The admission costs nothing. It's the truth.
His fingers push inside me, two at once, rough and possessive, and I gasp at the stretch. He doesn't give me time to adjust. He curls them hard against the spot that makes my vision white out while his thumb grinds a steady circle against my clit. "You're going to come on my hand first. I want to feel you fall apart before I fuck you."
The orgasm builds fast, stoked by his fingers working me open and the weight of his body holding me against the mattress. His mouth closes over my nipple, tongue circling the peak before his teeth catch it and tug hard enough to blur the line between pleasure and pain. The dual sensation snaps the last thread ofcontrol I had left. I come with a cry that fills the room, my walls clenching tight around his fingers, my hips grinding against his hand as the waves crash through me.
He doesn't give me time to recover. Before the last tremor fades, he flips me onto my stomach and hauls my hips up, forcing my knees wide. One hand presses flat between my shoulder blades, pushing my chest into the mattress, and the other grips my hip with bruising force.
He drives into me from behind in one long, brutal stroke, and the angle is so deep it punches the breath from my lungs. A sound tears from my throat that's raw and desperate, all thought stripped away and my body reduced to pure sensation. His hand on my back pins me in place as he sets a pace that's relentless and perfect, each thrust bottoming out with enough force to shift me forward on the sheets.
"You're mine, Raven." His voice is rough against my spine, his breath ragged between the words.
His hand slides from my hip to my front, fingers finding my clit and stroking fast and sure. The combined assault of him filling me from behind while working my clit with that same focused precision is almost more than I can take. My fingers twist in the sheets until my knuckles go white, and the sounds coming out of me don't belong to any version of myself I'd recognize in daylight.
He pulls out without warning and flips me onto my back, and the ease with which he handles my weight is a reminder of exactly what kind of man I'm beneath. His hand hooks under my knee and pushes it toward my shoulder, opening me wider, and when he sinks back inside, the new angle is devastating. He braces above me, fully seated, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that is possessive and dark and entirely his.
"Don't look away." The command is quiet and absolute. "I want to watch you come again."
His hips drive forward, deep and brutal and exactly what I need. His thumb finds my clit again, circling with a rough precision that has me unraveling beneath him. The orgasm builds from low in my belly, tightening every muscle in sequence, and when it breaks it's savage. I cry out his name, my body clenching around him so hard that his whole frame locks rigid and a vein stands out along his neck.
He follows a few strokes later, burying himself to the hilt, his body shuddering against mine as he comes with a sound that's deep and guttural and stripped of every layer of control he's built around himself. The warmth of him spilling inside me is intimate and possessive, claiming me in a way that should scare me but doesn't. I wrap my legs around his hips and hold him there because I'm not ready for the separation. Not ready to stop feeling the weight of him pressing me into the mattress.
We stay like that for a long time, his forehead against mine, our breathing slowing together in the dark.
Later, tangled together under the sheets with his chest solid against my back and his arm heavy across my waist, I listen to his heartbeat steady against my spine and let myself have this. Except it isn't simple at all. Jesse Hollister is a dangerous man who's done things I'll probably never fully know, and I just let him take me apart with the same controlled precision he'd bring to dismantling an enemy position.
Tomorrow will bring the team and the mission and the growing list of people who want me dead. Tonight there's only the weight of his arm and the sound of his breathing and the quiet certainty that whatever exists between us isn't going away. I'm not sure whether that should comfort me or terrify me, and I'm too spent to work out the answer tonight.
Sleep comes easier than it has in weeks, and when it arrives, it's dreamless and deep.
I wake the next morning to Jesse already dressed, moving through the bedroom with the quiet efficiency of a man who's been rising before dawn his entire life. He clips the holster to his hip and catches me watching from the pillow.
"The team's assembling at seven." He leans down and presses his mouth to my temple, and the tenderness of it after last night's roughness makes my breath catch. "Cipher's staying with you. The rest of us are running surveillance on the cartel staging points."
I sit up and push hair out of my face. "What are you looking for?"
"Patterns. Shift changes, vehicle rotations, how they communicate with each other. If we're going to move on them, we need to understand their operational rhythm down to the minute." He straightens and checks the SIG in his holster with a practiced hand. "You and Cipher keep building the case. We need more than circumstantial evidence on Harlan. Financial records, communications, anything concrete that a good defense attorney can't explain away."
"Understood." I throw back the covers and reach for my clothes.
The team arrives in two vehicles just before seven. Rook and Torque come through the cabin door first, Torque carrying a hard case of equipment balanced on one shoulder. Hawk and Cipher follow, and Hawk positions himself near the window without being asked, scanning the tree line the way Rook scanned the quarry walls yesterday. Old habits, all of them.
Cipher is set up at the kitchen island within minutes, his tablet and laptop arranged in a configuration that tells me he's been working since well before sunrise. He glances up when I pour coffee, his expression alert and curious behind wire-rimmed glasses I didn't notice yesterday.
Jesse gathers Rook, Torque, and Hawk near the door. He gives assignments in clipped sentences, each man nodding as he absorbs his piece of the operation. No wasted language.
Jesse crosses to me, slides his hand around the back of my neck, and kisses me. It's slower than last night, more deliberate. The kind of kiss that stakes a claim in front of a room full of trained killers and doesn't apologize for it. When he pulls back, his thumb traces along the line of my jaw.
"Keep your head down." His eyes cut to Cipher, then back to me. The message underneath those four words doesn't need to be spoken aloud.
Then they're gone, the door closing behind them. Engines start outside, and the sound of tires on gravel fades into the morning quiet.
