Page 56 of Raven's Mark
"This is real." His voice is low and certain. "All of it."
Then he starts to move, and whatever thought I had left dissolves. His pace is measured, thorough, each stroke hitting deep, his cock filling me completely. He watches my face the whole time, reading every shift in my expression the way he reads terrain. When he changes his angle and I gasp his name, he does it again. And again. Until I'm clawing at his shoulders and begging him for more.
My legs wrap around his waist and he groans, dropping his forehead to mine, his pace going rougher, less controlled. His hand slides between us and finds my clit, and the combined sensation tears a broken cry from my throat as the second orgasm builds fast and savage.
"Give it to me." The command is quiet and absolute against my mouth. "Right now."
The orgasm crashes through me, violent and consuming, my body clenching around him so hard that his rhythm stutters and breaks. He follows me over with my name on his lips, his wholeframe shuddering as he spills inside me, his arms pulling me hard against him.
He doesn't move for a long time afterward. Neither do I. Then he rolls onto his back and pulls me with him, settling me against his side with my head on his chest. His heartbeat slows under my ear, his breath evening out against my hair, and the room settles into quiet around us.
"Tomorrow," I say into the dark.
His arm tightens around my waist. One word that carries the weight of everything we've built and everything we stand to lose. I’ll walk into town and let the cartel find me. The plan goes into motion and there are no second chances.
But tonight, lying in the dark with Jesse Hollister's heartbeat steady against my spine, I'm not afraid. I'm not angry. I'm not running calculations or rehearsing contingencies.
I'm just here. With him. And for the first time since El Paso, that's enough.
His breathing evens out behind me, slow and deep, and I let the rhythm of it pull me toward sleep. My hand finds his where it rests against my stomach, and I lace our fingers together. His grip tightens in response, even in sleep.
My eyes close. The cabin settles around us, quiet and watchful.
Tomorrow.
16
JESSE
Raven is still asleep when I slide out of bed before dawn.
I move through the cabin on autopilot, pulling on jeans and a shirt, starting coffee, clearing the maps and satellite imagery from the kitchen island to make room for the final briefing. My mind is already running through the operational sequence, checking each variable, identifying points of failure and building contingencies around them.
Torque arrives first, rolling up the gravel drive in his truck with the sun barely cresting the ridge. He carries a duffel and a hard-sided case I know contains the tracker hardware. Knox and Beckett follow within minutes, Carmichael's SUV rolling in just behind them. Hawk pulls in after that, driving the surveillance van Torque sourced overnight, Cipher climbing out of the passenger seat behind him.
Cipher walks in with his computer bag tucked under one arm and a bulky square hard case gripped in his other hand. He sets the case on the island, flips the latches, and lifts the lid.
"Here’s the long range drone," he says to the room, nodding at the folded rotors and the optics package nested in the foam. "Fifty mile operational radius, thermal and daylight. This is our eyes in the sky if the transmitters fail."
Rook is the last to arrive, his sniper rifle case slung over one shoulder. He's been on the western ridge since yesterday, running overwatch, and the lack of sleep shows in the tight lines around his eyes. But his hands are steady when he sets the case down beside the door, and that's all that matters.
"Coffee's fresh," I say, gesturing toward the kitchen.
They help themselves without conversation, the kind of comfortable silence that comes from men who have operated together long enough to read each other's moods and respect them. Cipher sets his laptop beside the drone case and starts running diagnostics on the communications equipment. Torque opens his own case and begins laying out the tracker components with the methodical precision of a man who has planted surveillance devices in hostile territory and knows exactly what happens when hardware fails.
Raven emerges from the bedroom dressed in jeans and a plain black shirt, her hair pulled back, no makeup. She looks younger without it, and for a moment I'm hit with the visceral memory of her at nineteen, screaming my name. Then she meets my gaze and the illusion shatters. The woman walking into this kitchen is nobody's victim.
"Morning," she says. She pauses at the end of the island where Carmichael stands. A look passes between them, not warmth exactly, but the acknowledgment of two people who have reached an uneasy truce. Then she pours herself coffee and takes the stool beside Cipher.
"Morning." Cipher doesn't look up from his laptop. "I'm running a final check on the transmitter frequencies. You'll have four units on your body. One sewn into the sole of your left boot, one in your watch band, one clipped on your necklace, and one woven into your hair tie. All broadcasting on different frequencies so if they find one and disable it, we still have three backups."
"And the truck?" Raven asks.
"Torque installed the tracker last night in the driver's seat, beneath the upholstery. It uses GPS and cellular signal. If they move you in your vehicle, we'll know."
Torque nods without looking up from the components he's arranging. "Battery life is good for seventy-two hours of continuous transmission. After that it switches to pulse mode to conserve power, but we're not going to need that long."
"No," I agree. "We're not."
