"You're mine, Raven." The words are pressed into her skin between strokes that have her gasping. "Every part of you. And I am yours. No expiration."
I pull out and flip her over, and the sound of protest she makes turns into a moan when I pull her hips up and drive back into her from behind. The angle is devastating, deeper, tighter, and my hand grips a fistful of her hair and pulls her head back just enough to bare her throat.
"Now." My voice is ragged against her ear, my hips pounding forward, my thumb working her clit. "Come for me, Raven. Right now. I want to feel you fall apart."
She shatters with a scream she buries in the pillow, her whole body seizing around me, her pussy clenching so hard it borders on pain.
Wave after wave rolls through her, and I fuck her through every one of them, relentless, my grip on her hair anchoring us both while her body wrings everything from mine.
"I love you." The words tear out of me as I bury myself to the hilt and let go, spilling inside her with a groan that comes from the deepest part of me, my hips stuttering against her as the release crashes through me.
My arm wraps around her waist and I pull her back against my chest, still buried inside her, still pulsing, my face pressed into the curve of her neck while my breathing comes in harsh, ragged pulls.
We collapse onto the mattress together, sweat-slicked and breathing hard. I stay inside her because I'm not ready for the separation and neither is she, her hand reaching back to grip my hip and hold me in place.
My arm tightens around her waist, my palm flat against her stomach, and I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my chest.
After a long time, I pull out carefully and turn her to face me. Her eyes carry something I've never seen in them before, soft underneath the heat, open in a way that has nothing to do with her body and everything to do with the walls she just let fall. Her mouth curves into something that isn't quite a smile but warms a part of me I thought went cold a long time ago.
"That was different," she says quietly.
"Yes." I push a strand of hair behind her ear. "It was."
"The dirty talk stayed, though." Her mouth twitches.
"The dirty talk is non-negotiable."
She laughs, low and real and exhausted, and the sound of it settles into my bones like something I've been starving for. She rolls into me, her head on my chest, her leg thrown over mine, and the sunlight through the plaid curtains turns her hair to flame.
"Tomorrow," she murmurs against my chest.
Tomorrow. The debriefs, the statements, the federal grind. Carmichael will want formal depositions and the Bureau will want Raven's testimony and the long work of dismantling what Harlan and Alvarez built will begin in earnest.
But today, Raven is in my bed and in my life. She chose this cabin, this land, this dangerous man who killed his own father and spent a decade in shadows to keep her safe. She chose me with her eyes wide open, knowing exactly what I am and loving me anyway.
For the first time since I stood on that tarmac and watched Carmichael's plane carry her into the dark, the weight in my chest is gone.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Knox's name again. The second time since we got back, which means whatever is happening at Devil's Acre isn't getting better.
She locked herself in the bathroom for an hour. When she came out her knuckles were bleeding. She'd been hitting the tile wall.
I stare at the message. Knox doesn't text about women. Knox doesn't text about feelings. My brother fights, drinks, and runs his operation with the brutal efficiency of a man who turned his father's violent legacy into the only currency he understands. The fact that he's sending me updates about a woman he supposedly doesn't care about tells me everything his words don't.
What do you need?
I type back.
I don't know.
Then, after a long pause:
She won't eat. She won't talk. She keeps looking at the door like something's going to come through it. Then stand between her and the door. I'm already there.
I set the phone face down and pull Raven closer. She murmurs something against my chest that sounds like my name, already drifting, and the ease of it, the way she lets go without a fight, is worth more than everything I've traded to get here.
Outside the cabin, the Hill Country stretches in every direction, green and gold and patient the way Texas always is, waiting for whatever comes next. The road to Fredericksburg runs south through the cedar breaks, past the Blue Fork Ranch where it all began, past Devil's Acre where my brother is standing guard over a woman who might just destroy him.
Raven's breathing evens out, slow and deep. Her hand rests over my heart, and the last thing I see before I close my eyes is the light catching the copper in her hair.
