Page 86 of The Captain

He moved with the same focused intensity he brought to everything, deep and unhurried, and she matched him, her hips rising to meet each stroke, her fingers tracing the line of his spine. The room narrowed to the heat of him and the sound of his breathing and the specific, devastating way he said her name when she pulled him closer.

The tension built again, sharper this time, overwhelming, and she wrapped herselfaround him and let it take her. When she came apart it was complete and helpless, and within moments, he followed her with a ragged shout.

He collapsed against her, his face pressed into her hair. She lay tucked into him. The Brand was warm and settled on her palm, and the ring cool and new on her finger. Neither of them spoke for a longtime.

She didn’t need to. She turned her hand slightly and watched the diamond catch what remained of the afternoon light, throwing small bright points across the ceiling. She thought about his grandmother wearing it. His mother keeping it. Him carrying it without telling her, waiting for the right moment with that particular, infuriating patience of his. She thought she should find that unsettling. She found it, instead, the most Magnus thing she had ever heard. She pressed her mouth to his shoulder.

He stirred. His arm tightened around her, his thumb moving in an arc across her hip, and after a moment he said, “Law school.”

She lifted her head to look athim.

The corner of his mouth moved. “I wanted you to know I’ve already been looking into it.”

She stared at him. “You’ve been planning my education.”

“Researching options. There’s a difference.”

She laughed, the same open, helpless sound she’d finally stopped trying to contain, and let him absorb it the way he always did. She settled back against him. Outside, the city continued its indifferent glittering. The Severin estate held its exhaledsilence.

She was keeping him. The ring and the Brand and the man who’d walked into a room where she was invisible and refused to look away. She was keeping all ofit.

She intended to keep it for the rest of herlife.