Page 49 of The Jackal

"Look at me," he commanded softly. Our eyes locked as his pace built, steady and powerful.

The pressure coiled tight again, faster this time. Every thrust ground against my clit, his body covering mine completely. I came undone a third time, clenching hard around him, crying out into his mouth. He cursed, low and reverent, fucking me through it with gritted teeth.

His rhythm faltered, turning rougher, more desperate. "I'm close."

I gasped. "Please, Cash. Stay inside me."

With a broken groan that sounded almost pained, he drove deep one last time and spilled, pulsing hot and endless inside me. His whole body shuddered, muscles locked as he emptied himself, face buried in my neck like he was anchoring himself to me.

We stayed locked together, trembling, tangled in a mess of limbs and sweat and heaving breaths—spent, hearts hammering against each other.

Afterward, we lay wrecked, my head on his chest, his heart finally slowing under my ear. Neither of us in any hurry to be a separate person again.

"I love you," I told him, because I hadn't said it back yet, not in words, and he deserved the words. "For the record. I have loved you since before I had any sense about it. I'm just glad I got stubborn enough to still be standing here when you caught up."

"Thank God for stubborn," he said into my hair, and I felt him smile.

We were quiet a while. Somewhere, through the adjoining door, I could hear the soft thump of a dog resettling, Max keeping his watch. It made me smile against Cash's skin.

"We have to figure out where we live," I said eventually, because a woman's mind wanders to the practical even in the afterglow, especially a woman who'd spent the last day watching her whole life come apart and get put back together. “My dad gave me the down payment on my house. It's the first thing I ever owned that was only mine." My throat tightened. "I don't want to give it up. Even after—everything that happened in it. Maybe, especially after. I don't want them to have taken it from me. I want to walk back in and have it be mine again."

"Then, it's yours," he said, simple as that. "Nobody's taking your house. My brothers are making it like last night never happened—by the time you walk back in, it'll be your house and nothing else." His hand moved slow down my spine. "But I'm not letting you sleep in it alone, if I have my way."

"So, what do we do?"

“Both." He said it like the answer had been obvious to him the whole time and he'd only been waiting for me to arrive at it. "This suite's mine now—ours. Dominion Hall's the safest ground, and it's where my family is. I want you inside these walls with me until we unravel the mess. But that house is you, Mags. It's the first thing you built alone in a new city, and I'd cut off a hand before I'd ask you to walk away from it." He tipped my chin up so I was looking at him. "So, we go back and forth. Here when it makes sense. Your place when we need to breathe air that doesn't have a guard tower attached to it. The dogs won't care where they sleep as long as we're there. Neither will I."

It was the most sensible, generous thing anyone had ever offered me, and it undid me a little, because it meant he wasn't asking me to dissolve into his life and disappear the way I'd spent my whole childhood watching people disappear into the bigger thing. He was going to let me keep my crooked corner of the world and fold me into his. Both. I got to be both.

"Both," I said, trying it out. "I like both."

"Both," he agreed, and kissed the top of my head. "And your father gets here tomorrow, so we'd better rest, because something tells me the colonel's going to have questions. I intend to answer every one of them like a man."

I laughed, and I burrowed into the warm unwashed bulk of him. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I fell asleep without one single part of me braced.

26

CASH

After, I finally took that shower. I didn't take it alone.

The bathroom was built like everything at Dominion Hall—stone and glass and water pressure that could strip paint. We stood under it together and let the day come off us both at last.

I washed her hair. She laughed at me for how seriously I took it. I told her a man should be serious about sacred work, and she went quiet and let me.

I soaped every inch of her, slow, unhurried, learning her by hand the way I'd learned her by eye in the streetlight bars of her bedroom—the wing of her shoulder blade, the dip of her spine, the scar on her knee from some childhood on some base she'd tell me about someday.

She did the same to me. Traced the map of me, the old marks and the new ones, and didn't ask about a single one. Someday, I'd tell her, anyway.

It was a long shower. It was a long shower because I could not get enough of her, and I'd quit pretending otherwise. Every time I decided we were done, my hands disagreed and went back for more of her—her hips, her waist, the slick warmth of her against me under the spray—and she'd tip her head back and smile at the ceiling like a woman winning a bet with herself.

By the time the water went off, we were both wrinkled and warm. I was sure I'd follow her anywhere on earth for the rest of my life for the price of that smile.

I figured she was done in. It had been the longest day. I handed her a towel and took one for myself and knotted it at my waist, already thinking about the bed and eight hours and her breathing beside me.

She had other plans.

She stepped in close, still damp, and slid her arms around my waist like she wanted a hug. I gathered her in—and felt her fingers find the knot of my towel and tug it loose. It hit the floor. She looked up at me the whole way down.