Page 73 of Honeyfires

So I let her. I could never deny her a thing. Never.

Vera kissed her way down my chest, pausing at the phoenix, at Lucas and Santi's initials, pressing her lips to each one like an acknowledgment. Like honoring them by honoring me. When she finally reached where I needed her, I stopped thinking in sentences entirely. She was careful and focused, licking and sucking my clit utterly without hesitation, and when I came it was with her name on my lips and both hands in her golden hair and the knowledge that I was completely, irreversibly hers.

Afterward we lay tangled in her silky purple sheets, the candles burned nearly to stubs, the cake still on the nightstand looking lopsided and in desperate need of refrigeration.

"We should probably address the fire hazard," I said.

"You're the firefighter," she said, her cheek pressing a smile against my chest. "You handle it."

I put away the cake in the fridge in the kitchen and then blew out the remaining candles from bed, which took three attempts and moderate difficulty, and Vera applauded each attempt with genuine enthusiasm, including the failed ones.

"Thank you," I said, once the room was lit only by the ambient desert dark.

"For the applause? You're welcome."

"For this. For making it safe to say what needed saying."

She was quiet for a moment, her fingers resting over Lucas and Santi's initials like she'd decided that was where her hand lived now.

"Thank you for saying it," she said. "And for choosing me."

"Always," I said. "I'll always choose you, baby."

She hummed, already drifting toward sleep, her breath beginning to even out against my collarbone. I held her and looked at the ceiling and thought about all the roads that had led here—the hallway, the diner, the library, the station, the cookie afternoon, the gear bag note—and how none of them had felt, in the moment, like they were leading anywhere specific. Just one thing, and then the next, and then the next, and then… this.

I'd been to war. I'd rappelled into active wildfires that could've killed me. I'd made calls that kept people alive and lived with the ones that didn't.

But saying those three words was the bravest thing I'd ever done.

And hearing them back had made every painful thing that had ever happened to me completely and utterly worth it.

Because if it meant I got Vera in the end? I'd do it all again. A thousand times.

She Had a Whole Speech Prepared, With Three Austen References

Chapter Thirteen

I leaned against the doorframe of my kitchen, a coffee mug warming my hand, watching Vera move around the small space like she'd always belonged there.

She wore one of my old faded Army t-shirts that had survived two tours and approximately four hundred washes, and nothing else, her bare legs catching the morning light as she hummed while scrambling eggs. Her hair was still a beautiful disaster from sleep and from my hands the night before, and she was completely at ease about all of it, moving through my kitchen like she'd been doing it for years.

I had been awake for eleven minutes. I was already completely gone.

We'd been playing house for months, both of us pretending we didn't want to make it real. Her toothbrush next to mine from nearly the very start. Her dresses in my closet between my uniforms. Her books conquering my nightstand like a literary invasive species.

It had been two weeks since we'd first said I love you out loud, and approximately two weeks since I'd started running the math on why we were paying for two apartments.

"Move in with me," I said.

The spatula stopped moving. Vera turned slowly, the way you turned when you weren't certain you'd heard correctly and didn't want to react to the wrong thing.

"What?"

"Move in with me. Or I'll move in with you. Whatever. I genuinely don't care which. I just want to stop pretending home isn't already wherever you are."

She stared at me. "Petra Alves."

"We're together every night anyway. Your shampoo is in my shower. I know where you keep your spare glasses. I've started buying the good vanilla extract because you actually use it." I crossed to her, took the spatula out of her hand, set it down, and held both of hers. "I love you. You love me. Why are we paying for two of everything?"