For a split second, he doesn’t react, but just stares at me impassively. Then it’s like a curtain is lifted over his face and understanding makes his eyes soften with empathy as he gets everything about me in one clear moment.

Two long steps and he’s in front of me.

His hands go to the sides of my head, hold me in place, and he leans his face down until our noses are almost touching. “Of course I love you.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, the tears making a fool out of me as they spill out.

“Don’t,” Beck orders me, his eyes flicking back and forth between my own. His command is almost harsh, but his voice gently cradles my battered self-esteem. “Don’t you apologize for a thing to me. You did nothing wrong.”

I blink and more tears fall. “If only I’d—”

“Don’t,” he orders me again. “I’m not going to listen to it. If you’ve got some insecurities about what there is between us right now, then you ask them and let me reassure you, but don’t go about doing it by way of pointing a guilty finger at yourself. You hear me?”

I blink, clear the wetness from my eyes, and nod at him in understanding. It’s not that I wholeheartedly agree with what he’s saying to me, it’s just that I know a different way that he can reassure me that I still have his heart and he has mine.

Pushing to my tiptoes, I press my lips against his and speak against them urgently. “I need you.”

“You’ve got me,” he says, causing his lips to open, and when he tilts his head slightly to the right, I tilt mine in the opposite direction and slip my tongue into his mouth for a deep but brief kiss.

When I pull back, I look up at him and say, “I need you to fuck me.”

Beck’s eyes have been flatlined for the past several hours, burdened with death and consequences, but with those simple words fire sizzles and his jaw tightens. “You want me to fuck you? Right now?”

“And hard,” I murmur with a nod, pressing my body into his. I feel his dick starting to swell and give a little grind against him. “Really hard.”

He doesn’t answer me but responds by spinning me around, pushing me into the wall and then stepping up against my backside. I feel every single inch of him, even with the barrier of clothing still between us. For the first time in hours, I feel connected to him, despite the way in which he’s tried to protect me and the ways in which we banded together against the detectives’ questioning.

Only with the physicality of his touch and the fire I just saw in his eyes can I truly be assured that things might be okay between us.

Beck nuzzles his cheek up against the side of my head as his right hand slips down the front of my sweatpants and straight into my panties. He pushes his fingers straight into me, going deep. He makes me squirm and plead, “More, Beck. I want more than that.”

He gives a dark rumble of a laugh. “I’ll give it to you, love. Always trust that I’ll give it to you.”

Beck moves his fingers in and out of me, his lips on my neck and whispering filthy promises peppered with reassurances.

“You think my fingers are driving you crazy, Sela? Just wait until I fuck you with my cock. Then you’ll see how much I burn for you…always.”

Beck drives me wild until I’m begging for it, and then my pants are gone and apparently so are his, because he’s driving his cock into me from behind while I’m pressed up against the wall.

He holds still for a moment, gets his bearings, and then pulls my hips back slightly all while pressing a hand in between my shoulder blades to keep my torso against the wall. Placing his teeth at my shoulder, he gives me a tiny nip and whispers, “What you and I have, Sela…no one will ever comprehend it. No one will ever come in between it. But it’s real and it’s ours, and I’m never letting it go.”

I sigh out a long breath of relief over his words as well as pent-up sexual frustration. I circle my hips and get Beck focused back on the task at hand.

As requested, he fucks me hard, his pelvis slapping against mine. In between grunts of pleasure, he whispers in my ear, “Is this what you wanted, Sela? Is this how you wanted me to prove that you’re still mine?”

I nod, gasping and writhing with no control over my actions.

“Don’t ever doubt it,” he tells me after slamming deep and rotating his hips. “Don’t ever doubt that you are mine and this pussy is mine and that I’m never giving it up. I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect what’s mine.”

My orgasm explodes in response to his proclamations…his thrusts…fuck, I don’t know what it is, but when Beck declares that I’m his, my body acknowledges it by surrendering every piece of control and ownership of feeling to him.

That orgasm didn’t belong to me.

That belonged solely to Beck, and we both know it.

I can’t explain the heightened sense of awareness, but I come wide awake and realize that something is wrong. I immediately know Sela’s not in bed with me and the bedside clock says it’s just past five A.M.

We didn’t go to sleep until nearly two, and that’s because I was busy fucking reassurances into my girl.

I fucked her hard up against the bedroom wall as she requested, and when she came, I pulled out and threw her down on the bed. Put my face between her legs and made her come again.

Flipped her onto her stomach and rode her hard and fast from behind, and because she wasn’t coming again fast enough for me, I pressed a finger in her ass and that did the trick. She screamed in relief…release…pleasure…all of it. Only then did I finally let loose, pouring every bit of myself into her.

Only then did we let the trauma of the day overcome us, and we fell to the mattress together, immediately succumbing to sleep.

By all accounts, I shouldn’t be awake. I’m beyond exhausted from the mental stress of the situation, and yet I’m hyperalert as I realize that Sela’s not here and the leaden feeling in my stomach tells me there’s something wrong.

I hastily roll out of bed, grabbing my underwear from the floor and putting it on.

“Sela?” I call out, unable to bear the wait of a search through the condo.

I almost collapse with relief when she answers back softly, “I’m in the living room.”

I find her there on the couch, legs curled under her and an empty cup of tea on the coffee table. She’s sitting in the warm glow of the end table light, wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts. Her new blond hair is no longer a shock to me, and because it suits her so well, I can’t really even remember how gorgeous she was as a brunette.