Wade scooped Truenai into his arms, the strain in his shoulder a sharp, bright protest he willfully ignored.

He carried her the few steps down the short, dark hallway, her breath hot against his neck, her arms locked around him. He shouldered the bedroom door open and didn’t bother with the light. The ambient glow from the main room was enough. He laid her on the narrow bed, the thin mattress groaning, and his body covered hers before she could even sink into the fabric.

His mouth found hers again, not a question but a claiming. The taste of her—coffee and fear and her own unique warmth—drove a low sound from his chest.

‘Tell me what you need,’ he growled against her lips, his hands already working at the buttons of her shirt. His fingers, usually so deft with a weapon or cuffs, fumbled. The small pearl buttons felt impossibly small.

Truenai arched into him, her hips pressing up, seeking friction. Her own hands were at his belt, the leather and metal a more familiar puzzle. ‘You,’ she gasped, the word torn from somewhere deep. ‘All of you. No more waiting.’

The last button gave way. He pushed the soft cotton of her shirt apart, revealing the simple, practical bra beneath. It was white, almost clinical. The contrast with the heat of her skin, the frantic rise and fall of her chest, was its own kind of provocation.

Her fingers finally wrestled his belt open, the buckle clinking against the wooden bed frame. She yanked at the button of his jeans, then the zipper. The relief was immediate and profound as the constricting denim gave way. His cock, hard and straining against his boxer briefs, sprang free into the cool air of the room, then pressed insistently against her thigh through her pants.

‘Off,’ he muttered, his voice ragged. He helped her shove his jeans and boxers down his hips, just enough. His hands went to the waistband of her trousers, popping the button and dragging the zipper down in one rough, continuous motion.

She lifted her hips, a silent, urgent plea, and he stripped her pants and underwear down her legs in a single, desperate pull. They landed somewhere on the floor with a soft whisper of fabric.

And then there was nothing between them but skin.

The world narrowed, sharpened, then dissolved into a universe of sensation. The heat of her belly against his. The firm muscle of her thighs bracketing his hips. The soft, crushing weight of her breasts against his chest, only the thin lace of her bra between them. He could feel her heart hammering against his own, a wild, syncopated rhythm.

He broke the kiss to trail his mouth down her jaw, her throat. He found the front clasp of her bra and released it with a flick of his thumb. She shuddered as the garment fell away.

‘Wade,’ she breathed, her hands coming up to frame his face, forcing him to look at her.

Her eyes were dark pools in the low light, wide and unblinking. No tease now. No mask. Just raw, open want, and beneath it, a vulnerability that cracked something open behind his ribs.

He lowered his head and took one taut nipple into his mouth. She cried out, her back bowing off the bed, her fingers threading into his hair and holding him there. He laved and suckled, his hand finding her other breast, thumb brushing over the peak until it was a hard pebble against his palm.

He moved lower, his mouth blazing a trail down her sternum, over the quivering plane of her stomach. He kissed the hollow of her hip, his stubble scraping delicate skin.

‘What are you—’ she started, her voice thin.

He didn’t answer. He hooked his hands under her knees and gently pushed, opening her to him. The scent of her arousal hit him first—musky, intimate, profoundly female. In the faint light, he could see the glistening evidence of her need.

He didn’t tease. He put his mouth on her.

Truenai’s whole body seized. A sharp, broken gasp was followed by a moan that seemed to start in her soul and tear its way out. Her hips jerked involuntarily. His hands held her steady, his grip firm on her thighs as he tasted her, licking into her with slow, deliberate strokes that soon turned relentless.

Her cries were a ragged symphony above him. ‘Oh, god. Oh, please.’ Her hands were fists in the cheap bedding. ‘Wade, I can’t—I’m going to—’

He drove her over the edge, his tongue circling the tight, swollen bud of her clit until her thighs trembled and a shattered cry was ripped from her throat. He felt her convulse around his tongue, a series of pulsing waves, and he drank her in, staying with her until the last tremor subsided and she went boneless against the mattress, breathing in ragged sobs.

He crawled back up her body, his own need a throbbing, painful ache. He kissed her stomach, her ribs, the valley between her breasts, finally reclaiming her mouth. She could taste herself on his lips and tongue, and she kissed him back with a newfound, languid hunger.

He positioned himself at her entrance. She was slick and hot and ready. He looked down, meeting her gaze. Her hazel eyes were hazy, but focused on him. On his face.

‘This changes everything,’ he whispered, the words a vow and a confession.

Then he pushed into her, one slow, deliberate, devastating inch.

Truenai’s eyes fluttered shut. Her mouth fell open on a silent gasp. The stretch was exquisite, a perfect, burning fullness she’d only imagined. He was big, and she felt every ridge, every vein as he sank deeper, giving her time to adjust, to accept him.

