Page 64 of Cipher

“I warned you what would happen if you kept using that word.”

Heat coursed through my veins, but I held his stare and let a smirk curve my mouth. “I don’t seem to remember you putting it quite like that. Maybe I need a reminder.”

A growl rumbled up his chest, and then he swept me into his arms to carry me toward the stairs.

“I’ll remind you,” he promised, moving fast up the steps. “All night if that’s what it takes.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and laughed softly against his throat, the sound full of everything I felt.

The danger was over.

I was his.

And he was taking me to bed to make sure I didn’t forget it.

EPILOGUE

CIPHER

The Black Crowns’ veterans’ fundraiser had taken over the broad meadow of the Rutledge Ranch, filling land normally used for training with food tents, live music, raffle tables, and more civilians than I preferred inside our outer perimeter. Every vehicle had been screened before entering, each vendor vetted, and all the guests passed through a controlled gate without realizing three separate camera systems had identified them before their tires touched club property. None of it required much conscious attention anymore, which meant most of mine remained fixed on Bex.

My fiancée stood beneath my arm wearing fitted jeans, white boots, and the black leather vest bearing PROPERTY OF CIPHER across her back. Her engagement ring caught the light whenever she lifted her hand, and every flash against her finger tightened the same possessive place inside me that had settled the first time I slid the vest over her shoulders.

Four weeks had done nothing to reduce my need to keep one hand around her waist, track every person who approached, or imagine taking her home and stripping her clothes off one slow piece at a time.

Bex tipped her face toward mine, amusement warm in her eyes. “You're staring again.”

“Oh?” My tone was anything but innocent.

Her voice softened as she leaned closer, and her eyes were bright with mischief. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Corbin. You’ve been staring at my butt every time I turn around.”

“Vest tells everybody it belongs to me.” I lowered my mouth beside her ear while my cock began thickening from nothing more than the scent of citrus and vanilla on her skin. “I’m allowed to admire my property.”

Bex bit her lower lip to contain a laugh, then glanced across the field to make sure her father wasn’t close enough to overhear. Raines stood near the veterans support booth speaking with Stryker and Judge, his expression considerably less hostile than it had been the first time he saw my name across his daughter’s back. He still looked at the patch occasionally like he was considering whether California law offered a creative enough definition of justifiable homicide, but he had stopped pretending Bex lived anywhere except with me.

“You’re lucky Dad is over there,” she whispered.

“He knows I fuck you.”

Her face flared pink. “He does not need to hear you say it.”

“Neither did you.” I turned her in my arms and let my gaze drop deliberately to her mouth. “Still made you wet.”

Her eyes widened before narrowing with the kind of challenge that usually ended with her pinned beneath me. “You’re awfully confident for a man standing in the middle of a charity event.”

The loud voice of a woman near the fireworks perimeter drew our attention away. The company hired to handle the closing display had established its launch field beyond the southern drainage cut, far enough from the crowd to meet every legal requirement and close enough that Ghost had spent most of the evening irritating their safety coordinator. I had noticed the pattern twenty minutes after Bellamy Pyrotechnics arrived and filed it under problems that did not belong to me.

Tamsin Bellamy stood beside the temporary control station while she studied a launch diagram clipped to a board. Ghost leaned against the barricade several feet away with his arms folded across his cut, looking relaxed enough that anyone without operational experience might have missed how closely he watched every movement on the field. And every move Tamsin made.

“You’re inside my exclusion line,” she informed him without looking up.

Ghost glanced down at the painted marker beneath his boot. “By three inches.”

“Still inside.”

“Prez put me on site safety.”

“Stryker doesn’t hold the pyrotechnics license.” She finally lifted her face, fixing him with a stare that would have moved a less entertained man. “Behind the line.”