“Sloane.” My name against my lips. Barely a sound. “Let me have all of you.”
I wrapped my legs around his hips, heels pressing into the small of his back.
“Yes.”
He entered me in one long, slow motion—inch by inch—until he sat so deep inside me I registered it somewhere dangerously close to my heart. We both went still, breathing the same air, foreheads pressed together. The intimacy of it—unhurried, unguarded, eyes open—terrified me more than anything waiting outside those walls.
Then he moved.
Deep, unhurried rolls of his hips that dragged every inch of him against every inch of me. His pubic bone ground gently against my clit with each circle, rebuilding all that warmth, all that aching pressure, from nothing.
His hands cradled my face.
Our eyes remained open, locked together, neither of us hiding.
He existed everywhere. Inside me. Around me. In the hitch of his breath every time I tightened around him. In the way his thumbs caught the tears still sliding from the corners of my eyes. In the way he said my name—quiet,broken, reverent—like it carried the only meaning left in this ruined world.
When it crested this time, it pulled us both under.
My body arched. My walls fluttered around him in long, liquid contractions I couldn’t control and didn’t want to.
He buried his face in my neck, hips pressing deep and holding there as he came inside me—hot and endless—groaning my name against my throat like it tore free from somewhere he’d tried to keep locked.
We stayed tangled together long after. Hearts hammering against each other. Skin damp. His weight on me solid and real and warm—an anchor I hadn’t known I needed until I had it.
He kissed the corner of my eye.
The pulse in my throat.
Then, so quiet I almost missed it:
“I could stay in this moment forever.”
I turned my face into his. My lips brushed the corner of his mouth.
“Me too,” I breathed.
He answered with his whole body. Arms tightening. Hips shifting once more in the gentlest aftershock. His mouth finding mine in a kiss so slow and deep that time stopped mattering entirely.
For a few minutes, the world outside didn’t exist.
No dead, no empty radio frequencies, or things in the dark pressing against doors and windows. Just his heartbeat against mine and our breathing settling into the same rhythm—synchronized, unhurried, like two people who’d earned the right to be still.
Then, somewhere deep in the building, a metal doorslammed.
The sound echoed through the hallway and bounced off every hard surface, sharp and unmistakable.
We both went rigid.
Callan lifted his head slowly. Every muscle in his body turned to iron against mine. His eyes locked on the office door, listening.
Silence.
Then—faintly—a scraping sound. Something dragging across the floor.
“Tell me,” he said quietly, his voice completely different now, every trace of softness stripped clean, “that the building settled.”
My heart hammered for an entirely new reason.