When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt, he stopped. A fine tremor ran through his arms where they braced on either side of her head. Sweat beaded on his temple. The protest in his shoulder was a distant scream, utterly irrelevant.

‘Look at me,’ he ground out.

She forced her eyes open. The intensity in his gaze, the sheer, unchecked possession, stole the air from her lungs.

He began to move.

He drove into her, harder, deeper, claiming the space she’d given him, claiming her. Each thrust was a punctuation to his vow. This changes everything. The bedframe knocked a dull, rhythmic protest against the wall.

Truenai’s cry was swallowed by his mouth. Her hands scrambled for purchase, finding the sweat-slick planes of his back, digging in. There was no more gentleness, no more deliberate delay. This was need, pure and voracious, a fire they’d banked for days now roaring unchecked.

His wounded shoulder burned, a white-hot brand of pain that only sharpened the pleasure, grounding him in the brutal, beautiful reality of her body. He welcomed it. The pain was proof this was real, that she was real, arching beneath him, meeting every drive with a lift of her hips.

“Wade.” His name was a gasp, a plea, a command.

He broke the kiss, his forehead dropping to hers. Their breath mixed, hot and ragged. “Tell me,” he growled, his pace relentless. “Tell me you feel it.”

“I feel you.” Her voice was shattered glass. “Everywhere.”

It was true. The world had dissolved into sensation. The coarse drag of the cheap sheets under her back. The salty taste of his skin when she turned her head to press her mouth to his shoulder. The solid, driving weight of him, pinning her to the present, to this room, to this choice.

He shifted his angle, just slightly, and the change was electric. A sharp, bright sound tore from her throat. Her eyes flew open, wide, locked on his.

He saw it—the exact moment pleasure tipped over the edge into something indistinguishable from pain, the moment her control shattered completely. He held that angle, chasing the shocked bliss in her expression.

“There?” His question was rough.

She couldn’t speak. She nodded, a frantic, desperate motion, her body beginning to coil tight around him. The tension was a visible tremor in her thighs, a tightening of her fingers on his back.

He was close. The pressure built at the base of his spine, a storm gathering. But he watched her, anchored by her face, by the flicker of the streetlamp across her features. He saw the nurse there, the professional composure she wore like armor, now utterly gone. He saw the woman beneath, fearless and fragile, giving herself over to him.

Duty was a shredded concept, back in the motel room with Reed’s betrayal. This was all that remained. This truth. This skin.

“Come for me, Truenai,” he whispered, intimate and raw. “Let go.”

It was the permission, the rough tenderness in his voice, that undid her. The coil snapped. Her back arched off the mattress, a silent scream on her lips as the climax ripped through her, violent and consuming. She clenched around him, a series of pulsating waves that milked his length, dragging a ragged groan from his chest.

The sight of her, lost to it, tipped him over. His thrusts lost rhythm, becoming hard, final punctuations. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, his own release tearing through him with a force that left him blind and deaf to anything but the feel of her, the smell of her—vanilla and sex and sweat.

He collapsed, his weight a welcome anchor, his body shuddering through the last aftershocks. He remembered his shoulder at the last second, caught most of his weight on his forearms, but still settled against her, spent.

For long minutes, there was only the sound of their struggling breaths, the slowing hammer of their hearts. The stripe of light from the window cut across them, illuminating the rise and fall of her chest beneath his cheek.

Slowly, reality seeped back in. The dust in the air. The distant hum of a refrigerator. The sticky coolness of sweat drying on his skin.

He felt her hand come up, her fingers threading gently through his damp hair. Not pushing him away. Holding him there.

He finally found the strength to lift his head. He was still inside her, still joined. Her eyes were open, watching him. The haze was receding, replaced by a quiet, profound awareness.

He didn’t move. He couldn’t. This was the everything that had changed. The line was not just crossed; it was erased, paved over by the heat still lingering between their bodies.

“My shoulder’s screaming,” he said, his voice a wrecked, hoarse thing.

A soft, breathless laugh escaped her. “I’m not surprised.” Her other hand came up, traced the line of the bandage on his opposite shoulder. “You tore the sutures. Again.”

“Worth it.”

She smiled, a real, slow smile that reached her eyes. It faded as her gaze searched his. “What now, Deputy?”

The title, after what they’d just done, was a deliberate provocation. A reminder of the world waiting outside the door.

He finally shifted, withdrawing from her, rolling onto his back beside her with a grunt of pain. The loss of connection was a physical chill. He stared at the water-stained ceiling. “Now, I’m not a deputy. Not in this room.”

She turned onto her side, propping her head on her hand. The sheet pooled at her waist. “What are you, then?”

He looked at her. The streetlight gilded the curve of her shoulder, the swell of her breast, the serious line of her mouth. “Yours,” he said. The word hung in the air, simple and terrifying. “At least until this is over. However it ends.”