She leans in, her breath hot against the sensitive skin she’s just bared. "I want it all. Right here. I want you to come in my mouth. Every fucking drop."
The demand hits me like a physical blow to the chest. I sink my fingers into her hair, my head falling back against the grass as she leans down and takes me.
The shock of it—the heat, the wetness, the sheer, unashamed focus of her—knocks the air right out of my lungs. I sink my fingers into her hair, my head falling back against the grass as she begins to work. She’s thorough, relentless, using her tongue and the soft pressure of her lips to remind me exactly who is in charge of this particular ritual. I’m aching and heavy, my pulse a frantic roar in my ears as I watch her worship me under the open sky.
Later, she rests her head on my chest, her hand splayed over my heart. We lie there in the quiet—just existing, fragile and finite, borrowing minutes from a situation that doesn't deal in mercy.
Eventually, the sun dips behind a cloud. The air turns sharp and cold. Reality creeps back in at the edges.
"We should go." I say it reluctantly. "We have work to do."
"Firearms training." She groans, sitting up and reaching for her clothes. "Back to reality."
"Hey."
I catch her hand before she can pull away. She looks back at me—open, vulnerable.
"You did well today," I tell her. "Up here. And down there. You're adapting."
"I'm trying."
"That's all I need." I squeeze her fingers. "Now let's go learn how to make sure no one interrupts us again."
She smiles, squeezing back. Then she stands, drops my hand, and starts down the trail without waiting.
"Lead the way."
EIGHT
Wren
Kade is alreadyon the porch when I push through the cabin door, coffee in one hand, phone pressed to his ear. The call ends before I reach him. He doesn't offer a greeting.
"Frost ran the apartment operative through his network." He takes my mug from my hand, sets it on the railing, and turns to face me. "The name that came back is Ivan Kova. Former FSB—Russian Federal Security Service. Black Helix contracts him when a job requires a specific kind of resolution. No official body count because there are no official bodies. People don't die when Kova's involved. They disappear." A pause, deliberate. "He's been off-grid for forty-eight hours before your apartment was hit. That tells us the first operative was the test. Kova is the answer."
The pine-filtered morning light does nothing to soften the information. The name sits on me like a stone.
"What does that mean for us?"
"It means we have a day, maybe two, before someone with serious training and no interest in making it look accidental finds this location." He picks my coffee back up and hands it to me. "Drink. You need the caffeine. We start in ten."
The tablein front of me looks like war.
Kade has laid an armament of weapons out with the precision of a surgeon preparing for an operation. The black matte metal of a Glock 19. The heavy, battered wood and steel of a Mossberg shotgun. Boxes of ammunition stacked in neat pyramids. A bottle of gun oil, sharp and chemical, cutting through the scent of pine.
He's different now—the lover from the boulder entirely absent. In his place is the operator. Boots laced, jeans tucked, t-shirt tight across his chest. His expression is locked down, eyes scanning the tree line before they land on me.
"Yesterday was about survival?—”
“And sex. Lots of sex.”
“Lot’s of great sex.” He crosses his arms. The muscles in his forearms shift, corded and tense. "Today is not about sex, but making sure that if Ivan Kova comes through those trees, you're not a target. You're a threat."
"I've never fired a gun. The only weapon I've ever wielded is a keyboard."
"Then today, you learn a new interface." He gestures toward the table. "Finish your coffee. We're burning daylight."
Thirty minutes later,we're standing in a small clearing fifty yards from the cabin. Kade has set up targets—old coffee cans, a few paper plates nailed to trees, a heavy log propped against a stump for the shotgun.
