Fingers dig into my ass and his golden eyes remain fixed on mine, and then he thrusts forward and claims me forever.

My moan shatters the hotel room.

He drives into me with slow, sensual strokes. I clutch the sheets beneath me, head thrown back. I’m falling and spiraling and crying out his name. Reid folds over me, one hand landing beside on the bed while the other clutches my hip.

I can feel the breadth of his naked chest against my back.

His breath, hot and fast, against my nape.

Tilting my head to the side, heat flushes over my skin as he accepts the wordless invitation and presses his lips to my neck. I move my hand over his, interlacing our fingers, and breathe his name. “I’m going to come,” I pant, thrusting my hips backward to meet his strokes. “Oh, God, I’m going to—”

His fingers drop away from my hip to slip between my thighs.

One touch.

One thrust of his cock.

And I explode with a cry, shuddering in his arms and bowing my back and grabbing his hand to keep his finger circling my clit while I ride out the storm.

“You feel so good,” he mutters against my neck.

“Like fate.”

“Like you were always meant to be mine, Laela Donna. Like you’ve been mine all along.”

He grasps my hip, leveraging his weight so that he angles his hips to thrust upward with every stroke. He grunts my name and brushes his lips over my shoulder. This man is a contradiction of shadows and light, bold and aggressive one minute and sweet and romantic the next. And when he comes, it’s with a jagged groan that lights me up from within like a wave of sunlight on the coldest winter day.

Gently, he lowers us to the bed. Rolling us onto our backs, he pulls me halfway over his body so that I can rest my chin on his chest. Eyes closed, he draws circles over my shoulder blade. “Do you hate me, Laela?”

It’s a joke, I think.

A play on every moment in the last year and a half when I’ve signed off each email with Regretfully in hate, Laela Donna.

I press a kiss to his damp skin. “No, Agent Paxon. I don’t hate you.”

“Do you like me?” The corner of his mouth lifts. “Could you see putting up with me for the foreseeable future?”

My heart squeezes at the vulnerability coated within humor.