“That’s it… let it build… let me have everything…”
She comes first.
Her breath catches sharp, then shatters. Her whole body locks, then releases in hard, rolling spasms. I feel every single one—tight, desperate clenches that squeeze me over and over, pulling me deeper. She moans my name in broken pieces, thighs shaking, back bowing, fingers clawing at the wall as wave after wave crashes through her.
That’s all it takes. It pulls me under and I snap. Each pulse shoots through me like fire, leaving me shaking, groaning low against her skin, arms clamped around her until the last shudder fades and we’re both trembling, spent, still locked together.
The waves of pleasure make me feel tingly, and I feel drunk on her body and the attraction I have to her. And I know now that I'm not letting this woman go. Not for Bryan, not for the police, and definitely not for Barone.
Sabine Hart is mine now, whether she likes it or not.
14
SABINE
Iawake to the hiss of the old radiator under the window kicking on and find Jace still smashed against me in this tiny bed. The studio apartment offered exactly two options, sleep together or one of us takes the floor, and after everything yesterday, neither of us had the energy to argue about propriety or boundaries. Besides, the nasty sex made it easy to lie tangled up with him all night.
His breathing is deep and even against my shoulder, and the warmth of his body next to mine feels safer than it should given that we're both fugitives running from people who want us dead or imprisoned.
Moving requires careful extraction to avoid waking him, and when my feet finally touch the cold floor, the apartment settles back into stillness. My phone sits on the small kitchen counter where I left it last night, and all I can think about while pulling my laptop from the bag and powering it on is how we have to track down the rest of the people through my unit.
My phone has all the information we need, and I have to get it to the computer. So I pull out the wire and connect the two devices to get things switched over.
When the final file transfers successfully, my hands pick up the phone and turn it over, examining the device that's been my constant companion for years and is now a liability we can't afford to keep active. The military can track phones with frightening accuracy when they want to, and leaving this one powered on is essentially broadcasting our location to anyone with the right clearance and motivation to find us.
I'll have no choice but to smash it to bits later, but for now I take out the battery and the SIM card and pray that's enough. Then I snoop around the kitchen until I find a coffee maker and some coffee pods, and soon, the scent of caffeinated beverages wafts through the tiny apartment and I hear movement.
The sound draws my attention through the bedroom door where Jace is stirring slowly. His eyes open and focus on me standing in the kitchen area with my coffee and the parts of my phone spread across the counter. He looks tired, like he didn't sleep well at all, but he sits up carefully, favoring his injured leg.
"Morning." He runs a hand through his mussed hair and yawns at me. "You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep." I don't tell him the reason for my insomnia is the torrent of emotion I'm living under. I'm sure he can gather that deduction for himself. "Transferred the files to my laptop…"
He nods and swings his legs out of bed, standing and stretching so his shirt rides up slightly and reveals the muscle definition beneath. My eyes drop to my coffee before he can catch melooking, and I feel heat rising in my cheeks. He's an attractive man. I'm not blind, but sometimes I’m stupid.
"Smart move." He crosses to the coffee maker and starts his own cup, and we stand in the small kitchen side by side. It doesn't feel uncomfortable, but it does feel a little awkward. "What's the plan?"
"West Virginia." I've put some thought into this. Our first move has to be to someone I can break so Jace doesn't have to kill anyone this time. "Staff Sergeant Everette Hamilton is the next name on your list, and he's the one I believe we can convince to help us. If anyone's going to break from the group and testify about what Bryan did, it's him."
Jace looks thoughtful while sipping his coffee, and I notice just how handsome he is. A bit older than me—probably ten years or more—but striking. He'd make beautiful babies. "Getting out of Chicago puts distance between me and Vittorio. The boss is expecting updates and results, and going dark for a few days might give me a chance to think through what I'm gonna tell him when he realizes I'm not doing my job."
He's tense, and with a boss like that, I'd be tense too. Mine can court martial me and put me in prison, but they'd never put a gun to my head because I failed. "Yeah, maybe…"
He walks out of the kitchen, past my laptop, and looks through the safehouse window, probably at his truck. "We should hit the road soon. It'll take a bit to get there, and we'll have to either pay cash for a hotel or sleep in the truck."
I understand and I'm not happy about having to go hunt down more of my former colleagues, but it is what it is. Without someone else to corroborate my testimony, Defense will neverbelieve me and I'll be marked as a problem, and with the charges now mounting against me and what I've done, we have no time to lose.
An hour into the drive,Jace and I have relaxed into natural conversation that started as a plan for how to approach Hamilton once we get there and now hovers precariously on the edge of personal topics. He's a bit reserved with every answer he gives me, which isn't encouraging. People say soldiers are the ones who have issues showing their emotions, but have you ever met an assassin?
"Well…. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and it seems we'll be on the road." Jace's eyes stay with the flow of traffic, but I see his posture shifting. It's inevitable that talking about this mission we're on would become dry and we'd run out of things to say, but I didn’t figure it'd be him that brought up personal stuff. "Seems like we'll be celebrating together… Probably while trying to strongarm a witness."
The absurdity of it makes me chuckle and I sigh. "Not exactly a traditional holiday experience." My eyes track out over the snow-covered landscape. We're almost out of the chaos of Chicago's outer suburbs, but buildings still line the highway on both sides. Smoke pours from chimneys and the world is a sea of crystalized frost and white powder.
"Did you ever have traditional holidays?" He sounds curious, and it makes me smile and relax a little. Jace's human side is coming out again, making it harder to feel distant from him. "You know… before you joined up?"
The question makes me think back to childhood and adolescence spent moving between military bases while my father climbed ranks and my mother made temporary homes wherever the Army sent us. "I was an Army brat." I smile at that memory. "Dad was career military, so we moved every few years and holidays were whatever you could make them in base housing or temporary apartments. Nothing about my childhood was particularly normal or traditional."
"But you had family," he says bluntly. "I'm sure your parents wanted to make it special since you moved around a lot."
