I have never worn something like this in public.
Oakley finishes the zipper.
And doesn’t remove his hands.
Instead, his fingers trail from the zipper’s terminus at the base of my spine upward, tracing the line of my vertebrae through the fabric with the slow, deliberate path of a man who is helping with a dress and using the assistance as an excuse to touch. His hands reach my bare shoulders. His thumbs press into the muscle there—lightly, briefly—before he leans in.
His lips find my neck.
The kiss is warm. Precise. Placed on the exact spot where he’d left a mark three days ago that has since faded to a faint shadow that I’ve been checking in the mirror with an interest I refuse to examine. His mouth seals against the skin and my back arches involuntarily—the spinal response of a body that has learned what Oakley’s mouth on that particular spot leads to and is expressing enthusiasm for the sequel.
He chuckles.
The sound vibrating against my neck, warm and low and carrying the candied blood orange of his scent in the concentrated dose that close contact produces.
“Mr. Commander is mad as fuck,” he says, pulling back with a grin that suggests he finds Roman’s fury entertaining. “Everyone and their aunt apparently needs him for the station recovery coordination meeting that was supposed to take two hours and is now on hour seven.”
Alaric’s laugh drifts from the hallway.
He’s already dressed—more nightwear than I’ve seen him in, which is saying something for a man whose default presentation is tailored and deliberate. Dark charcoal shirt, open at the collar, the sleeves rolled to his forearms in the specific, casual-but-calculated configuration that makes his burnt vanilla scent accessible and his investigator’s build visible. Black trousers. The kind of shoes that look expensive because they are.
He leans in the doorway with the relaxed, angular elegance that is his signature posture, the dark hair falling across his forehead in the way that makes him look less like a detective and more like a man who has stepped out of one of the Italian films he watches when he thinks no one is paying attention.
“The invitation was a surprise,” he says, addressing my earlier disbelief that this evening is actually happening. “But a welcome one. The bar’s grand opening is the kind of event that draws the entire social network of three towns. Being seen there—together, visible, celebrating—is exactly the kind of public statement that accelerates the strategy.”
I sigh.
Looking at my reflection. At the woman in the black dress with the icy blue hair and the constellation tattoos and the body that is carrying itself differently now—softer at the edges, less armored, the persistent tension that had been my baseline for years replaced by something that looks almost like ease.
“At this rate, we’re going to be a pack and he’s going to be left behind,” I say.
Oakley chuckles. “Don’t let him hear that. He’ll become the Grinch and lose his damn mind.”
We laugh.
The three of us. In a hallway of a government-secured ranch house in Montana on a Friday evening, laughing about the absent fourth member of a pack that didn’t exist a month agoand now feels like the only structure in my life that was built to hold weight.
It was a shame about the yacht.
When Alaric had mentioned sailing during our bookshop encounter, I’d assumed it was performance—dialogue scripted for the watcher’s benefit, part of the counter-surveillance operation that had included his fingers between my thighs and his mouth on my neck and the page forty-three that I would never read the same way again. But it had been real. He has a boat. Docked at the lake town. A thirty-two-foot cruiser that he maintains with the same meticulous attention he gives to case files.
Rain had cancelled the week’s plans—a front moving through that turned the lake to grey chop and the skies to the low, heavy overcast that Montana produces when it wants to remind you that October is a transitional season and winter is the destination. But next week the forecast showed warming. Clearing. The kind of weather that would make an evening on the water not just possible but irresistible.
And fuck.
I want that.
Want to ride him on the yacht with the water beneath us and the sky above us and no walls, no ceiling, no building containing the sound. Want the risk of it—the open air, the visibility, the specific, high-inducing danger of being naked on a boat with a man whose composure I want to demolish the way he demolished mine in the fiction aisle.
Not like he hasn’t taken every opportunity since.
The kisses. The teasing. The specific, maddening way Alaric operates—touching me like it’s incidental, kissing me like it’s spontaneous, when every contact is as deliberate and precisely calibrated as a chess move. I can still recall his fingers. Still feel the phantom pressure of the bookshop. Still see him liftinghis hand to his mouth, his tongue tracing his glistening fingers with the unhurried appreciation of a man cataloguing a flavor he intends to revisit.
Focus, Hazel. Tonight.
It’s not long before we’re on our way.
Alaric drives—the designated driver, his role claimed with the practical authority of a man who has assigned himself the operational responsibility and doesn’t intend to negotiate it. Oakley and I sit in the back, which is a configuration that makes me feel like I’m being chauffeured by a detective in tailored charcoal and I am not going to pretend I don’t enjoy it.
