Page 259 of Fractured Loyalties

“You still test me,” I say.

Her lips part. “Do I pass?”

“You don’t need to.” My mouth grazes her ear. “You’re mine, pass or fail.”

She exhales, a soft sound that carries heat. “Good thing I stopped running, then.”

My grip tightens, not cruel, not gentle—just enough for her body to remember where she belongs. Her knees flex, a shift of weight that betrays how fast she opens for me now. Months ago, she would have tried to hide it. Now she lets me see. Shewantsme to see.

I push her back into the counter, press my hips to hers, and feel the hunger spark sharp and instant. The stack of clinic files wobbles under her hand. She doesn’t move them. She spreads her legs instead, the defiance of a woman who no longer fears what it means to want.

“Still messy,” I murmur against her mouth. “You should know by now I don’t tolerate distractions on my counters.”

“Then move them,” she whispers back.

I almost laugh. Almost. I slide the files aside with one arm, scattering papers across marble, and lift her onto the counterwhere she belongs. The sound she makes is low, needy, not afraid. Never afraid anymore.

Her thighs wrap me in, bare under the dress she wears for no one but me. She doesn’t ask permission when her mouth meets mine, but the way she leans into my hand when I close harder around her throat tells me she remembers the rules. She remembers who wrote them.

I break the kiss long enough to see her eyes—blown wide, wet around the edges, daring me to take more.

“You were made for this,” I tell her.

She bites my lip, hard enough to taste copper. “So were you.”

The sound in my chest doesn’t feel like a laugh or a growl. It’s something worse. Something better. I grip her wrists and slam them flat against the counter, pinning her while I grind against the heat waiting for me under thin fabric. She arches up, chasing friction like she’s forgotten what patience means.

“I own your mornings,” I remind her.

“You own all of me,” she says, raw, unflinching.

The admission should feel like victory. It feels like peace.

I kiss her until I feel her melt, her body caged under mine, her pulse drumming against my hand, her voice spilling truths that don’t sound like fear anymore.

The phone buzzes against the counter, sharp enough to cut through the air between us. Mara stiffens in my grip, then exhales like she wants to ignore it. I don’t move at first. I want to keep her pinned here, her pulse under my hand, her body under mine.

But she tilts her chin toward the phone. “It might be Celeste.”

I release her wrists, slow, unwilling. Her skin stays marked under my fingers, faint imprints that will fade too soon. She slides off the counter, smoothing her dress like I didn’t just crush her against the marble. Her composure has teeth now. She wears it so well.

She collects the folder of clinic files she’d been sorting before I interrupted her. She keeps working, sliding the papers back into order, even with the heat still rising off her skin.

I pick up the phone. The name glows on the screen: Celeste Varon.

Mara’s head lifts, eyes brightening in a way they never do with anyone else. She plucks the phone from my hand before I decide whether to answer. “Celeste, hi.”

Her voice softens, careful but genuine. She listens while Celeste asks questions—the clinic schedule, the intake files Mara had been updating, her health. Alec’s voice drifts faintly in the background, steady and grounding. Mara’s mouth curves, not quite a smile, but the closest thing she gives the world outside this apartment. She laughs once, brief and unguarded, and the sound digs into me in ways nothing else does.

When she passes the phone back, Celeste has one more line. “We’d like to see her soon. Both of you, if you’ll come.”

I don’t answer right away. Mara’s watching me too closely. I press the phone to my ear. “We’ll see.”

Celeste sighs. Not for Mara—for me. “Just don’t let her forget she has a place outside your walls.”

I hang up before Mara can read it on my face.

She sets the files aside and studies me anyway. “They want to see me. At the clinic.”