Page 96 of Breaking His Exile

“He wrote that to me from prison,” she said. “After Dad died. Told me I didn’t have to stay quiet and small anymore.”

“You didn’t listen for a long time.”

“No.” Her voice had gone rough. “I’m working on it.”

When he reached her thigh, the tattoo there brought him up short, and a laugh burst from him. “Is that… a raccoon playing guitar?”

“Holding a guitar.”

“Why?”

“There was tequila.”

“It’s terrible.”

“It’s a masterpiece!”

She was still laughing when he kissed the crooked little raccoon, then the skin beside it, then higher, and her laughter changed register into a moan when he nuzzled her pussy.

He slid his fingers under her panties and found her already soaked.

“Evander…”

He tugged her underwear aside and buried his tongue in her.

She bucked. Hard. The flannel in his fist, her thigh against his jaw, the taste of her and the sound, wild and open, every gasp scrambling his ability to pretend he didn’t need this as badly as air. He stayed between her thighs, fucking her slowly with his tongue, until she went rigid. Her heels digging into the mattress as she came into his mouth with his name on her lips.

He let he come down, then took his time building her back up again. This would be the last thing he got to keep, and he intended to enjoy every second of it. He used his mouth until she was arching under him again with her hand fisted in his hair, until she came apart again with a broken sound and a third time with his name caught somewhere in her throat. He worked her until her thighs shook around his head and she sobbed his name. He didn’t stop for his ribs. He barely noticed them.

“Evander.” She reached for him with both hands, pulling him down. “Come here. Please.”

When he finally sank into her, they both went still for a breath, foreheads together, her legs locking around his hips.

Then he moved, slow and deep.

She met every stroke with her nails dragging down his back and her mouth against his jaw. He wanted her to feel this in her body tomorrow. He wanted it in her bones the way five names were in his— permanent, unerasable, something that stayed even when the man who’d put it there was gone.

He didn’t let himself think the word gone. Not yet.

She came again with her face pressed into his shoulder and her whole body drawing tight around him, and that was what took him with her. A low, wrecked sound left him.

Afterward, he stayed inside her longer than he needed to, his weight braced on his forearms, her fingers tracing slow lines along his spine like she was reading braille.

“Stay,” she said, quiet, half into his shoulder.

He wanted to say I love you. It sat right there behind his teeth. But he knew with absolute certainty that if he let them out, he would never be able to walk out that door before dawn.

He would stay.

He would let her keep him, let this ranch keep him, let all of them believe he was safe to have close.

He kissed her temple instead. “Sleep, Songbird.”

She did, eventually, curled into his good side with one hand splayed over his heart like she meant to keep it there by force. Tilly climbed onto the foot of the bed sometime after — a violation of every rule he’d ever tried to teach her — and neither of them corrected the dog.

He lay in the dark and listened to Rainey’s breathing slow into a long, even rhythm.

When he was sure she was out, he slid from under her. She protested in her sleep, and he froze, mind scrambling for an excuse.