She moaned into my neck, a long, shuddering sound that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
We didn’t so much fall as collapse—a boneless, panting heap on the hardwood floor, tangled in our clothes and each other. We breathed like we’d just run miles, our hearts hammering a frantic, shared rhythm. Eventually, through some combination of effort and desperation, we made it to mybedroom. We collapsed onto the sweat-soaked sheets that felt like the only real thing in the entire world.
Her head found its place on my chest, a heavy, comforting weight. My hand moved instinctively to her hair, fingers threading through the dark, damp strands as her breathing gradually evened out.
I should have talked to her. Should have said something, anything. But the truth was, I didn’t have words for it.
Dostoevsky wrote that beauty was mysterious as well as terrible. That God and the devil were fighting there, and the battlefield was the hearts of men.
Looking at Cassandra in the darkness, her face peaceful in sleep, I understood that completely. She was the most beautiful, terrible thing I had ever known. She was the battlefield. And I was already losing the war.
By four in the morning, we both drifted into something that resembled sleep—the kind of exhausted surrender that came after pushing your body past its limits. Her breathing deepened. My hand stayed in her hair, holding her close even in unconsciousness.
For a few hours, I let myself pretend this was simple. That she was just a woman and I was just a man and the space between us wasn’t complicated by blood oaths and family loyalty and the fact that I didn’t know the first thing about who she really was.
***
The next day crashed into that fantasy like a sledgehammer.
I woke to find her already getting dressed, moving with the efficient grace of someone who’d learned to extract themselves from situations quickly and cleanly. She was pulling her shirt over her head when I opened my eyes, and the moment she saw me watching, her entire body language changed.
“We scratched an itch,” she said without preamble, without giving me even a second to process. “That’s all this was. That’s all it can be.”
I should have agreed. Should have nodded and accepted the clean narrative she was offering, a story where what happened between us didn’t mean anything, didn’t complicate anything, didn’t crack the careful control we’d both worked so hard to maintain.
Instead, I reached for her. “Cassandra—”
“Don’t.” She stepped out of arm’s reach, and something in her face had gone cold. Not angry. Worse than angry. Unreachable. “We both know what this is. Two people who work in close proximity. Sexual tension. It happens. We dealt with it. Now we move on.”
I got out of bed, naked and unapologetic, and crossed to where she stood. “That’s not what that was.”
“Yes, it was.” Her eyes stayed fixed on my chest, refusing to meet my gaze. “You’re going back to Russia in five weeks. I have my life here. This”—she gestured vaguely between us—”“doesn’t change anything.”
She was lying. I could see it in the tension around her eyes, in the way her hands clenched into fists at her sides. But I also knew that pushing would only drive her further away, and I wasn’t ready to lose her. Not yet. Not when I was just starting to understand the magnitude of what she meant to me.
So I nodded, pretended to accept the narrative she was selling, and said nothing when she slipped past me to find her shoes.
The drive back to the office was silent. We didn’t speak. Didn’t look at each other. I dropped her off at the building’s entrance and watched her walk inside like we were nothing but professional acquaintances who happened to share breathing space.
***
Rafael’s office was chaos when I walked in.
“We have a problem,” he said without greeting, without the usual pleasantries. His cigar was lit, his face was dark, and the energy in the room felt like standing in the center of a storm about to break. “Trev was hit yesterday. Three guys, professional execution, clean extraction.”
My mind stuttered. “Trev? Not—”
“Not Lev,” Rafael cut me off, eyes narrowing. “Why would it be Lev?”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’d made a mistake. In my current state—distracted and off-balance and completely unable to think straight about anything that wasn’t Cassandra—I’d confused the details. Had grabbed the wrong name out of the tangle of information I was supposed to be tracking.
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” I said, forcing myself to focus. “Got the names mixed up.”
“That’s a problem, Drew.” Rafael’s voice was quiet, which was somehow worse than if he’d been shouting. “Details matter. Mistakes in details get people killed. They create chain reactions that spiral out of control. They’re not fucking acceptable in an organization like this.”
He was right. He was completely right, and the knowledge that I’d compromised operational security because I couldn’t stop thinking about a woman who’d made it abundantly clear she didn’t want anything to do with me made my skin crawl with shame.
