Page 96 of No Good Fight

The room is pale in the morning light that’s filtering in. Rain still taps lightly against the glass, but the storm has burned itself down into something tired and gray. Ryder’s breathing is slow at my back. Actual sleep. Not the half-awake, waiting-for-the-world-to-fail kind of rest I know he’s been getting.

I lie still longer than I should, because moving means leaving the warmth of him and admitting how natural this feels. His bed. His arm. His shirt twisted around my hips because I fell asleep wearing it after he helped me take back one dark piece of myself Preston had stolen.

I don’t even quite remember him giving it to me, because my body just about collapsed like an exploding star with the orgasm.

My body remembers that part before my brain can decide whether we’re being embarrassed about what Ryder was able to do with just his fingers.

I shift carefully, trying to reach my phone without waking him, but Ryder’s arm tightens before my fingers make it to the nightstand. His mouth brushes the back of my shoulder, sleepy and warm, and the small contact hits me harder than it should. I stop moving. So does he, like his body figured out what it did before the rest of him caught up. But there’s no mistaking the way his dick is pressing against my ass, making everything so much more intense.

“Bathroom,” I whisper, even though I’m not moving toward the edge of the bed or even thinking about leaving.

His arm loosens immediately. “Okay.”

The roughness in his voice makes my stomach dip. I should get up. I should go brush my teeth, find pants, locate coffee, and pretend I’m a person who didn’t spend half the night grinding against his hand in the dark while asking him to help me take back pieces of myself. Instead, I turn in his arms until I’m facing him, morning breath be damned.

Ryder’s eyes open, heavy and unfocused for only a second before they lock on me. Face. Mouth. His shirt on my body. The blanket caught at my hip. He takes all of it in, and I feel the effort it costs him to keep his hand still against my waist.

“I was trying not to wake you,” I admit.

“You didn’t.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Yeah.” His thumb moves once over the borrowed shirt, low on my ribs. “It is.”

The honesty makes me smile before the nerves surrounding what I want can eat me alive. I slide my hand up his chest, feeling the warmth of him through his T-shirt, the steady thud of his heart under my palm. He watches the movement like it matters more than breathing. Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why my own breath keeps catching every time his fingers flex but don’t grab for me.

I lean in and kiss him.

Ryder lets me start it. He lets me press my mouth to his, lets me shift closer beneath the blanket, lets me make it soft for exactly three seconds before his restraint starts to fray and I can feel the groan before I hear it. His hand slides from my waist to my back, pulling me into him with a growl that turns the quiet room into something hotter. Less safe, maybe, but not unsafe. Never unsafe. My leg slips over his hip, and the hard length of him presses against me through too much fabric.

I break the kiss with my face hot and my hand fisted in his shirt. “I’m trying very hard not to be embarrassed right now.”

His forehead rests against mine. “Don’t be.”

“Very easy for the man who didn’t just climb on top of someone before dental hygiene.”

His hand moves down my thigh, slow and firm, keeping me there when I start to hide behind sarcasm. “Alex.”

The way he says my name makes the embarrassment soften into something else. I look at him, really look, and see the question he isn’t asking because he promised himself he wouldn’t push me. Last night, in the dark, I asked him not to stop. This morning, with gray light in the room and the world quiet around us, I want him to know I’m still choosing him.

I rock my hips once, deliberately, and his breath leaves him hard.

“I want this,” I say before he can turn restraint into another wall between us. “I want you. Right now. No panic, no blackout, no proving anything. Just because I woke up in your arms and I don’t want to move away.”

Ryder’s eyes darken, and this time, he doesn’t make me argue with his fear first. He rolls me beneath him, one hand braced in the pillow beside my head while the other pushes the blanket down my body. The borrowed shirt rides up around my ribs. He kisses the bare skin he finds there, then lower, taking his sweet time while I’m trying not to implode with need.

“Ryder.”

“I know.” His mouth presses to my stomach. “I’ve got you.”

The words shouldn’t undo me. They do anyway.

We move slower than I expected and not nearly slow enough. Clothes carefully removed instead of being pushed aside. His T-shirt disappears somewhere near the foot of the bed, my borrowed shirt is dropped off the edge next to my head, and every inch of him that touches me feels like an answer to a question I’ve been too afraid to ask for years. When he settles between my thighs, he pauses with his mouth against mine and his hand wrapped around my hip, waiting only long enough for me to nod.

Then Ryder is inside me, and the whole room narrows down to the stretch I feel as he fills me, the heat of our bodies coming together, the sound he makes against my throat.

“Jesus Christ, Alex.” His voice is broken. “Don’t fucking move or I’m going to come like a teenager.”