Page 57 of Duty Preserved

She bit her lip when a particular angle made her gasp, and her fingers tightened on my skin when a new sensation hit. I saw something hesitate in her face.

She was about to overthink it.

Fuck no.

I reached up and cradled her face. “Stay with me,” I said. “Here and now.”

She exhaled. Let her head fall back. Let herself stop being careful. The change was immediate. I let my hands fall back down her body, touching every inch of her I could. Caressing her breasts, thumbs brushing back and forth over her nipples then gliding my hands down her ribs before grabbing ahold of her hips again.

Her hips moved faster, harder, and I thrust up to meet her, matching her. I had to lock my jaw to keep from flipping her onto her back and driving into her the way I wanted to.

I slid my hand between us and found her clit, and when I touched her there, she jolted and grabbed my wrist.

“Too much?”

“No.” She pressed my hand back down. “Don’t stop.”

I worked her with my thumb while she rode me. Her breath went ragged. Her thighs shook against my hips. She tightened around me in waves, and every time she clenched, I had to grit my teeth against how good she felt. If I came before her, I’d never forgive myself.

“Donovan.”

“I’m right here. Let go.”

Her whole body locked, her back arched, and she bore down on me so hard I saw white. I held her hips and thrust up into her through it. When the last tremor ran through her, I stopped holding back.

Two more thrusts and I was done. I pulled her down onto me and came so hard my hands shook. She collapsed against my chest, both of us breathing hard, both of us spent. I wrapped my arms around her back and held her there.

She’d chosen this. From calm and steady ground.

She’d chosen me.

Chapter 15

Sarah

The camp rose out of the plain ahead of us. The water tank, propped up on its tall, welded stand, was the first visible indicator we were drawing nearer. The cabins gathered in low behind it, the dining tent’s canvas roof among them. After more than a year here, I knew the whole spread of it by heart, and pulling in usually felt like coming home. Not this morning.

Donovan eased off the accelerator without my asking. We hadn’t said a lot on the drive back from Nanyuki, and now that the buildings sat there in front of the windshield, I finally understood what I’d been dreading for the last two and a half hours.

This was the end of the private part.

I kept my eyes forward and waited for it. The cooling. I knew the shape of that by heart, the way a man got some daylight and some distance and quietly revised his opinion of you once the room stopped being dark. Whatever had felt certain at three in the morning tended to look like a mistake by noon, and I’d spent the drive braced for the exact moment he decided it had been one.

He hadn’t given me a single sign of it. He’d kept his hands relaxed on the wheel and his eyes on the road. That was worse, somehow. Silence left room to fill, and I’d filled two and a half hours of it with every version of the letdown I’d survived before.

I was good at bracing. I’d had practice.

Donovan’s hand left the gearshift and settled on my thigh, warm and heavy, and squeezed once.

“You okay?” he asked.

Two words, and they weren’t really about the road or the meds. I looked at his hand on my leg, then up at his face, and I found none of the distance I’d talked myself into expecting.

He looked at me like the night had happened and he wasn’t sorry about it, and there would be more of it when there was time.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”

His hand stayed a beat longer, thumb moving once against the seam of my pants. Then the first cabins came up on either side of the track and he put his hand back on the wheel, and the private part was over.