"Grant. God. Right there."
I stay right there. Give her exactly what she asked for, steady and unhurried, until her thighs lock around my head and her back bows and she comes against my mouth with her fingers twisted in my hair and my name spilling out of her like a prayer she didn't mean to say out loud.
I work her through it, slowing but not stopping, letting the aftershocks roll through her body while she catches her breath. Then I kiss my way back up, tasting her skin at every stop, the salt of sweat on her stomach, the flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.
She pulls me up the rest of the way, guides me between her legs. I press against her entrance and pause, forehead against hers, the head of my cock nudging into her slick heat.
"Stay with me," she whispers. "Right here. Don't go to Las Cruces yet. Stay with me."
"I'm here."
I slide into her, and the slow push takes my breath apart. She's still swollen and sensitive from the orgasm, and every inchof the entry is tight, wet friction that I feel in my spine, in my chest, in the backs of my eyes. She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me deeper, and the sound she makes when I bottom out is quiet and raw and meant only for this room.
I move in her slowly. Long, deliberate strokes that let me feel every ripple of her body around mine. No urgency yet. Just the patient rhythm of two people trying to memorize each other with their bodies because words aren't enough and time is running out.
Her legs wrap around my waist. Her hips tilt to meet each stroke, and the angle shifts, and she gasps and clutches my shoulders and I know I've found the place inside her that makes her forget how to breathe. I stay there. Roll my hips against that spot while my mouth finds hers, kissing her deep and slow while the pressure builds between us like a storm neither of us can outrun.
The pace changes on its own. Neither of us decides it. One stroke comes harder than the last, and she answers it, and then we're moving faster, her nails cutting into my back, my hand gripping the iron headboard for leverage. The bed creaks and shifts beneath us, and her breathing goes ragged, and I can feel her tightening around me again, the flutter and clench that means she's close.
"Look at me," she says, echoing my words back, and her hands cradle my face, holding me in place so I can't turn away.
I look at her. She looks at me. And I watch her come apart with her eyes open, her orgasm rippling through her body while I'm inside her, while I'm watching, while there's nowhere for either of us to hide. Her lips part and her eyes go bright with tears she won't let fall and she says my name once, quiet, like she's writing it down somewhere permanent.
I follow her. The orgasm pulls through me slow and devastating, nothing like the sharp detonation of the othertimes, more like being taken apart one piece at a time and set down gently. I empty into her with my face pressed against her neck and her heartbeat against my chest and the taste of her still on my tongue.
Afterwards, she lies against my chest and traces patterns on my skin with her fingertip. I play with her hair, winding auburn strands around my fingers and letting them slide free.
"You've got your copy of everything," I say. "Flint's got his. Vic's confession is on my phone. If something goes wrong, you and Flint take it to Torres at the FBI field office in Albuquerque. Public corruption unit. She's expecting it."
"Stop briefing me like a soldier."
"You are a soldier. You've been one since the night you showed up behind the chutes."
"I showed up because I had a good angle on the bull pens."
"You showed up because you don't know how to walk away from a story. Same reason you're not walking away from me."
She tilts her head up. Looks at me. "You're the best story I've ever told, Grant Corbin. Don't you dare give me a bad ending."
I kiss the top of her head and hold her tighter and don't make promises I might not be able to keep.
Outside, the desert wind scratches sand against the window. Somewhere on the highway, a truck downshifts, the engine note dropping like a groan. The world keeps moving. It doesn't care about two people wrapped around each other in room nine of the Desert Rose, trading their bodies for borrowed time.
9
Flint's truck pulls into the Desert Rose parking lot at dawn, and Rainey doesn't cry, which is worse than if she did.
She's been awake for an hour, sitting on the edge of the motel bed with her camera bag packed and the backpack that holds copies of everything we've gathered zipped tight against her knees. I called Flint last night, told him the plan, and the old man drove three hours south without a single complaint. Just said he'd be there by sunrise.
Rainey walks out to meet him, and I follow. The desert sky is going from black to grey, the air still cool enough to raise goosebumps. She stands in the parking lot with dust on her boots and shadows under her eyes, looking at me like she's developing a photograph in her mind. Fixing the image. Burning it permanent.
"Call me when it's done," she says.
"First thing."
"I mean it, Grant. The second you're off that bull and breathing, you call me."
"I will."
