Page 101 of The Drifter

It isn't over. That's the truth sitting under the happiness, and the happiness is real but it isn't safe. Craine is out there.

He flew off that ranch clean and he's still out there, somewhere, spending his allies and building his case. After what he did, this family has gone very quiet and very certain in a way I've learned to read.

They're not angry. Angry burns off. This is past angry. This is the whole of Dominion Hall turning its face in one direction. I've heard the words in low voices in rooms I'm not always invited into: too far. He's gone too far this time. They're preparing something. I don't ask the mechanics—I've never once needed to know the mechanics. But I know it's coming. And I know that when it comes, Craine is going to learn what I learned on that trail, which is that there is no worse thing you can do to people like these than touch what's theirs.

But that's tomorrow's war.

Tonight was ours.

It was late when Clint came to find me on the balcony of our suite, the harbor spread out black and glittering below, the whole house gone quiet behind us. I'd been standing out there a while with a glass of wine I wasn't drinking, listening to the water, letting the day settle.

He came up behind me and put his arms around me, crossed over my chest, his chin coming down on the top of my head. I felt the whole warm wall of him at my back and leaned into it.

"You're thinking loud," he said.

"I'm thinking about how I got here."

"And?"

"And I can't make the math work." I turned in his arms. "Three days, Clint. You walked into my lobby three days before all of this. And I built a whole life around the idea that I couldn't afford to want anything, and you took about ninety seconds to knock the whole thing down with one question."

"I'm good at questions." He tucked a curl behind my ear, slow. "It's about all I'm good at."

"You're good at other things."

His mouth did a thing. Then, it was on mine, and the wine glass ended up set down on the rail, forgotten. He walked me backward through the doors into our suite with his hands already learning me the way they'd learned me the first afternoon, like a man who had all the time there was and had finally stopped being surprised that he did.

He undressed me slow, in the low light, and he did the thing he always does, the thing that undid me the first time and undoes me still—he stopped me when I reached, out of old habit, for something to cover myself with, and he stepped back, and he looked at me. All of me. Took his time about it, the way he takes his time about everything worth doing, until my skin came up and the flush went into my throat and I stood there in front of him with nothing in my hands and let him.

"There she is," he said, low. The same words. He says them every time. Every time, they open something in me that had been closed since a linen closet.

"Come here," I said.

And he did.

Clint crossed the distance in two slow strides, his hands sliding up my bare arms to cradle my face as if I were something both precious and breakable. His thumbs brushed my cheekbones. When he kissed me, it was deep and deliberate, the kind of kiss that said he had catalogued every way I tasted and still wanted more.

I felt the heat of him through his shirt, the steady thunder of his heart, and I let my hands roam—unbuttoning, pushing fabric aside—until there was nothing between us but skin and the salt air drifting in from the open balcony doors.

I guided him backward to the bed, taking my time because taking my time was the whole point now. We had earned this.

He sat on the edge of the mattress and I climbed into his lap, knees bracketing his hips. For a long moment, we simply breathed each other in. His palms traced the curve of my waist, possessive but reverent, thumbs sweeping just beneath my breasts until I arched into him with a soft sound I didn’t try to stifle.

“You’re all mine,” he murmured against my throat, the words rough with restraint finally unleashed. “Every inch. Every breath. Say it, Sasha.”

“I’m yours,” I whispered, and the truth of it settled bone-deep as I sank down onto him, slow enough to feel every thick inch stretch and fill me.

The burn was sweet, familiar, and still somehow new—because this time there was no desperation, only the deliberate slide of bodies that knew each other’s scars and stories by heart. He groaned low in his chest, hands gripping my hips to hold me there.

We moved like that for a long time—me rolling my hips in circles, him meeting every descent with a slow, upward thrust that pressed him impossibly deeper. His mouth found my breasts, tongue circling one tight peak before drawing it between his lips, sucking gently until my head fell back and my fingers tightened in his hair.

Every luxurious stroke built the heat between us, slick and rhythmic, but it was the way he watched me that undid me most: dark eyes locked on my face, drinking in every flicker of pleasure.

He flipped us without breaking rhythm, settling me beneath him. “Look at me,” he said, voice gravel-rough. One hand braced beside my head, the other slid between us, big fingers finding the exact rhythm that made my thighs tremble around his waist.

He moved in long, deep strokes, claiming me with every surge of his hips, but there was worship in the way he kissed the tears that slipped from the corners of my eyes, in the way he whispered my name like a vow each time he bottomed out inside me.

I came first, sudden and shattering, clenching around him as pleasure rolled through me. He followed moments later, burying himself to the hilt with a broken sound that was half growl, half my name, pulsing hot and deep while his arms locked around me like he would never let go.