Page 52 of Broken Ride

At the next town's limits I pull in beside Laney under a gas station awning, and while the pumps run I send the plate with the times to Torres and to Kenna both, working two channels at once.

Then I follow her taillights the last dark mile to the motel with my jaw aching from the clench.

The motel is nothing anybody would remember, which suits us. Laney runs her drill while I bring the bags in, and the boots go down by the door pointing the direction she chooses.

The sight of it tonight, after the roses and the note and the photograph and the rig, lands on me sideways. Fourteen months of that drill. Fourteen months of a woman rebuilding herself in rooms like this one, one placed boot at a time, while a man with a badge graded her from the dark.

She shoots the deadbolt and turns around, and the whole day is still on her, riding her shoulders like weather.

I cross the room before she takes a step. My fingers find her chin and tip her face up, the move that's been passing back and forth between us like a coin, and tonight it's mine. "Tell me what you need."

"Tonight?" Her eyes come up hot and tired and steady all at once. "Make the day disappear, cowboy. If you can."

"Done." I hold her jaw and her pupils go wide at the word. "Yes or no, Laney. Say it out loud. That's how it works in this room."

"Yes." Her chin lifts in my grip, pure challenge. "Obviously, yes."

"Then here's the last thing you decide tonight." I slide my thumb along her cheekbone, watching her track it. "Last night I sat where you could watch my hands."

"I remember." The guard behind her eyes stands down, and her voice drops. "Tonight I don't need to watch them."

That goes through me whole. Seven words, and every cinch on me goes slack at once.

I strip her slowly and thoroughly, buttons and belt and boots, turning her where I want her, and she lets me move her, which from this woman is its own kind of surrender. Her breath goes ragged before I've touched anything that would explain it. When she's bare I walk her two steps backward to the dresser, stand behind her, and tip her head back toward the mirror with one hand spread across her throat, loose as a rein and going nowhere.

"Eyes up." Her gaze snaps to mine in the glass and tries to slide off her own reflection, and I don't allow it. "No. Look at her. A man spent fourteen months watching you from the dark to make you smaller. Tonight you're going to watch what I see."

She watches. My hands travel over her in the mirror, her breasts, her nipples drawn tight under my calluses, the flat of her belly, the flare of her hips, and I take my time about it because the watching is the point, her own eyes going glassy at the sight of herself being wanted in full light instead of studied from shadow. When my fingers finally slide down between her thighs, she's already drenched for me, slick heat coating my hand, and the sound she makes cracks in the middle.

"Louder," I tell her, working her slow, two fingers buried inside her and my thumb rolling her clit with no mercy at all, her spine arching back against where I'm hard as a fence post against her. "Nobody's grading you tonight. Give me the noise."

She gives it. She rides my hand shameless, grinding back into me, chasing the pressure, and I keep her facing the glass while I work her, and she comes apart standing, clenching hard around my fingers, my mouth on her neck and her eyes on the mirror the whole way through it, gripping my forearm hard enough to leave her name in it, loud enough that the room next door learns mine.

I bring my fingers up where she can watch, and I taste her, slow, holding her eyes in the glass. Her whole body shudders against me, one long involuntary wave.

Then I take her to bed and let her watch as I rid myself of my clothes.

I lay her out and settle over her, my weight on my forearms, and she reaches for my shoulders and I catch both her hands instead, lace my fingers through hers, and press them into the mattress beside her head. Held, and holding back, both at once. Her eyes flare.

"So damn sure of yourself," she says, breathless, and it isn't a complaint. It's a dare.

"Sure of you." I push my cock into her in one long slow stroke that goes to the root, tight wet heat gripping me the whole way down, and it turns whatever she planned to say next into a sound with no spelling. "File a complaint in the morning."

She laughs, actually laughs, underneath me with her fingers laced in mine, and then I move and the laugh comes apart into something better. I ride her the way I've wanted to since the flowers hit that office, deep and deliberate and mine, dragging every stroke out slow enough to feel her clench and flutter around me, her heels hooked hard behind my thighs pulling me deeper, sweat slicking the skin between us, and she meets me the whole way, hips rising, giving as good as she gets, cursing me and praising me in the same breath.

There's not one flinch in her, and her eyes never once go to the door. A woman who spent fourteen months sleeping with her keys on the nightstand is underneath the biggest man she knows with her hands pinned and her throat bare, and what's on her face is want with nothing guarded behind it. That trust finishes something in me the whiskey never touched.

"With me," I tell her, low, when her breath starts breaking, and I free one hand and work my thumb down over her clit where we're joined, riding her harder now, deep grinding strokes that put a sob of pure want in her throat.

She goes over with my name coming apart in her mouth, clenching around my cock in long rolling pulses that pull me over right behind her. I come buried deep inside her with her fingers crushing mine, spilling everything the day built into the only place it's ever gone clean.

She lies under me after, sweat-slick, our hands still laced, and neither of us speaks while the parking lot light buzzes through the curtain gap and the interstate hums somewhere out past it.

"Tactical debrief," she murmurs finally, when I've rolled and gathered her against my side. "Day's gone. I checked."

"Told you." I run my hand up the line of her spine, and she makes a low sound like a satisfied auditor.

Then she props her chin on my sternum and looks at me, and there's nothing fragile in it. "You want the real assessment? A whole marriage and fourteen months hunted, and tonight, in a motel I picked at random, is the safest I've ever felt with another person's hands on me. Write that in your logbook, cowboy."