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“I kept it,” I say. “I kept it through the canary trap and the lender call and the stampede. I kept it while you were bleeding on an auction-block step and while a man swung a bar at your head. I kept it because I wanted to see who we would be after you gave up the access you took.” My voice is shaking now and I let it. “I don’t want to keep it anymore. I want to give it to you.”

“Tessa.”

“I love you.” It comes out easier than I thought. It comes out like it was always right there. “I love you. I think I started loving you in a kitchen that smelled like burnt tortillas. I know I loved you behind that gate post with your blood on my hands. I watched you stand up on that block today and hand them every weapon they could use, and I loved you so much I had to hold on to the table.”

His face breaks open.

I have never seen that before. Not in his bed, not in the clinic. All the careful authority just goes, and underneath is a man who looks like he’s been hit and is glad of it.

“Yes,” I say. “I’ll marry you.”

He lets out a breath, slow and visible. His good hand closes once on his knee instead of reaching for me.

“The ring stays sealed until counsel can document the transfer,” I tell him.

“Agreed.”

“I keep the apartment.”

“Agreed.”

“And you aren’t driving.”

That gets me his first full smile since the east gates opened. I pick his truck keys up off the table. I leave my car inside the ranch fence under its own lock and drive us to my apartment. Cole follows only far enough to pick the truck up afterward. I send the address to my counsel, not to Barbed Crown security.

Inside, I set the sealed ring and his signed promise next to my keys. He stands in the narrow space between the kitchen and the bedroom, too big for the neutral furniture and careful not to let his size become a wall.

“My fiancée,” he says.

It lands differently with my car in his fence and my work out of his reach and a door only I can open.

“Tell me what mine means tonight.”

“Chosen,” he says. “Never owned.”

I put my hand on his chest. “Yes. I want you in my bed. Same rules. And tonight the claim is mine to give.”

I unclip the sling and support his wrist while the strap comes loose. I ease his shirt off the good arm first and then over the bad one without lifting the shoulder, the way I’ve done it three times now, and he lets me.

He opens my blouse with his left hand. It’s slower than usual. It’s not less sure. He pushes the fabric off my shoulders and watches while I take off my bra.

His palm settles on my bare waist. “My fiancée chose me.”

“She also chose the medical restrictions.”

“I can hold both facts.”

I kiss him before his confidence acquires more vocabulary. His mouth opens under mine, hungry and controlled, while I undo his belt and handle the rest. He braces his good hand on the dresser to step free. He’s hard between us, and the sight of how much he wants me carries none of the old danger now. The want isn’t hiding inside a contract or a locked server. It’s just here.

I set a condom on the nightstand where either of us can reach it.

“Sit,” he says.

The command goes exactly as far as I invite it. I sit on the edge of the mattress and open my thighs.

He lowers himself to the rug without using either arm and puts his good hand under my knee and spreads me wider. He looks up at me with enough focus to make my pulse pound in my throat.

“This is what mine means,” he says. “You opened the door. You set the limits. You chose the man between your legs.”