My hands are still shaking when Leonid cuts the engine.
Adrenaline, hot and restless, burning through me like my body doesn’t know the job is over yet. The night presses close around us, cool air brushing my flushed skin, the smell of damp earth and oil and victory tangled together. My heart is still racing, my mind replaying every second; the locks I cracked, the cameras I looped, the way we moved through the building like it had been waiting just for us.
Like it belonged to us.
I pull off my gloves and flex my fingers, grounding myself in the familiar ache. There’s a sting on my wrist I didn’t notice when it happened. But I feel alive in a way I never did before Leonid. Alive without fear. Alive without needing to disappear afterward.
He watches me the way he always does after a job; quiet, focused, like he’s checking that I came back whole.
“You were reckless,” he says, voice calm, but his eyes are dark and glittering all at once.
I grin at him, unable to help it. “You loved it.”
He doesn’t deny it.
The house greets us with silence when we step inside, lights low, the world narrowing the moment the door shuts behind us. Boots abandoned. Jackets shrugged off. Weapons set aside without discussion. We move together easily now, no tension in it, just trust and momentum carrying us forward.
Then his hand closes gently around my wrist.
The touch is careful, grounding, and I’m suddenly aware of how close he is, how my pulse jumps traitorously under his thumb. He brushes the shallow scratch there, his brow tightening just a fraction.
“You’re bleeding,” he murmurs.
“It’s nothing,” I say, but I don’t pull away.
The adrenaline hasn’t burned off yet. It’s pooling low and hot, feeding into something else entirely. The silence between us thickens, charged with everything we’re not saying, with the way the job stripped us down to instinct and left us vibrating with it.
“You were brilliant tonight,” he says quietly.
His praise still does that to me, still sinks under my skin and lodges there like it means something dangerous. I swallow, my breath hitching despite myself.
“So were you,” I answer, and the way his jaw tightens tells me he feels it too.
His hand slides from my wrist to my waist, giving me time to stop this if I want to. I don’t. Instead, I step closer, close enough that I can feel his heat, the solid certainty of him anchoring me as the last of the adrenaline hums through my veins.
“You’re shaking,” I say softly.
“So are you.”
I fist my hands in his shirt.
The realization blooms warm and terrifying in my chest all over again; I chose this life. I chose him.
He lowers his forehead to mine, and the world shrinks to just us. “If we don’t stop,” he warns quietly, “I won’t be able to.”
My smile is slow and reckless. “Then don’t.”
That’s all it takes.
He lifts me easily, my legs wrapping around his waist without thought, a breathless laugh tearing out of me as he carries me upstairs. The house disappears. The job fades. Everything narrows to the way he holds me, to the knowledge that this isn’t surviving, or running. I’m finally living and it took being caught by him for me to realize that.
He kicks the bedroom door shut behind us and we both tear off clothes until we’re naked and panting.
“Fuck you’re so sexy like this,” he grunts, his eyes darkening as they take me in. “I can smell how aroused you are. I love that doing a job gets you so worked up.”
“Right back at you, Leo,” I say with come-get-me eyes.
He practically leaps on me, his mouth going straight to my neck to find my pulse point where he sucks hard enough to make me moan.
