Page 53 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

FORTY-SIX

Finding My Way Back

GABE

The bedroom feels different in the aftermath. Quieter. Like the ghosts that have been haunting us have finally decided to give us some space to breathe.

Ally sleeps curled against my chest, her breathing deep and even for the first time in days. No nightmares. No restless tossing. Just peace written across features that have carried too much pain lately.

I can’t sleep. Too much adrenaline still coursing through my system, too many thoughts circling like vultures in my head. But for the first time since Hank died, they’re not all dark thoughts.

We did it. We actually fucking did it. Made love without him and didn’t fall apart. Didn’t discover that everything between us was just proximity to his light. Found something that’s ours—different from what we had before, maybe sadder, but definitely real.

Her hand rests over my heart, fingers splayed across skin she’s marked with her nails. The sting feels good. Feels like proof that I’m still capable of feeling something other than grief.

“Can’t sleep?” Her voice comes soft and drowsy, eyes still closed.

“Thinking.”

“About?”

“About how that didn’t feel like betrayal.”

She shifts against me, tilting her head to meet my eyes. “What did it feel like?”

“Like coming home.” I consider the question, searching for words that fit the tangle of emotions in my chest. “Like remembering who I am when I’m not drowning in guilt.”

“Who are you when you’re not drowning?”

“Yours.” The word slips out before I can stop it, raw and honest. “I’m yours, Ally. I always have been.”

Her eyes widen slightly. We haven’t talked about that yet—the fight with Hank, the possessiveness that nearly destroyed us before grief finished the job.

“I know I fucked up before,” I continue. “Thinking love meant ownership. Thinking I could stake a claim on you like you were territory to be conquered.”

“Gabe—”

“Let me say this.” I frame her face with my hands, need her to understand. “What we just did—that wasn’t about possession. That was about choice. You choosing me. Me choosing you. Both of us choosing to build something new instead of letting grief bury us alive.”

She kisses me then, slow and deep, and I taste hope on her tongue alongside desire. When she pulls back, her eyes hold something I haven’t seen since before everything went to hell.

“Make love to me again,” she whispers.

“Ally …”

“Please. I need to know if we can do this more than once. I need to know if it gets easier.”

I don’t need to be asked twice. My body’s already responding to her proximity, to the way she looks at me like I’m something worth wanting instead of something broken that needs fixing.

This time there’s less hesitation. Less careful navigation around empty spaces. I know how she feels beneath my hands now, how she responds when it’s just us. The knowledge makes me bolder.

I roll her beneath me and pin her wrists above her head with one hand while the other explores territory that’s always been mine to claim. She arches into my touch, breath hitching when I find the spot that makes her lose control.

“Better?” I murmur against her throat.

“Much better.”

We move together with growing confidence, finding rhythms that belong to us alone. No ghost of a third presence. No phantom hands or imagined whispers. Just Ally and me, relearning how to set each other on fire.

When she comes apart beneath me, it’s with my name on her lips and her nails digging crescents into my shoulders. When I follow her over the edge, it’s with the knowledge that this—us—is going to survive whatever comes next.

I wake to pale morning light filtering through curtains and the soft sound of Ally’s breathing beside me. The space where Hank should be doesn’t feel like an open wound anymore. Just an empty pillow that reminds me of what we had without destroying what we have.

Ally stirs when I brush hair from her face, eyes fluttering open to reveal sleep-soft confusion that clears when she focuses on me.

“Morning,” she says, voice husky with sleep.

“Morning.”

We’ve made love twice in the last hour, and I’m already hard again. Already wanting her with an intensity that should probably concern me, but doesn’t. This is who I am—the man who wants her constantly, who can’t get enough even when she’s wrapped around me.

Hank used to tease me about it. Called me insatiable. Said watching me try to control my need for her was like watching someone try to hold back the tide.

The memory doesn’t hurt as much as it should. Instead of loss, I feel gratitude—for his understanding, for his willingness to share, for the way he never made me feel ashamed of how much I needed her.

“Again?” Ally asks, reading the intent in my eyes.

“If you’re up for it.”

“Always.”

This time, I don’t hold back. Don’t treat her like she might break if I touch her too hard or move too fast. This time, I let myself be the dominant bastard she fell in love with, the one who knows exactly how to drive her out of her mind.

