He pulls back. Drives in again — deeper, harder, and I wrap my legs around his waist to take all of him. My nails rake downhis back. His hand grips my hip, angling me up, and the new position hits something that turns my vision white at the edges.
"There — right there, don't you dare stop —"
He doesn't stop. He finds a rhythm that's ours — not performance, not choreography. Hard enough to make the bedframe knock against the wall. His mouth on my throat. My fingers in his hair, pulling. His hand slides between us, finds my clit, and the double sensation — his cock inside me, his thumb circling that swollen nerve — is too much. Not enough. Both.
"Come for me." Low. Against my ear. Not a command from the operative. A request from the man.
The orgasm builds different this time. Slower, deeper, rolling up from somewhere behind my navel. My pussy clenches around him, tight, tighter, and when it breaks I don't muffle the sound. Let it fill the room — his name, broken syllables, the ceiling fan clicking its rhythm above us while I come apart around his cock.
He follows three strokes later, shuddering, burying himself deep. His face pressed into my hair. A groan that sounds like surrender. His hand finds mine, lacing our fingers together against the cheerful yellow bedspread, and he holds on like I'm the only solid thing in a room that's spinning.
Neither of us speaks.
After, we lie tangled in the yellow bedspread. His arm around my shoulders. My head on his chest. The ceiling fan clicks. The house settles. Somewhere outside, a cricket resumes its argument.
My fingers trace idle patterns on his sternum. His hand moves through my hair — so instinctively tender it makes my throat ache.
"So," I say, because the silence is getting heavy and I handle heavy things with humor. "On a scale of one to chasing Ambassador through a hotel lobby, how much of a professional crisis is this?"
His chest vibrates under my cheek. Not a laugh. Close to one. "Off the scale."
"Cool. Cool cool cool." I tap my thumbnail against my teeth, realize I'm doing it, stop. "So what happens now?"
He doesn't answer right away. His hand keeps moving through my hair — the slow touch of someone who just remembered that touching another person doesn't require a tactical reason.
"I don't know," he says.
Honest. Terrifying in its honesty.
I press my face harder against his chest. Breathe in the smell of him — something clean, something warm, something that's started to smell like home the way Foxglove smells like home. A dangerous thought.
The people I want always leave.
Not a new thought. An old one. Worn smooth from handling. Del stayed, but Del is the exception that proves the rule. Every other time I've reached for someone — not the careful version but the real, terrifying, full-throated kind — they took what was convenient and moved on.
Liam isn't even mine to lose. He's here on assignment. Vance sent him. When Gus Novak is neutralized, Liam goes back to The Glasshouse. Back to HPG. Back to a life where he doesn't sleep in a Victorian B&B with yellow bedspreads and a woman who names her power tools.
His arm tightens around me. Like he heard the thought.
"Stop," he says quietly.
"Stop what?"
"Whatever you're thinking that made you tense up."
I almost laugh. Of course he noticed. The man who catalogs exits and monitors angles can feel the exact moment I go rigid against his side.
"I'm not thinking anything."
"Kari." Patient. Gentle. Devastating.
"Fine." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "I'm thinking about what this means. And whether 'I don't know' is the kind of 'I don't know' that turns into 'this was a mistake' by morning."
His hand stops in my hair. Then resumes. "It's not."
"You sound sure."
"I am."