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She hadn’t stood with him. She hadn’t helped him.

You are leaving.

That thought punctured a hole in that inflating sense of self, but she ignored it. And she kept on kissing him, rolled her hips in time with his touch.

Because he was glorious. Because she wanted him.

And that was more important than anything. Than what the future held, than who they were now, and who they would become.

This was what mattered.

He pulled the straps on her dress down, exposing her breasts, then lowered his head and sucked one nipple deep into his mouth.

With searching hands, she undid the buckle on his jeans.

He was still wearing his shirt, his cowboy hat.

She reached inside his pants and wrapped her hand around all that hard steel.

Then she exposed him, stroking the length of him, positioning him between her thighs.

She urged him into her, gasping when he filled her.

She had already been boneless and replete with the effects of one orgasm by the time he had been inside her last night. She was tender today, and it hurt a bit. But she didn’t want him any less.

She wanted him so, so much.

If anything, this just proved how much. How much she was willing to pay for the chance to be possessed by him.

That desperation almost frightened her.

Because she knew what it was like to want things she couldn’t have.

To want things that could be taken away from her.

She was far too familiar with it. With that freefall sensation that happened when the rug was pulled out from beneath you.

Those things had formed her. They had made her.

But she had climbed the mountain; she hadn’t fallen off. And she would climb this mountain, too.

Because she wanted to.

Because she wanted to acclimate. That was enough. They had decided that. That just wanting to was enough.

So she clung to his shoulders, and she met him thrust for thrust, kissed him with wild abandon as he moved in and out of her, the sweet slide of his hardness inside her softness making her feral.

Turning her into her own brand of soldier.

A warrior.

His equal.

She wasn’t Rory from middle school any more than he was Gideon from high school.

They were both changed. They were both different. More now than they had ever been. But somehow they had come to this moment together. And it was perfect. Glorious and brilliant, a shimmering testament to their strength and their need.

He was everything.