Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
He’s careful.
So careful it makes my chest ache.
Every movement is a question, every shift calibrated around my responses. When my body tenses, he slows. When I pull him closer, he answers with a low sound that makes the edges of my vision spark.
I’ve never felt so… seen.
Not as an idea. Not as a crush. Not as someone’s little sister.
As me.
As Lark, messy and stubborn and scared and wanting too much.
He gives me more anyway.
At some point I realize I’m shaking—not from fear, but from the sheer force of everything hitting me at once. The danger outside. The man inside. The way my heart is beating so loud I’m sure he can hear it.
He buries his face in my neck, breath hot against my skin. “Lark,” he groans, like my name is the only thing holding him together.
I cling to him, nails digging into his shoulder blades, not to hurt but to anchor. “I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m right here.”
We find a rhythm that’s all ours.
Messy and tangled and a little desperate.
Beautiful in its imperfection.
When it finally crests—when everything snaps white and bright and too much—I feel like I’m being rewired from the inside out. Like the entire world narrows to the point where we’re joined, to the sound of his voice in my ear, to the way he holds me like breaking apart around me is not an option.
I come back to myself slowly, heartbeat roaring in my ears, chest heaving.
Knight is still above me, weight braced, forehead pressed to mine, eyes squeezed shut like he’s praying to something that might be listening.
His breath is a stuttered mess.
“Hey,” I whisper, lifting a shaky hand to brush damp hair off his forehead. “You okay?”
His eyes open.
They’re blown wide and weirdly soft.
“I am now,” he says, voice rough. “You?”
“Currently experiencing a full system reboot,” I say. “Ten out of ten. No notes.”
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh or a sob. It sounds like both.
He kisses me again, softer this time, almost reverent. He rushes to clean up and dispose of the condom, and then he’s back in bed before I can even miss him.
He rolls us carefully so I’m half on top of him, using his shoulder as a pillow, one arm wrapping around my back like he has no intention of ever letting go.
I tuck myself into the curve of him, still breathing him in, still half dazed.
The world outside the cabin is unchanged.
We’re still on a list.
Helios is still out there.
Dean and Arrow and the others are still tearing apart digital empires to make sure we get to always instead of maybe.
But in here, in this cramped little bedroom with the sheets twisted around our legs and his pulse steady under my palm, something absolutely did change.
We jumped.
And instead of falling alone, we crashed into each other.
“Knight?” I murmur after a while, my voice slow and sleepy.
“Yeah?” His fingers are tracing idle patterns on my spine, half-conscious.
“You realize there’s no going back from this, right?”
His hand pauses. Then keeps moving, slower. “Good,” he says quietly. “Because I don’t want to go back.”
I smile into his chest.
My body is tired in the best way.
My anxiety, for once, is a quiet, distant hum instead of a scream.
“I love you, you know,” I say, the words easier now, sliding out on a sigh.
He tightens his arm around me, lips brushing my hair.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I’m… getting there. Saying it out loud. For now, you’re going to have to settle for ‘I’m not letting anyone take you from me.’”
I close my eyes, letting those words sink all the way down. “That works for me,” I whisper.
Outside, the wind moves through the trees.
Somewhere beyond that, a network of monsters thinks it’s hunting us.
They’re wrong.
Because for the first time since this started, I feel like we’re not just dodging blows.
We’re building something worth fighting for.
And Knight Hayes?
He just claimed me.
Turns out, I really like being his.
FIFTEEN
BOUNTIES & BREAKFAST
KNIGHT
Waking up with Lark wrapped around me is the kind of thing my brain files under this cannot possibly be real.
She’s half on top of me, one leg thrown over my hip, face tucked into my chest, hair a dark cloud across my throat. My arm is numb, but it’s the good kind of numb.
For a minute, I just lie there and let myself have it.
No Helios. No bounties. No dark web. Just this girl, soft and warm and breathing against me, fingers curled in my hair like she latched on sometime in the night and never let go.
My chest does something complicated.
Careful not to wake her, I slide my free hand up her back, tracing idle patterns between her shoulder blades. She makes a small noise and snuggles closer, which does absolutely nothing for my blood pressure.
“Knight,” she mumbles into my shirt, voice sleep-rough. “Stop overthinking.”