She smiled faintly, still tasting laughter.
Breakneck had flour in his hair. On his shirt. Smeared along one side of his jaw like war paint. God, he’d looked so alive. That rare, real smile splitting across his face like he didn’t know how to contain it.
She’d wanted to lick it off him. All of it.
After the cake was in the oven, she turned to find him lingering close enough to her, she could feel his heat.
“I have to head back for a bit,” he said, voice low. “Technically, I’m off-base without leave, during an active op. Ice is…on edge about me anyway, and if I don’t turn up soon, he’ll send out an annoying, nosy six-man search party.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You want me to drive you?”
He shook his head, already backing toward the door. “I’ll run. Clear my head.”
She hesitated, reading more in that than he probably meant to show. But she didn’t press. “Okay,” she said. “Be careful.”
“I always am,” he said, then flashed a grin that looked nothing like control. “Mostly.”
“Sounds like a good plan.” He hadn’t exactly expected to fall apart in her arms and end up here. She just nodded, trusting him to return.
When he did, twenty minutes later with a small bag, the sun had dipped lower, painting the ridge in gold. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt, sleeves pushed up over his forearms, collar open just enough to see the line of his throat.
He looked like a man rebuilt, but still carrying the weight of everything that had cracked open earlier.
Dinner was warm and simple. Conversation quiet. He helped with the dishes without being asked.
He’d been careful about making sure he showered alone, damn it, and now they were circling each other again. Cooling from the heat. No longer electrified, but crackling under the surface.
She could still smell him on the air. Just clean skin, heat, and something uniquely him, like sun-warmed linen and open air, the kind of scent that clung after hours outside and lingered long after he was gone. It was subtle, elemental, masculine in the quietest way.
Her body ached in all the ways that came with restraint.
He was right there, steady and quiet, and somehow that made the hunger sharper. She didn’t just want his hands. She wanted his honesty. His breath against her throat. The sound he made when he gave in. She wanted to bury herself in the warmth of him and feel the difference between the man the world feared and the man who had chosen to hold back…for her.
“Let’s just sit and curl up in front of the fire,” she’d said, needing closeness more than pushing his boundaries too far. Needing him near.
So now they sat on her long comfy couch, wrapped in the wool blanket he’d dragged off the chair, her legs curled under her and his arm draped along the back of the couch, not quite touching her.
So she leaned into him gently, just enough to feel the weight of him at her side.
In the quiet, she fell asleep and woke to warmth.
His body was a solid wall beside hers, heat radiating through the blanket. His breathing was even, slow. One hand lay heavy on his thigh, the other curled slightly between them.
He was sleeping. Really sleeping. That was so good.
That devastating face, all angles and shadows, now soft with rest. God, he looked beautiful. The tension in his jaw gone. The faint scar near his temple smoothed out in the low firelight. The lines of exhaustion were still there, but something in his features had let go.
He’d had one hell of a day, and this was the first moment of peace he’d found.
Still…she couldn’t help herself. She reached out and gently, reverently, brushed her fingers along the edge of his hair, short and rakish, curling just slightly at the ends. Her touch moved lower, tracing the edge of his jaw, lingering at the dark stubble that had thickened as the sun went down.
God, that mouth. Full. Firm. Wicked. The man could kiss like a devil but somehow look like a fallen angel. It wasn’t fair. She was in deep trouble. No amount of training or self-discipline had prepared her for him.
She should just let him sleep. But she couldn’t stop looking at him. Her fingers stilled just above his cheek when his eyes opened, immediately aware, tactically ready.
But then his head tipped slightly, those storm-gray eyes locking onto hers.
All that intensity returned, barely restrained, simmering. Chemistry radiated off him like a heat signature, and she was helpless in the perimeter of it. No wonder women threw themselves at him.
