“Yes.” His answer is curt and tells me absolutely nothing. Once again, I wonder if this is a celeb’s house. Wouldn’t my viewers love that? I found Justin Bieber's top secret getaway. Is the man in front of me his private security? He looks like he could be security. Although, I always thought security would be in a black suit and have an earpiece in. You know, like the bodyguards you see accompanying celebs places.
“Like celebrity private? Or billionaire recluse private? Or?—"
“Government.” He interrupts me with one word.
That word lands like a physical blow.
Oh. Oh no.
He steps closer, and I catch the scent of him—clean, faintly woodsy, with an undertone of something that smells expensive. His voice drops lower, taking on a quality that makes every nerve ending in my body stand at attention.
“And you shouldn't be filming anything out here.”
My stomach drops straight through the frozen ground. I follow his gaze to my phone on the dashboard. Still recording.
“Well, this is awkward,” I say weakly, heat flooding my face despite the cold.
His jaw tightens—just barely, but I catch it. A muscle ticking beneath stubble that's a day or two past deliberate. He needs a haircut and a shave. He’s had time to shower but not to groom? Interesting.
“Turn it off,” he says. Not asks.Orders.
And here's the thing I cannot explain and probably shouldn't examine too closely: something in me sparks at the command. Not rebellion. Not fear. Heat. My clit throbs, my nipples tighten. My body betrays me with a pure, undiluted, inconvenient heat that pools low in my belly and makes my breath catch in a way that has nothing to do with the altitude.
Because for the first time since I started building my entire life around cameras and content and carefully curated chaos, someone is looking at me like I'm not performing. Like he sees exactly who I am beneath the filters and the persona.
And he is decidedly not impressed.
He's in control. Completely, utterly in control.
And something tells me I'm already in trouble.
The kind I might not want to get out of.
And God help me, instead of reciting the phrase I’ve practiced a thousand times… how I have the right to record, I instead, obey. I open the door, reach into the car and tap the screen, ending the recording. When I turn back, he's closer. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
“What's your name?” he asks, voice quiet but firm.
“Madison.”
“Madison what?”
Something defiant flickers in my chest. I don’t have to tell him. He’s a strange man, who could just as easily overpower me and force me into the vehicle and take me away. I look at him and I know, I just know, he’s safe. He’s not going to hurt me. “Summers. Madison Grace Summers.”
His eyes narrow slightly, like he's cataloging that information somewhere in a mental file, I probably don't want to know exists.
“Ty Garcia,” he says. “And you're going to delete that footage.”
“It's nothing,” I protest. “Just trees and snow?—"
“No,” he interrupts, still calm, still controlled. “It's a restricted area, classified infrastructure, and a serious security violation. So, you're going to delete it. It shouldn’t be a problem if it’s nothing. Delete it, now.”
The way he says it—not threatening, not angry, just absolutely certain—makes my knees weak. I unlock my phone with shaking fingers and pull up the video.
He watches over my shoulder, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body. My thumb hovers over the delete button.
“I spent three hours driving up here,” I say quietly.
“Then you wasted three hours,” he replies. “Delete it, Madison.”
