I said, “Nothing’s wrong. I just—” but I didn’t finish.
I didn’t need to.
He let go of my throat, ran the hand down to my collarbone, then lower, until his palm was flat against my chest, right over the heart. He pressed, not enough to hurt, but enough to let me feel the difference between my own pulse and his.
He said, “You can go back to the other room, if you want. You can go anywhere you want.”
I shook my head. “I want to stay here.”
“Just sleep?”
“If you want,” I said, and I meant it. “But I think we both know that’s not what I came here for.”
He considered that, his jaw working. “If we do this,” he said, “there’s no going back.”
I swallowed, the motion pushing his palm up and down a millimeter. “What does that mean?”
“It means you stay,” he said. “It means when you get scared, you talk to me instead of running. It means Emilio grows up with two parents, not one. It means you’re not a guest here anymore. It means you’re mine.”
He said it with a gravity that left no room for debate, and the worst part was, I wanted it. I wanted all of it. The permanence, the responsibility, the consequence.
I nodded. “Okay,” I said.
He kept his hand on my chest for a second longer, feeling the thrum of my heart. Then, in a motion that was almost gentle, he reached down and tugged at the hem of my sleep shirt.
I let him.
He pulled it up, slow, and I arched my back to help, the fabric catching for a second at the small of my back before sliding free. The cold hit my skin all at once, but I didn’t care. I watched him watching me, his gaze moving over my ribs, my shoulder, the pale hollow at the base of my throat.
He took it all in, deliberate, as if he was learning a map he might have to redraw from memory later.
Then he leaned in, and kissed me.
It was not the kind of kiss that asked for permission. It was the kind that stripped you of every excuse, every defense. I let my mouth fall open, let him in, let the rest of me follow.
He tasted like bitter coffee and salt, and underneath that, something unfamiliar and wild. His hand was at my neck again, this time holding me in place, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw.
I wrapped my arms around his back, digging my fingers into the muscle just above his spine. He was so much bigger than me, but the weight felt good, like armor.
We stayed like that, fused together, until I forgot where the sheets ended and our skin began.
I didn’t think about the ranch, or the baby, or the legal paperwork gathering dust on the kitchen counter. I thought only of this: the certainty of his body, the way my own desire tangled up with it, impossible to separate.
He broke the kiss first, but only to look at me again, checking for something. I must have given him what he wanted, because he smiled—a real one, all teeth and crooked at the corner.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded, breathless.
And he went back to the hem of my shirt, and kept going.
He peeled the shirt over my head, slow enough that I felt every inch of it drag across my skin. My hair was probably a disaster, but he didn’t seem to care; his hands went straight to my shoulders, broad fingers digging into the muscle like he was checking for damage.
I expected him to kiss me again, but instead he paused, taking a long look, his eyes heavy-lidded and so dark in the lamplight they bordered on black.
Then he set both hands on my chest, the weight and span of them a full bracket from shoulder to shoulder, and just held me there.
It should have been awkward, being naked from the waist up while the man beside you stared at your body like a problem to be solved. But Hooper didn’t give awkward room to live. He made the moment feel like an examination, an inventory, the kind of attention that had a purpose beyond wanting.
