I grip him so hard he makes a sound I've never heard from him, raw and broken, and his hips stutter, and he buries himself deep and holds there as he comes, his release hot inside me, his mouth pressed hard against the curve of my neck and his breath tearing out of him in harsh, shaking exhales that I feel in my collarbones.
We stay locked together while the aftershocks pulse through us both, his body settling over me in increments as his arms give out, and I take it. I take all of it. The heaviness of him is the most grounded I have felt in a decade, and I hold him inside me until his breathing slows and the tremors in his muscles quiet into stillness.
He rolls to the side and takes me with him, keeping us connected, and the shift draws a soft sound from both of us. My head settles against his chest where his heartbeat is still running fast, and I listen to it slow, count the beats as they drop from urgency into steadiness, and the slowing feels like the shape of everything that has changed between us.
The quiet that follows holds nothing that needs to be said. We lie tangled together in the lamplight, his arm around mywaist, my skin still flushed and damp against his, the scent of sex and sweat and his skin filling the recycled air of the mountain. Beyond the concrete walls, Montana's sky blazes with stars I have never seen from London.
"Don't let me wake up and find you gone," I whisper.
Roman's arm tightens around me. His mouth presses against my hair, and the rumble of his voice moves through his chest and into mine.
"Never again, Vix. Never again."
The quiet stretches, and I listen to him breathe, and the words build in my chest the way intelligence builds before a briefing, assembling themselves from pieces I have been collecting since London. Since before London. Since a bar in Istanbul where a man ordered raki and pretended to enjoy it and I fell without knowing I was falling.
"I love you." The words come out quieter than I intend, pressed into his chest where his heartbeat catches them. "I have been trying not to for a very long time, and I am done trying."
Roman goes still beneath me. His breathing changes, a single uneven exhale that tells me more than any words he could assemble. His arm tightens, pulling me closer, and his lips press against the top of my head and stay there for a long moment.
"Say it again," he says. His voice is rough.
"No. Once is enough. You're an intelligence operative. You can remember one sentence."
The laugh that moves through his chest is low and real and shakes us both, and I smile against his skin because making Roman Frost laugh in bed is an achievement I intend to repeat.
The silence that follows is different from the ones that came before. Lighter. The kind of silence that belongs to people who have said the hard thing and survived it.
"We should talk to Kane about quarters," I say.
Roman's hand pauses on my back. "Quarters."
"This bed is adequate for sleeping. It is not adequate for what we just did, and I have no intention of stopping. Kane has larger rooms available in the residential section. I've seen the facility schematics."
"You've already reviewed the schematics."
"I review everything. It's a professional habit."
He shifts beneath me, and I can hear the smile in his voice even without seeing his face. "You want to move in with me, Vix?"
"I want a bed that doesn't put my shoulder against the wall when you decide to be ambitious. The cohabitation is a secondary benefit."
"Secondary."
"Tertiary, at best."
His chest shakes with another silent laugh, and his hand resumes its path along my spine. "I'll talk to Kane in the morning."
"I'll talk to Kane. You'll agree with whatever I've already arranged."
"And there it is." His mouth finds my hair again. "The Victoria Cross negotiation style. Inform the other party of the outcome and let them believe they had input."
"It's served me well for decades."
"It has," he agrees. "I'll take the larger bed and the woman who comes with it."
I close my eyes and let the mountain hold us both, and for the first time since a dead man walked back into my life and made the rubble worth rebuilding, the silence is the first in a decade that asks nothing of me.
DAR
