Page 37 of Reaper
I watch the steady, efficient movement of his hands. The same hands that killed a man an hour ago. The same hands that just took me apart on the floor of this cave.
"We need to move before first light." He speaks without looking up from the slide of the Glock.
"How far?"
"Five miles east. There's an abandoned logging road. We find a vehicle, we get off the mountain, we find a hardline connection so you can confirm that drive."
He reassembles the weapon with a sharp, metallic click and slides it back into his thigh holster.
"Wyatt."
He looks at me. The firelight casts long, harsh shadows across his face.
"What happens when I confirm the drive?"
"Guardian HRS takes the intel. The Feds freeze Ares Global's assets. The contract is done."
"And us?"
He holds my gaze. The silence in the cave stretches, heavy and loaded. The absolute clarity of the last hour begins to fray at the edges, letting the reality of tomorrow bleed back in.
"I don't know." The admission costs him. He looks away, staring into the dying coals. "I'm a ghost. Frost drew a line four years ago. I don't belong in the light. And you don't belong in the dark with me."
"I think I proved tonight that I can survive the dark."
He looks back at me. The raw, unguarded hunger from earlier flashes in his eyes, shadowed by something that looks a lot like grief.
"I'm not usually that aggressive." His voice drops, thick with a sudden, dark vulnerability. "Not the first time."
I push myself up from the pine needles, the oversized undershirt sliding up my thighs. "Or the second?"
"Or the second." He tracks my movement, his jaw tightening. "I let go. I didn't mean to?—"
"You didn't do anything wrong." I crawl across the narrow space between us, pushing his hands away from the disassembled Glock. "You weren't too much of anything." I kneel between his outstretched legs, the heat of the coals warming my bare skin. "If anything, you were all kinds of right."
He goes completely still.
"Let me show you how okay I am with it."
I push the heavy undershirt off my shoulders, letting it pool around my waist. I don't give him time to argue or overthink. I lean down and take him into my mouth.
The groan he lets out is a harsh, fractured sound that echoes in the small cave. His hands immediately tangle in my hair, gripping hard, the rigid control he was trying to rebuild shattering instantly.
This isn't a delicate seduction. It's a claiming. I take him apart with my mouth, matching the desperate, bruising intensity he gave me against the wall. I want him to feel exactly how much I want the darkest, most feral parts of him. The parts he thinks he has to hide.
His breathing turns ragged, his hips driving up to meet me. The muscle tension in his thighs is absolute. He curses my name, his grip on my hair tightening as the climax breaks through him in a violent, shuddering rush.
He rides it out, his chest heaving in the firelight.
When the last tremor fades, he doesn't let go of me. He pulls me up, dragging me hard against his chest, wrapping his arms around me like I'm the only thing tethering him to the earth.
"I don't know what I did to deserve you." The words are a rough, broken exhale against my neck.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. The desperate hunger from earlier is gone, replaced by an agonizing, crystalline clarity. He traces the line of my jaw—a ghost of a touch.
"Surviving the dark isn't the same as living in it." He kisses my forehead, pulling his undershirt back up over my shoulders to keep the cold out. "Get some sleep. I've got the watch."
TWELVE
