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“Who?”

“You, you. Fuck, Rhett, you—”

“Who owns you?”

“You!”

Something inside me fucking snaps.

My release tears through me with the violence of a blade cutting through wheat, vicious and endless, ripping a sound from my throat I barely recognize as my own.

Her body gives beneath me.

I follow her down, my weight pressing her into the warm black Earth while I keep moving through every brutal pulse, emptying myself into her until there’s nothing left.

Until I’m shaking.

Until she’s trembling beneath me.

Until the field falls strangely, impossibly still.

Then the Earth beneath us gives a deep, satisfied pulse and somewhere in the corn, something sighs.

I roll us onto our sides, still inside her, still connected, and she whimpers as I slip free, the loss of contact making her shiver.

“Rhett,” she breathes.

I pull her against my chest, my hand sliding down her stomach to where we’re both filthy with dirt and sweat and me.

“Again?” she whispers.

I let out a breathless laugh. “Jesus Christ, woman. Give me five minutes.”

“I don’t have five minutes.” She presses her ass against my thigh, and I feel it—feel her still wet, still open, still hungry.

The Reaper in me stirs.

I catch her hip, roll her back toward me, and kiss her slowly.

After another couple of orgasms. We’re both spent. Ruined, wrecked and exhausted.

I wrap her in my arms and listen to her heartbeat then realize nothing else happens. I consider this an enormous victory. There’s no roots. No dead women, no screaming corn and no mysterious blood. Just Sage beside me beneath the moon tracing something across my chest with one finger.

“What are you doing?”

“Counting.”

“Counting what?”

“Scars.”

“You’ll be here awhile.”

“I’ve got time.”

I look at her. “Not as much as I do.”

She stops.