Page 45 of Reluctant Bride

“It’s not legal behind a bar dumpster, Dawson.”

“I checked the statute. It’s a grey area.”

She’s still laughing when I push her underwear aside and find her soaked, and the laugh breaks into something primal, her head dropping back against the wall.

“Fuck,” I say against her throat. “I’ve been hard for you since you took my arm at the fair.”

“That was six hours ago. Longest you’ve ever waited for anything.”

“Not even close.”

I free myself, line up, and push into her in one slow, relentless stroke, and she gasps my name into the dark like it’s the only word she’s got left. She’s tight and slick and desperate around me, her heels digging into the backs of my thighs, urging me deeper, and I still my hips for one second, forehead against hers, just to feel her pulse hammering where our skin meets.

“You’ve been thinking about me too,” I say. “All day. Don’t lie to me now.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Then there’s no more talking. I drive into her hard and fast, her back thudding against the brick with every stroke, her mouth finding mine to swallow the sound of it, both of us chasing something we don’t have the patience to draw out tonight. She clenches around me first, a broken sound tearing loose against my collarbone, and I follow her over at the same time, groaning her name into her hair, both of us shaking, both of us laughing again before we’ve even caught our breath.

“Look at us,” she says, still catching her breath, forehead against my collarbone. “A married couple who can’t even wait until we get home.”

“We have a bed. A very good bed. I checked the mattress reviews myself.”

“And yet.”

“I’ve got plans for you at home that a dumpster can’t accommodate.” I press a kiss to her temple, her hair damp at the edges from the heat of the alley. “Consider this the trailer.”

“That’s a terrifying amount of confidence for a man who just finished behind a bar.”

“I finish everything I start too. Consistency’s the whole brand.”

We straighten ourselves out with more dignity than either of us has any right to and go back inside separately, three minutes apart, which fools exactly nobody, judging by the look Tessa gives us both.

I find Eli and Cora still at the pool table, and West’s pulled up a stool beside them with his phone out, scrolling through the day’s photos.

“Hey,” he says, not looking up. “I’ve been going back through the fundraiser shots. Trying to figure out where else this truck shows up.”

Holt drifts over from the door, drawn by the change in West’s voice, the even tone that means he’s found something and hasn’t decided yet how bad it is.

“Show me,” Holt says.

West turns the screen. The shooting range, mid-afternoon, Erin lowering the rifle after her demonstration round, Holt in the background with his arms crossed. And behind them, small in the frame, angled at the tree line, the grey Silverado.

Holt takes the phone out of West’s hand without asking, and zooms.

The image blurs, resolves, blurs again as he adjusts it, and then holds steady on the driver’s side mirror of the truck, a small convex smear of reflected light and shadow that shouldn’t show anything at all.

It shows Cruz. Standing near the range fence, rifle-cleaning kit in hand, head turned. Not toward the shooters. Not toward the crowd.

Toward the truck.

Holt doesn’t say anything for a long second. When he does, his voice has gone even, his indicator that he’s already decided and is now getting around to telling the rest of us.

“He’s not looking at us,” Holt says. “He’s looking at it. Like he already knows what it is.”

FIFTEEN

SAGE