Page 25 of After Hours

“Good girl,” Zachary murmured, and she understood that he knew what was happening inside of her. “You can come when you like, Romily.”

He could read all of this. He could read her. She was an open book to him, and that, too, felt like an impossibility. And made her feel safer than she ever had before in her life.

And the more she moved, penetrated so deeply in two places, the more she felt another tectonic shift happening inside of her. This time, the moment she thought about it—it was happening.

She was coming and coming, so hard it was shocking to her that something didn’t break?—

And then he was coming too. Romily found herself desperately wishing that they had already fast forwarded to whatever place they were going, so there would be nothing between them, not even that little bit of latex.

Thinking of him flooding her made her orgasm contract all over again.

This time, when they were finished and she was limp in his arms, he carried her to the bed and deposited her there.

She was vaguely aware of him moving around, then going into the bathroom. She heard the water turn on and then he was back beside her, using a warm cloth on her pussy and her ass, and a different one on her face. All the while, he murmured things she didn’t quite catch in that low voice of his.

It felt a lot like a lullaby.

“Time for you to get some sleep, little bird,” he said, reading her mind again.

But she frowned at him, though her body still felt as it was off on a different planet somewhere. Because she needed to tell him the truth, even now. Even in whatever state this was he’d left her in.

“I don’t really sleep that well,” she said softly.

His blue gaze was electric. “You will fall asleep and you will stay asleep,” he told her.

Romily felt her whole body shift at that, as if he’d adjusted her with that look alone. As if he could control her sleep as well as everything else.

Zachary lay down beside her and pulled her to him, settling her against his body as if she belonged there. As if she’d always meant to be tucked next to him like that. She pressed her face into his chest, breathing him in deep.

He reached off to the side and came back to the set of handcuffs, made of a soft leather and connected by a smooth chain. “You’re mine,” he told her. “And you’re safe.”

And then his too-blue eyes bored into her, as if he was daring her to dispute this vow he was making.

There wasn’t a single spare part of her that wanted to do that.

Solemnly, as if this was a sacred moment, Romily nodded. Then held her wrists out as he clipped her into the cuffs, made sure they were tight, and pulled her back against his chest.

He held her, then began to breathe. Slow and deep.

She followed suit and was asleep within seconds.

When she woke up, sunlight was pouring in all of his windows, she was alone in his bed and still in those cuffs, and Romily couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well. Or been sohappy.

Especially when she looked up and saw him watching her from the doorway.

She couldn’t help the way she beamed at him. “I feel like a phoenix,” she said.

And Romily watched as this Viking of a man—her urban Viking—smiled. As if she was the only woman who had ever existed or ever would.

He made her believe that, too.

“Little bird,” he said, “I think it’s time to fly.”

Chapter Seven

The next few months were the best of Romily’s life.

Zachary was very serious about testing. He insisted that her IUD was checked out by his doctor, which Romily was fine with as she’d had to have it inserted at a questionable clinic in the first place. She’d done it right after she’d left Joseph, because she never intended to leave her fertility in anyone else’s hands again.

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