He might have laughed. He might have said something. But her lips kissed the old shrapnel scar, and he lost the thread of whatever sentence he’d been constructing.
His injured arm protested when he shifted his weight. A sharp pull along the graze that made him grit his teeth—not enough to stop, not even close, but enough that she saw.
“Lie down,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
She nudged his shoulder. “Lie. Down.”
He did. She adjusted with him—a fluid recalibration, the kind two people made when they knew each other’s bodies well enough to compensate without discussion. He settled on his back, his good arm free to touch her, his injured arm resting on the bed while she straddled him.
“Better?” she asked.
He reached up and unhooked her bra. Her breasts, full and gorgeous, swung free. “Better.”
She laughed and kissed his jaw. Then lower—the base of his throat, where his pulse was hammering.
“Lyssa.” Her name came out like a warning—a door being held open at the last second before it closed for good.
“Ssh,” she said again, running her hands over his chest, his sides, his hips. “Let me take care of you.”
The moment everything else fell away—truly fell away, the last shred of distance between them closing —Mack understood something he’d been circling for two years without landing on. He hadn’t been angry at her.
Underneath the pride and the hurt and the walls he’d built from the rubble of their engagement, he’d been terrified. Terrified that she’d seen him clearly and chosen someone else’s truth over his, because that meant his truth wasn’t enough.
That he wasn’t enough.
And now she was here, tugging his pants off, closing her fingers around the hard length of him, and watching him through half-lidded eyes.
He cupped her breast, held her gaze, and tweaked her nipple. She sucked in a breath and shifted so the tip of his cock was at her opening. She was wet and slick, ready.
“Mack,” she breathed his name. “I need you inside me.”
All he could do was watch as she slid down his shaft, tossing her head back, her hair falling down her back. Her face, tipped up to the ceiling, was filled with pleasure.
A pleasure that raced through his body as well. He hung onto her hips as she began to move, building a rhythm. “Jesus, Lyssa. All I ever wanted was you.”
When she looked down at him, she was smiling. “And now I’m back where I belong.”
He saw it—the old Alyssa and the new merging into one.
He was hers. She was his.
She leaned forward, creating exquisite friction between them, and kissed him. Their bodies continued to move together, the rhythm becoming urgent.
“Stay with me,” she whispered. Not a request about tonight. A request about everything.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He meant it the way he meant operational promises—as a commitment he’d back with his life. “Not this time.”
She made a sound that was part laugh and part sob. Her hands pressed against his chest, breasts unbounded and free as she slid up and down on him.
As emotions and desire rose to a crescendo, his hips bucked underneath her. He held onto her while the world outside continued to be dangerous, and none of it mattered as much as the woman in his arms and the sound she made when he touched the bundle of nerves between her legs.
She exploded, arching her back again. “Mack!”
His name. Just his name. But it was said in the throes of passion. Her muscles clenched around him, and his vision burned white. He gripped her hips, jackknifing into her once, twice, three more times as his own climax hit. “Alyssa,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s…always…been you.”
Later, the night had deepened. The safehouse was quiet—so quiet that Mack could hear the faint hum of the dry cleaning equipment below, some timer or motor running on its overnight cycle.