And he's looking back.
The moment stretches. One second, two. She could break eye contact. Close her eyes, turn her face, pretend this is only about us. That's what I want. What every possessive instinct in my body is screaming for.
I don't say a word.
Because my possessiveness—that consuming, all-or-nothing thing I've carried my whole life—doesn't break in that moment. It bends. I feel it happen and I don't fight it. She wants him too.And instead of making me want to kill him, it makes me want to give her what she can't ask for.
I thrust harder, and Hope's eyes flutter but don't close. She's still looking at him when I reach around to find her clit, still looking at him when I start rubbing circles that make her entire body shake.
"Come," I growl against her ear. "Let him see. Let him watch you fall apart on my cock."
"Jude—oh fuck—"
"Come, Hope. Now."
She screams.
The orgasm tears through her—her pussy clamping down on me hard enough that I see white, her whole body convulsing against me. Gage's name is on her lips alongside mine, tangled together, indistinguishable, and the sound of it pushes me over.
I come with my face buried in her neck, my hips slamming forward one final time as I empty myself inside her. The release blanks out everything, and somewhere in the middle of it I realize I've never come inside a woman before. Never trusted anyone enough for that.
But I trust her.
The thought hits me in the gut and I push it aside. Hold her instead, one arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her upright while we both shake.
The room goes quiet. No sounds except our ragged breathing and the low hum of the emergency strips and the distant crackle of Gage's radio. I pull out and she whimpers, her eyes glazed, her body still trembling. I turn her around to face me.
"Hey." I cup her face in my hands. "You're shaking."
"I know." Her laugh is breathless, unsteady. "I can't feel my legs."
"Good."
She smiles—that smile, the one that hasn't dimmed since week one—and reaches up to touch my chest.
The words I don't say sit in my chest. Not here. Not in a blackout in a day room where a guard just risked his career for us and tomorrow I might wake up sedated in a solitary cell. When I tell her, it'll be somewhere that matters.
"The power could come back any second," she says.
"I know."
I fix her skirt. She straightens her blouse. We move apart—her back to her chair, me back to mine. The clipboard is between us again. Her hands are still shaking when she picks up the pen.
"You knew. About the cameras."
"I know every system in this building. I know what the generator covers and what it doesn't." I lean back in my chair. "The cameras aren't on the priority list."
She looks at me—really looks, searching for a thing in my face she hasn't found yet. "You let me look at him. While we—you could have stopped me."
"I could have."
"Why didn't you?"
The question hangs. I don't have an answer that makes sense. Don't have the words for what bent inside me instead of breaking.
"Because you wanted to," I say. "And I'm learning that your wants matter more to me than they should."
Her eyes go bright with a thing I can't name. She rises on her toes and kisses me—soft, unhurried, nothing that matches the violence of what we just did—and when she pulls back her smile has steadied into a thing I haven't seen on her before. Certainty.
