"They're searching the island?"
"Yes. But not thoroughly. With Salvatore Ramunno dead they are probably just going through the motions while the family recalibrates."
She's quiet for a moment. Then, muffled, "I have notes on their timing."
The laugh comes out of me before I know it exists, one low breath of it, unpracticed, and I feel her smile against my skin, and this is what she does. Ten minutes after torchlight on the floor she is dragging me back up into the world of the living, because she refuses to leave anyone behind in the dark, even me.
"The boat is coming," I say into her hair. "We hold. Moving now puts us on open roads with search teams on them. This house has held for two days. It holds for two more."
She pulls back enough to look up at me. There is just enough moonlight through the slat to find her eyes with. "Before we were interrupted," she says, "I told you, I was sure. I want it noted that the interruption changes nothing."
"So noted." I tuck the loose hair back behind her ear.
The kiss is tentative at first, experimental, she is testing the waters after a storm.
My body reacts immediately, remembering last night. Every inch of me tightens with the memory of her above me, around me, the way she took what she wanted and gave everything back without hesitation. The interruption should have killed the heat. It hasn’t. If anything, the threat outside has sharpened it, turned it into something edged and necessary.
I cup the back of her neck, angling her mouth to mine, and take control. Slow at first, matching her caution, letting her feel that I’m steady. Then deeper. Hungrier. My tongue slides against hers and she makes that small broken sound again, the one that undoes every wall I’ve spent two decades reinforcing. Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer even though there’s no space left between us.
“Iris,” I rasp against her lips.
She doesn’t answer with words. She answers by pressing her body flush to mine, hips rolling once in a slow grind against my cock that drags a groan out of my throat. My hands slide down her back, under the hem of the oversized T-shirt she’s wearing, and find bare skin. Warm. Soft. Alive. The contrast with the cool night air seeping through the shutters makes her shiver, and I pull her tighter to me, chasing the tremor with my palms.
The bedroll is only steps away. I guide her backward without breaking the kiss, one careful step, then another, until the backs of her heels hit the edge. She sits, then lies back, tugging me down with her. I brace my weight on my forearms, careful of the fresh scar pulling at my side, but she doesn’t let me hover. Her legs part and wrap around my hips, heels digging into the backs of my thighs, anchoring me exactly where I want to be.
“You’re still healing,” she whispers, even as her hands slip under my shirt and trace the ridges of muscle along my abdomen.
“I’m healed enough.” The words come out rough. Truth and need tangled together. I kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw, the sensitive spot beneath her ear that makes her arch. “I need to feel you again. All of you.”
She nods, and helps me strip the shirt over her head. Moonlight through the shutter slat paints silver across her breasts, the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips. I’ve seen her in every state now; terrified, fierce, exhausted, laughing. But this is the version that brands itself into me. Wanting. Trusting.
I mouth my way down her body the way I did before, slower this time because the danger outside has reminded me how fragile every second is. I linger at her breasts until her breathing turns ragged, then lower, until I’m settled between her thighs, pulling off the boxers she took from the packet this morning. The taste of her floods my senses. She’s already wet, slick from earlier and from the fresh wave of arousal the kiss stirred. I lick into her slowly, learning every hitch of her breath, every roll of her hips. When I slide two fingers inside her she clenches around them with a soft moan, her hands fisting in my hair.
“Yakob—please—”
I give her what she asks for. I curl my fingers, find the spot that makes her thighs tremble, and work her with my tongue until she comes apart under me. Sharp, sudden, her whole body bowing off the bed roll. I stay with her through it, gentling her down, then crawl back up her body and kiss her so she can taste herself on my tongue.
Her hands are already at my waistband, shoving my boxers down. I kick them off and settle between her legs again, the headof my cock sliding through her folds. She’s so warm. So ready. I notch myself at her entrance and pause.
“Look at me,” I say.
Her eyes open, green even in the near-dark, shining with the same certainty that undid me the first time.
I push inside her in one long, steady stroke.
The sound she makes is pure relief and pleasure. I swallow it with another kiss and start to move in deep, measured thrusts that drag against every sensitive place inside her. She meets me stroke for stroke, nails digging into my shoulders, legs locked around my waist. The world outside the shutters might still be hunting us, but in here, there is only this. Only her.
I lose myself in the rhythm. In the way her breath catches every time I bottom out. In the slick heat of her body gripping me tighter with every thrust. My name falls from her lips like a prayer and a plea at once, and I chase the sound, chasing the edge that’s already building at the base of my spine.
“Come with me,” I growl against her throat. “Iris. Let me feel you milk me.”
She dips her hips, changing the angle to what she needs. Her body seizes around me, pulsing, pulling me deeper, and I follow her over with a low groan, burying myself to the hilt as the release crashes through me. I spill inside her in heavy pulses, hips stuttering, arms shaking with the effort of holding myself above her. Fractured sounds of surprise escaping my throat.
I don’t move from her, even after m cock stops throbbing and twitching. We stay locked together, breathing hard, hearts hammering against each other. I brush damp strands of hair from her face and kiss her softly, until the urgency bleeds into something quieter. Something that feels dangerously like permanence.
I roll to the side, my cock still hard, and pull her against me so she’s tucked against my chest. My hand strokes down her belly in slow passes. The wound in my side aches faintly, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in my chest.
“Two days,” I murmur into her hair.
