Page 128 of Just One Little Bargain

I lock in place behind her, breathing through my teeth while she holds my hand.

“Milo. Move.”

I do. I draw back enough to watch her body hold on to me, the slick pull of her following almost to the tip. When I press forward again, I can’t look anywhere else.

Her ass lifts into every thrust, soft beneath the narrow curve of her waist. She’s small enough that my hands could nearly span her hips, but there’s nothing slight about the way she takes me. My cock disappears between her thighs before her body closes tight around me again.

I’ve seen statues carved in worship of bodies like hers. None of them ever moved like this.

Her free hand reaches behind her and catches my hip, keeping me buried.

“More,” she gasps. “Harder.”

I give it to her, driving into her harder as my free hand slips between her legs. I find her swollen clit and work it with tight, deliberate circles, holding steady when she clenches around me. Every pulse draws me closer to the edge, but she has to get there first.

“You’re doing so good,” I murmur. “Come for me, Evie. I need to know what it feels like when you give me everything.”

She comes with a broken cry, her body pulsing hard around me. I keep my fingers moving through every contraction, her hips jerking beneath mine while my name breaks from her until the sound is unrecognizable.

I bury deep, forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, and let go in thick pulses, every spurt wrung out of me by her fluttering body.

“I don’t know how I found you,” I breathe against her skin. “But I think I’ve been looking for you my entire life.”

We stay like that until our breathing begins to settle, and the sweat cools between us. I ease out of her, and Evie gives a low, unhappy sound, her hips following me.

I fold her into my arms. She settles against me without resistance, soft in a way she rarely permits herself to be, while my palm travels slowly along her spine.

“You okay?”

Her answer is a contented hum that contains no recognizable words.

“Evie, that could mean anything from blissful to medically concerning.” I press my mouth to her hair. “Do you need water? Sugar? A chair? I’m prepared to carry you, but I should disclose that my knees are currently unreliable.”

She pulls back, eyes still heavy and unfocused. “I’m perfect. That was incredible.”

“Yeah?” I brush the hair from her cheek.

“You’re amazing.”

I have no defense against the praise. She leans into me. I kiss her forehead, her cheek, then her mouth because touching her has become a basic biological requirement.

When she looks up at me, I want more than tonight.

I want this every day. Not only her body, but her mornings and bad moods, the lists she rewrites, the routines she guards so fiercely. I could spend a lifetime learning every ordinary version of her until no corner of her life remains unfamiliar to me.

It shouldn’t be possible to feel this certain about someone this quickly, yet the certainty feels older than either of us, familiar in a way I can’t explain.

I’d trade anything for that life.

The cruelest part is knowing I’ve got nothing that could tempt Hell into giving it to me.

Chapter 37

Milo

The thing about Foxglove Inn is that it runs on a clock only Evie can hear, and I’ve spent weeks learning its pattern. Coffee before dawn. The oven at six thirty, and then the whole downstairs smelling of whatever she’s decided the guests deserve that day.

The longer I stay here, the more obvious it becomes that this place’s rhythm extends well beyond its walls. People from town appear whenever they have something the Inn could use: surplus produce from their gardens, armfuls of flowers cut before the rain can spoil them, revised walking maps, or new leaflets for whatever Brindlewood has decided to celebrate next. None of it’s presented as a favor. Someone sets things on the kitchen table or tucks them beside the reception desk while catching Evie up on a neighbor, a road closure, or which stall will be at the market that weekend. Then they leave again, as though tending to the Inn is simply part of ordinary life here.