He was prepared for violence, coiled with it, not tense, but effortlessly, ready to answer that call within a hairsbreadth of any threat. Lethal didn’t even touch all that he was, both in his training and his skill, but his magnetic charm, not in the sense of magic, but an ingrained, indescribable spirit that sang with intent, force, and the capacity for a tenderness that she feared would bring her to her knees, to the brink of what it really meant to be intimate.
She shivered as the smooth metal met her fingertips and her palms, with only the memory of his velvety hard, terribly bruised skin beneath her hands.
Blair cleaned his rifle the same way she handled every fragile, dangerous thing in her life, with care, precision, and a quiet, steadying breath between steps.
But tonight something was different. Her hands weren’t just steady. They were deliberate. Every pass of the cloth was a balm to her nerves, every click of reassembly grounding the wild, unruly pulse still running through her like electricity.
He had leaned into her. He had kissed her back. When Ice walked in, Kelly Gatlin had looked at her like he wanted to commit a felony.
She cleared her throat, clicked the final piece into place, and set the rifle down gently. Her hands hovered over the weapon, then stilled.
He trusted her with this. Not just the rifle. Himself.
That knowledge settled deep in her chest, humming warm and bright.
Maybe he didn’t want this. Maybe he thought he shouldn’t. Her hand tightened around the stock. But she’d felt the truth under his skin, raw, aching, terrified, and as hungry as he was.
Breakneck woke to pain knitting itself along his ribs like someone had tied wire under his skin. For a moment he didn’t recognize the room, the dark outlines of the barracks taking too long to resolve. He inhaled carefully, winced, and sat up slowly, hand braced on the mattress until the world steadied.
His throat felt dry. His muscles ached. His mind wouldn’t shut off.
Milk usually helped. Warm, quiet, familiar. Something he’d done since he was a kid when nightmares made the night stretch too long. He could ask Kodiak for something stronger, something that would knock him out cold, but Breakneck avoided medication unless he was half-dead.
Still breathing meant he was functional.
He tugged on sweatpants, moving like a man twice his age, and padded down the hall toward the break room. The building was quiet, the hour late enough that even the Tier 1 chatter had died down. He expected silence. Darkness. The hum of the fridge.
Instead, the glow of a laptop lit the room.
Ayla sat hunched over the table, elbows braced, fingers dragging through her hair as lines of data flickered across the screen. The image paused on the RPG launcher. The trajectory. The heat signature. The angle of deviation before Breakneck’s bullet spun it off course.
Her shoulders shook once.
He stopped inside the doorway.
“You’re up late,” he said quietly.
She startled, head snapping up, eyes wide behind the faint shine of exhaustion and something that looked a lot like guilt.
“I’m—sorry,” she said, wiping at her cheek fast. “I know I shouldn’t be working. I just…needed to see it again.”
He took a few steps closer, slow enough not to crowd her. “What’s wrong.”
Ayla swallowed hard. Her voice shook when she finally managed, “It was my fault. The RPG. I should’ve caught the signature earlier. I almost got everyone killed.”
Breakneck exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck, ribs flaring with the movement. “You didn’t almost get everyone killed.”
She blinked at him, tears threatening again.
He nodded toward her screen. “You caught the signature as it emerged. At night. Through interference. On a moving system you barely had calibrated.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t fast enough.”
“No mission ever goes the way it’s supposed to,” he said, voice low, steady. “Things go sideways. They always go sideways. What matters is you saw it when it counted. You warned us. That’s why we’re all standing here.”
Ayla looked down, her breath quivering. “I should’ve been better.”
Breakneck didn’t think. He simply reached out and squeezed her shoulder, firm and grounding, the way Ice or Boomer would’ve done for him.
