I stay standing. For a second. Maybe longer. Then look around and realize how much work I have left to do here before I’ll be ready to call it a night.
I sit, pull out my phone and thumb a quick message to my neighbor.
Hey, sorry for the short notice. Can you feed Nikita tonight? Got held up at work.
Send.
The second it delivers, the door bursts open again.
Chris is back. Eyes burning. Shoulders tight. Breath coming hard.
I don’t even have time to stand before he’s on me.
And then he kisses me.
No warning. No permission. Just heat and hunger and the weight of everything we never said.
And I don’t stop him.
6
Chris
I don’t remember deciding to kiss him.
There’s a second—maybe less—between walking out the door and turning back, where all I can feel is the pressure building in my chest like something’s going to snap if I don’t let it out. And then I’m inside again, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and dragging his mouth to mine like it’s the only thing tethering me to the present moment.
He doesn’t resist. Doesn’t ask questions. Just opens his mouth and lets me take what I need.
I kiss him like I’m trying to bruise both of us. Like maybe if I take him apart with my mouth, I’ll find whatever part of me I lost in that bed with them last week, that never really came back.
His hands go to my waist, steadying. Guiding. Like he’s bracing himself in case I start to fall.
My hands move fast. Desperate. Under his shirt, peeling it over his head. Then over bare skin, until I feel the scar at his shoulder. Know it’s the one from the bullet he took for Mason. For Nina. It shouldn’t make my stomach tighten, but it does.
I pull away just long enough to look him in the eye.
“Don’t make this mean something,” I rasp.
His brow creases, but he doesn’t argue. Just nods, once. It’s enough.
We stumble backward toward the couch. The boxes are still there—stacked, half-labeled, full of Nina’s life. I fall back into the cushions and he straddles me, pushes me back with another kiss, his mouth grazing across my jaw to my throat.
This isn’t about dominance. It’s about control. Mine, unraveling. His, offered.
I pull him back to my mouth and kiss him again, slower this time. Ever since I came home something inside me has been crumbling. The only time I felt whole again was that night in LA, with him inside me. With Nina’s taste on my lips, my mouth tight against her core.
Whatever held me together didn’t survive the first briefing when I got back to Langley.
I hoped he wouldn’t notice. But of course he did. Like we were still connected.
His hands go to my shoulders, weight pressing down. He’s not directing. Just holding me there, grounding me.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to want this.”
“You don’t have to know,” he says. Soft. Sure. “Just don’t lie about wanting it.”
I exhale through my nose. My head falls back against the cushions. My eyes are closed when I say it. “You gonna make me ask?”
