It was slow, soft, and more intimate than anything he’d experienced before. Just a quiet moment in their chaotic lives as they explored each other with their hands and mouths. When she orgasmed again, her body squeezed around his, and he was done. He shook and tensed with her as their orgasms peaked together, consumed them, and then faded.
He relaxed on top of her, everything in him shaking from his release and the beauty of the connection they’d just shared. He felt raw, like his chest had been peeled wide open for her examination, and yet so relaxed he was already drifting toward sleep, using her breast as a pillow.
Sage’s fingers twined into his hair, and the sensation was achingly familiar. She’d always played with his hair after sex, and he’d always liked it, had missed it after she left.
He tightened his arms around her. He couldn’t let her leave again. It might break him if she did. “What’s your story, Sage? I wish you’d tell me.”
Her hand paused halfway through his hair. Fuck. Why’d he have to go and open his trap? He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. It was just a wayward thought that his sex-dazed, half-asleep brain processed into actual words, and he shouldn’t have let his guard down enough to allow it to slip out. He fully expected her to clam up and pull away from him again…
But she didn’t.
Instead, she continued combing her fingers through his hair. “Once upon a time, I was sweet and innocent…” She tugged his hair hard enough that he either had to look at her or risk a bald spot. She smirked. “But then shit happened.”
A burst of laughter escaped him. Damn, if that wasn’t a perfect summation of his own life. “C’mon. You were never sweet or innocent, vixen.”
Sage rolled and straddled him, lightly scraping her nails down his chest. “I was so. I wore pigtails and everything. A regular Catholic schoolgirl.”
“Yeah?” He cupped her gorgeous ass in both hands and squeezed. “I’d love to see that.”
“Play your cards right and maybe you will.” She leaned over and grazed her lips across his, then sat upright again when her stomach grumbled loudly enough that he could hear it. She climbed off him. “But right now, I need pizza.”
He propped himself up on one arm and watched her, gloriously naked and unconcerned about it, as she rummaged through the nightstand drawer for the requisite binder of take-out menus found in every motel. “I forgot about your insatiable appetite for after-sex pizza.”
She gave him a look of feigned outrage. “After-sex pizza was our tradition. How could you forget?”
He hadn’t really. Last fall, during the week they’d spent snowed in together, they’d subsided solely on sex and frozen pizzas. He hadn’t been able to eat a slice since without thinking of her.
“I’ll order. Go in and get cleaned up.” He got off the bed and took the binder from her. “The usual?”
Her smile said she knew he’d been lying about forgetting, but she didn’t call him out on it. “Extra pepperoni.” She started toward the bathroom but swung back around. “Vaughn?” She waited until he gazed up from the binder. “You were never going to turn me over to the police, were you?”
No point in carrying on that ruse. It had been paper-thin to start, and now it was all but transparent. He closed the binder and met her gaze. “No, that was never my plan.”
Relief filled her eyes, but she still sank her teeth worriedly into her bottom lip. “So what is your plan?”
At this point, he had no fucking clue. “Let’s take today for ourselves, and tomorrow we’ll figure everything else out.”
She clasped his trident in one hand, then released it after a second and nodded. “Okay.” She drew a breath. “Okay.” Then she grinned and motioned toward his hips. “You keeping that thing as a souvenir or what?”
He gazed down. Ah, hell. Had he really just had an entire conversation with a condom drooping off his cock? He’d been so wrapped up in her he’d completely forgotten to deal with it. “Maybe. Unless you plan to use another one.”
“Oh, I plan to use several more. You might want to order us a couple pizzas,” she added and disappeared into the bathroom.
A thrill coursed through him—the exact kind of adrenaline high he usually got from a good cage-fighting match. But sparring with Sage was better than anything he ever got from the octagon. Better even than the rush of jumping out of a plane or creeping in behind enemy lines.
Jesus, he’d missed her.
And if he only had today with her, he was damn well going to make the most of it.
…
They spent the rest of the day and all night in bed, alternating between sleeping, eating cold pizza, and making love. It was definitely making love, too, nothing like the hard and fast, angry fuck in the front seat of the rental car. It reminded Sage of their time together before she left DC, when for a short while she’d felt like everything might just turn out okay, when she’d thought she might be done running and could finally be…well, not her old self—because that woman was long gone—but a better version.
That was the problem with being with Vaughn. She’d always felt comfortable around him, like she didn’t have to wear one of her disguises. She didn’t have to be anyone she didn’t want to be.
It should scare her.