I know.
You’ll compromise the mission. Compromise yourself. Everything you’ve built?—
I know.
She deserves a protector, not a man who takes what he wants from her.
That one lands. A blade between the ribs. Because she does. She deserves someone with clean hands, a civilian life, and the freedom to give her more than a few weeks of borrowed time before the next deployment drags me back into the dark.
But she’s looking at me like I’m already hers.
And I’m so fucking tired of being strong.
I set the gun down. Not gently. Final. It’s cold steel. Duty. Discipline. Everything I’m supposed to be.
My hands go to her waist, and I pull her in—hard enough that she stumbles, sharp enough that she gasps. Her breath punches out, and the sound goes straight through me, rewires something fundamental.
Wrong. This is wrong.
The thought surfaces, distant, drowning. My fingers dig into the curve of her hips like I’m trying to anchor myself to something—to her, to sanity, to the last thread of resistance still screaming somewhere in the wreckage of my discipline.
She doesn’t pull away.
She surges forward instead, hands fisting in my hair like she’s done pretending. Her body presses flush against mine, and the contact shatters through me—days of distance, of careful space, of holding the line, obliterated in a single collision.
“Finally,” she whispers.
The word brushes my lips. Close. So close I can taste it.
Stop. You can still stop.
I can’t.
I don’t want to.
“You have no idea—” My voice comes out wrecked, scraped raw, someone else’s voice entirely. “What you’re asking for.”
Her grip tightens in my hair. Pulls. The sting blooms across my scalp, and the groan that tears out of me is barely human.
“I know exactly what I’m asking for—Diego.”
Fuck.
The last restraint doesn’t break. It incinerates.
My mouth crashes into hers—no finesse, no control, nothing left of the soldier who walked into this room. Just hunger. Days—years of starvation pour out in the drag of my teeth across her bottom lip, the way I swallow her moan like I need it to breathe.
She tastes like adrenaline. Like ruin. Like every bad decision I’ve ever wanted to make.
One hand slides up her spine, fingers splaying across the back of her neck, tilting her head to take her deeper. The other stays locked on her hip, grip bruising, holding her against me like I’m terrified she’ll vanish if I ease up for a second.
This is a mistake.
I’ll pay for it. Career, reputation, maybe my life if the distraction gets her killed.
And I kiss her anyway—harder, desperate, a man drowning who’s decided he’d rather go under than let go.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Needy. Wrecked.
