"That bothered you," she says quietly as the elevator climbs. The statement isn't a question but an observation. "Watching me with him."
The professional response would be to deny it. To maintain the boundaries that kept me functional through years ofoperations where emotion was liability. To do anything except acknowledge what's been clawing at me since Koval touched her wrist.
"Yes." The single word comes out absolute, with no hedging, no deflection, just raw honesty that strips away the veneer I've been maintaining.
She turns to face me, the movement bringing her close in the confined space. "Archer?—"
"I know it was a performance." My voice comes out rough, low. My hand slides from her back to her hip, holding her in place. "But when he touched you, I wanted to break his fingers."
Her breath catches. "Under your protection? Or something else?"
"I don't know anymore." The admission costs something. "On the jet, I convinced myself this was about verification. About proving you're salvageable and worth the risk I'm taking. But in that club, when you slipped into the Nocturne role, when Koval looked at you like you're something he could possess—" I break off, jaw clenching against words that shouldn't be said in an elevator where we could be overheard.
The elevator chimes, doors sliding open to reveal our floor. We don't move. Don't step into the hallway. Don't retreat to separate rooms and professional distance.
"Something changed," she says finally. "In the club. Maybe before that, on the jet. But when you looked at me—when you moved closer after Koval touched me—" Her hand comes up, fingers brushing my jaw in a mirror of the touch I gave her at altitude. "You weren't playing a role. That was real."
"Everything about this is real." My hand tightens on her hip, pulling her closer. "The way I wanted to break Koval's hand when he touched you. The way I've been thinking about you since we left Monaco. The way I can't seem to keep my hands off you even when I should be maintaining distance."
"I know." Her voice is barely above a whisper. "But I can't stop thinking about you touching me. About your hand on my back in the club. About the way you looked at Koval when he touched my wrist."
"Like I wanted to kill him?"
"Like you wanted to claim me."
The words hang between us, raw and honest and impossible to take back. The elevator doors try to close, hitting my shoulder before retreating. Someone on another floor has probably called for the car.
"We should debrief," I say, but my hand doesn't release her hip. "Discuss tomorrow night's meeting. Plan our approach and extraction protocols."
"We should," she agrees, but her fingers are still tracing my jaw, the touch light and devastating. "But that's not what either of us wants right now."
She's right. What I want is to pull her into my room, finish this conversation without the constraint of mission parameters, and discover exactly what this connection building between us actually is. What I want is to make absolutely clear that no one else gets to touch her, that what I'm feeling is territorial and primal and completely inappropriate for the situation we're navigating.
What I want is her.
But wanting isn't the same as acting. And the timing couldn't be worse. We have a meeting tomorrow night that could verify her intelligence or expose us both to Iron Choir retaliation. We have a child's life hanging in the balance and a mole to expose. We have mission parameters that don't include whatever this dangerous attraction has become.
"Later," I force myself to say, releasing her hip and stepping back. "After we verify the intelligence and secure the meeting. After we know you're clear and the mission is stable." My handdrops to my side, already missing the contact. "Then we figure out what this is."
She nods, disappointment and understanding warring in her expression. "Later," she agrees.
We step into the corridor together, the silence between us thick with everything unsaid. At her door, she pauses, key card in hand.
"Goodnight, Archer," she says quietly, then disappears into her room before I can change my mind and pull her back.
I stand in the corridor for a long moment, pulse hammering, body screaming to follow her through that connecting door neither of us has mentioned. Every tactical consideration says pursuing this now would be catastrophic. Every instinct says waiting might cost me the one thing I didn't know I wanted until it was standing in front of me, bleeding and exhausted and trusting me to keep her alive.
I force myself into my own room and close the door. Through the hotel walls, Berlin hums with nightlife and danger. Koval is out there somewhere, making calculations about whether Nocturne's intelligence will be valuable enough. The Iron Choir is out there, hunting the operative who betrayed them. Moreau is out there, protecting his position and eliminating threats to his carefully constructed cover.
I keep trying to convince myself that professional boundaries still matter when everything about this operation has already crossed lines I didn't know existed.
My hand flexes, remembering the feel of her skin beneath my palm. The way she leaned into my touch in the club. The vulnerability in her eyes when she asked if I could see her beneath Nocturne's performance.
Tomorrow night we meet with Koval. Tomorrow night we verify intelligence and secure information about the Laurent kidnapping. Tomorrow night we prove whether Marissa Vale isthe asset worth saving or if Nocturne consumed everything that made her worth protecting.
But tonight, alone in this hotel with connecting doors that remain closed, I'm left with the uncomfortable recognition that operative and asset stopped being adequate descriptions somewhere between Monaco and Berlin.
And whatever we are now is infinitely more dangerous than anything the Iron Choir could throw at us.
