Page 57 of Dominion's Guard
"I'm going to get you water," I tell her. "I'll be ten seconds."
"Five."
"Demanding." I press my mouth to her forehead and cross to the bathroom, wet a cloth with warm water, fill a glass, and bring both back. She drinks half the water in one pull. I take the cloth and clean her gently, between her thighs where her skin is oversensitive and flushed, and the care of the gesture makes hereyes close and her breathing catch for a different reason than the sex did.
I pull the sheet up over both of us and settle against the headboard with her tucked into my side, my hand in her hair, running the slow repetitive rhythm that brings someone back into their body after it's been somewhere unfamiliar.
"Tell me what you're feeling," I say. "Whatever it is. There's no wrong answer."
"Like I just ran a marathon I didn't train for." She presses closer against my side. Her skin is cooling, and I pull the sheet higher around her shoulders. "Like I've been holding my breath for years and I just exhaled and I don't know what my lungs are supposed to do with all this room."
"That's the surrender. The real kind. It's supposed to feel too big the first time."
"Does it get smaller?"
"It gets familiar. The size stays." I pull the sheet higher around her shoulders. "You called yellow. That was exactly right. That's what it's for."
"I almost called red." The admission is quiet, almost lost against my skin. "Not because anything hurt. Because I could feel myself letting go and I didn't know where the bottom was."
"There's no bottom. There's me." I tilt her chin up until her eyes meet mine. "That's the deal. You let go, I catch you. Every time. That doesn't change."
She doesn't look away for a long time. The trembling has slowed to a fine vibration in her hands, the last of the adrenaline working through her system, and her eyes are swollen at the edges and her mouth is soft in a way I've never seen it, stripped of the sharp edge she wields like a weapon.
"I've never actually surrendered before," she says. "To anyone. Every scene, every Dom, every time I knelt on thatfloor or bent over a bench, I was giving them the choreography without the feeling. I didn't know the difference until right now."
I pull her closer. I press my mouth to her temple and feel her pulse against my lips.
"I know," I say. "Thank you for trusting me."
She curls into my side, and her body settles into the curve of mine as if the shape was already familiar. I keep my hand in her hair, keep the rhythm even, keep the contact consistent while her breathing slows and her body settles and the trembling stops.
"Are you warm enough?"
"Mm."
"I need words, Renata."
"Yes. I'm warm. I'm good. Stop hovering."
The bratty edge creeping back into her voice is the best sign I've heard all night. It means she's coming back to herself, reassembling the pieces in the right order, and the woman who emerges from the other side of this will be the same sharp, defiant, impossible woman who walked into my life and refused to leave, except now she knows what it feels like to stop performing, and she let me be the one who showed her.
The kitchen table and the case files and the killer and the operation and Hebert's warning and the badge on the line all exist outside this room, waiting, and they will be there in the morning.
Tonight, she chose to stop running. She chose me. She chose the honest version of herself over the performance, and the courage that took is greater than anything the badge has ever asked of me.
Her breathing evens out against my side. Sleep pulls at her in slow increments, and I feel each one in the way her weight shifts deeper against me and her fingers finally uncurl. The steps between my door and the guest room stopped meaning anythingthe moment she pressed her face into my neck and let go, and the only distance left is the one between tonight and tomorrow.
Tomorrow she will walk onto Dominion's floor wearing a wire and I have to trust the plan we made to keep her alive.
14
RENATA
The wire itches.
It sits against my sternum, taped flat between my breasts with medical adhesive that the FBI tech applied with clinical efficiency and zero eye contact, which was considerate of him given that I was standing in Andy's kitchen in a bra and jeans while a federal agent I'd never met turned my body into a surveillance device. The transmitter is the size of a matchbook, nestled against the underwire where the contour of the bra holds it flush. The tech told me the adhesive would feel warm at first and then I'd forget it was there, and he was half right: the warmth faded, but the awareness hasn't.
Every breath pushes the edge of the housing against skin that is already raw from the tape, and the low-grade friction has become a metronome I can't stop counting.
