Page 108 of No Good Fight

A silent demand.

One I’m happy to obey.

I kiss her and drive into her again, deeper, steadier, letting the heat between us build until her body starts to tremble around mine for a different reason. My hand slips between us, fingers finding her clit, and she breaks the kiss with a gasp that echoes off the tile.

“That’s it,” I tell her, my mouth against her jaw. “Take what you need from me.”

She does.

Her head falls back against my hand, and she comes around me with a scream, thighs locking tight at my waist. I keep moving through it because she pulls me closer instead of away, and because the sight of her like this, alive and demanding and mine only because she says I can be hers, strips every last piece of control from me.

I follow her over hard, burying my face against her throat while my body goes tight and the world narrows to water, steam, Alex. Her arms stay around my neck afterward. She doesn’t let go when my breathing starts to even out. I don’t let go either.

Eventually, I lower her carefully until her feet touch the shower floor, but only because the water starts to cool. My hands stay on her waist while she leans into me, forehead against my chest.

“You’re still shaking,” she murmurs.

“So are you.” I don’t tell her that my tremors have nothing to do with the mindblowing orgasm. It’s her. Always her.

“I know.”

I wrap both arms around her and hold her there, letting the water run over us until the worst of the day slides off our skin and goes down the drain. It doesn’t erase what happened. Nothing does. The marks are still on her arms. The photograph is still in evidence. Preston is still breathing somewhere he shouldn’t be.

But Alex is standing in my shower with her cheek against my chest, and for the first time since I heard her phone hit the floor, I can breathe without feeling like I’m dragging air past broken glass.

Later, after I get her into one of my shirts and convince her to eat half a sandwich she claims is too large for one human woman, she falls asleep on the couch with her feet tucked under my thigh. Her fingers stay wrapped in the hem of my shirt even after she’s passed out. The monitors glow in front of us, showing porch, driveway, garage, back door, side yard, fence.

My phone vibrates on the coffee table.

Josh again.

I let it go to voicemail.

It starts up a second time before the screen goes dark from the first missed call. Then a text comes through.

Josh: Time’s up.

Another follows immediately.

Josh: I’m coming over. So are Mom and Dad. Nia’s with me. Don’t even think about telling me no.

I look at Alex asleep against me, exhausted and bruised and safer than she was this morning only because the locks are between her and the world for now.

My thumb hovers over the screen.

There are a dozen ways to answer. None of them will stop what’s coming, and I have no reason to stress Alex out when we both know what her family’s like.

So I set the phone facedown, spread my hand carefully over Alex’s knee, and keep watching the doors until morning.

21

ALEX

I trip over my own leggings two minutes and twenty seconds before my entire family invades Ryder’s house with breakfast and judgment.

Yes, I know I’m overreacting and exaggerating but all I want to do is run away.

One second, I’m standing beside Ryder’s bed with one leg shoved through soft black fabric, half-listening to him explain that Josh texted after I fell asleep. The next, my foot catches in the wrong opening, my balance goes sideways, and I hit the carpet on my hip with a sound that is not graceful, feminine, or emotionally prepared for company.