I flip her onto her stomach, hands gripping her hips as I position her exactly how I want her. She pushes back against me, demanding and eager, no longer the careful woman trying not to betray a dead man’s memory.

“That’s it,” I growl when she meets me thrust for thrust. “Take what you need.”

She does. She takes everything I give her and demands more, her body moving with the grace that always destroys my control. When I slide my hand between her legs, find the bundle of nerves that makes her scream, she shatters with an intensity that nearly takes me with her.

“Don’t stop,” she gasps. “Please don’t stop.”

I don’t. Can’t. I drive into her until thought becomes impossible, until there’s nothing but sensation and connection and the primal satisfaction of claiming what’s mine.

After, we lie tangled together, sweat cooling on skin marked by teeth and nails. Ally turns in my arms, studies my face with eyes that hold wonder alongside satisfaction.

“There you are,” she says softly.

“What do you mean?”

“The man I fell in love with. The one who looks at me like he wants to devour me whole.” Her fingers trace the line of my jaw. “I was starting to worry he was gone forever.”

“Not gone. Just buried under a mountain of guilt and grief.” I catch her hand and press a kiss to her palm. “Still working on digging him out, but I think he’s going to make it.”

“Good. Because I missed him.”

“Missed who I am with you?”

“Missed who we are together.” She shifts closer, eliminating the last inch of space between us. “This—what we just did—that felt like us. Like the real us, not some pale imitation.”

She’s right. The careful distance is gone, replaced by the easy intimacy that always existed between us. The way she fits against my body like she was designed for this exact purpose. The way I can read her needs in the arch of her spine, the catch of her breath.

“Shower?” I suggest. “Before we get too comfortable and spend the entire day in bed.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

“Terrible? No. But I’m pretty sure we need to eat actual food at some point.”

She laughs, the sound lighter than anything I’ve heard from her since the medical bay. “Fine. But I’m stealing your shampoo.”

“You always steal my shampoo.”

“Because it smells like you, and I like smelling like you.”

The casual intimacy of the statement hits me harder than it should.

These small things—shared shampoo, tangled legs, the way she steals my coffee in the morning—these are what make a life together.

Not grand gestures or dramatic declarations.

Just the accumulated weight of a thousand small choices to choose each other every day.

The shower is exactly what we need—hot water washing away the last traces of distance, steam creating a cocoon where only we exist. I wash her hair with the reverence she deserves, fingers massaging her scalp until she melts against me.

She returns the favor, hands mapping every inch of skin like she’s memorizing me all over again. When she drops to her knees and takes me in her mouth, I have to brace myself against the shower wall to keep from falling.

“Fuck, Ally.”

She hums around me, the vibration nearly destroying what little control I have left. When I fist my hand in her wet hair, she doesn’t pull away. Just looks up at me with eyes that hold challenge alongside submission.

The combination unravels me completely. I come with her name on my lips and stars exploding behind my eyelids, knees threatening to buckle from the intensity.

She stands slowly, licks her lips with satisfaction that makes my spent cock twitch with renewed interest.

“Better?” she asks.

“You’re going to kill me.”

“What a way to go.”

We finish the shower with hands that linger and touches that promise more later. When we finally emerge, pink-skinned and thoroughly satisfied, the world feels manageable for the first time in days.

I wrap her in the oversized towel she loves; the one that swallows her whole and makes her look impossibly beautiful. She does the same for me, movements gentle and reverent.

“I love you,” I say, because the words feel important in this moment.

“I love you too.”

“Even though I’m a bossy bastard?”

“Especially because of that.” She rises on her toes to kiss me, soft and sweet. “I don’t want you to be nice anymore, Gabe. I want you to be mine the way I’m yours. Completely. No reservations.”

The words hit like absolution. Permission to be exactly who I am without apology or modification. Permission to love her with the intensity that always scared me before.

“Completely,” I repeat, sealing the promise with another kiss.

We dress in comfortable clothes—jeans and T-shirts that feel like freedom after days of grief-soaked formal wear. Walk hand in hand toward the kitchen, already planning coffee and breakfast and the simple pleasure of a normal morning.

The plan evaporates the moment we reach the living room.