Their bodies were pressed too close. The song was still playing inside, slow and warm and heartbreakingly familiar. Her breath brushed his cheek. Her fingers curled slightly in the fabric at his shoulder.
If she leaned in an inch—one inch—he’d be lost.
“Marshall...” she whispered, his name breaking on her tongue.
He closed his eyes.
Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t cross the line.
She’s an asset. She’s in danger.
You can’t afford to want her.
He opened his eyes.
She was right there.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
She was so close he could feel the warmth of her breath against his jaw, feel the soft give of her body leaning instinctively toward his. He hadn’t meant to look at her mouth—but the second he did, the world narrowed to that single, impossible distance between them.
He could close it. Every cell in his body wanted to.
One tilt forward and he’d have her taste on his tongue again, the past crashing into the present like it had been waiting for this exact heartbeat.
His hand flexed at her waist. The air shifted . . . expectant . . . electric . . .
And that was the problem.
Marshall inhaled hard and stepped back—one controlled, mechanical movement he’d perfected in a dozen war zones, never once for a woman.
If he kissed her now, he wouldn’t stop. And if he didn’t stop, he’d forget the mission, forget the danger, forget that someone might have already marked her as leverage.
He couldn’t let her get hurt because he was weak.
So he put space between them. Barely a few inches. Enough to break the gravitational pull before he did something he couldn’t take back.
Her breath hitched—hurt, confused, wanting. He felt it like a bruise.
“We should . . . go back inside,” he whispered, not meeting her eyes.
“Yeah.” Her voice was rougher than it should’ve been. “Okay.”
But when she turned away, Marshall’s fingers twitched uselessly at his side, every instinct in him screaming to haul her back against him, kiss her until the earth stopped spinning, forget the mission and the danger and the lines he wasn’t supposed to cross.
She walked toward the barn lights. He stood in the shadows, trying to relearn how to breathe. And failing miserably.
CHAPTER 16
NORAH
Norah barely rememberedthe drive home.
Her body was in Georgetown, keys in hand, Marshall’s jacket dangling from her fingertips. Her mind was still outside a barn strung with lights, pressed against a man she had spent years training herself not to need.
The almost-kiss replayed in sickening, exquisite loops—the way Marshall had looked at her like she was both memory and possibility, the way his breath had teased her cheek, the way her entire body had lifted toward him without thought.
And then the way he’d stepped back.
