Page 163 of High Reward

“I was terrified,” she admits, arching under my mouth.

“Terrified and magnificent. Both things can be true.”

I slide two fingers into her pussy, and she’s already soaked, already trembling from adrenaline that hasn’t finished leaving her body. Lili shifts down the bed and takes Grace’s mouth in a kiss that has her moaning into it, and I take my time working Grace open while I watch the two of them lose themselves in each other.

“Vic.” Grace’s voice breaks around my name. “Please.”

I don’t make her wait tonight. Not after everything.

I settle between her thighs and push my cock into her in one slow, deep stroke that has both of us groaning. Lili straddles Grace’s face, and the sound Grace makes against her, muffled and desperate, goes straight to my spine.

“Fuck, look at you both.” I set a rhythm, one hand gripping Grace’s hip hard enough to bruise, the other reaching up to fist in Lili’s hair and guide her exactly where I want her rocking. “Two of the strongest women I’ve ever known, and you’re both mine.”

Lili’s head falls back, and she rides Grace’s mouth with a moan that fills the room, her hand finding mine where it’s still tangled in her hair.

I feel Grace start to shake beneath me, her whole body coiling tight, and I lean down to bite the curve of her shoulder, right where I know it’ll push her over.

“Come for me, sweetheart. Let me feel it.”

She does, crying out against Lili, and the sound drags Lili over seconds behind her. They shudder through it together. I keep moving inside Grace until my own release catches up to me, hard enough that I have to brace a hand on the headboard to keep from crushing either of them.

I collapse to the side, and for a long moment, none of us say anything. Just the sound of three people breathing, slower and slower, until none of us are afraid anymore.

“We’re safe,” Lili says eventually, more statement than question, her fingers finding mine over Grace’s stomach.

“We’re safe,” I agree.

Grace turns her head to look at both of us, tears and laughter tangled up in her voice when she finally speaks. “I signed my first book and had a gun pointed at me, all in the same twelve hours. And I got both of you back. I think I need a vacation.”

“Give it a few months,” I tell her, kissing her temple. “I know exactly where I’m taking you.”

She doesn’t know I mean that literally. Not yet.

Chapter 44

Lili

Victorpicksmeupat ten in the morning, which should have been my first clue this wasn’t a normal visit.

“Where are we going?” I ask, sliding into the passenger seat of the Audi instead of the driver’s seat like he always makes Grace take.

“Somewhere that’s just for you.” He pulls out of the Pink Sapphire’s parking garage without another word, and I know better than to push. Victor Serrano reveals things exactly when he wants to, not a second sooner.

We end up at a private range twenty minutes outside the city, the kind with reinforced walls and a membership fee that probably costs more than my old apartment.

“A gun range.” I stare at the building, then at him. “Vic, I already know how to shoot.”

“I know you do. That’s not why we’re here.” He leads me inside, past an attendant who clearly knows him, into a private bay at the end of the row. “I want to watch you be good at something that has nothing to do with surviving him. I want to watch you be good at something because you chose it.”

That lands somewhere soft and unguarded in my chest, and I have to look away from him for a second so I don’t do something embarrassing, like cry in a gun range.

“You planned this.”

“I plan everything, Spitfire. You know this about me.”

We spend two hours out there, him loading magazines and adjusting my stance with his hands on my hips, correcting my grip, saying nothing when I outshoot every target on the first try. Apparently four months of processing rage in Rhode Island turned me into a hell of a shot. By the end of it, I’m laughing. Actually laughing, for the first time in months.

Afterward, he takes me to lunch at a quiet restaurant where nobody recognizes either of us, and he lets me order for both of us and pick the wine. He doesn’t take a single phone call the entire meal.