Not tonight.
He went still for half a second, and I stepped closer than necessary. One thing I noticed was that Caleb never noticed the distance closing until the last few inches. That delay interested me.
He was so watchful of everyone else; did that mean he trusted me because he didn’t look at me? His breathing changed, and his attention returned to the screen as if nothing had happened.
He smells so good.
A pulse thumped strongly in his neck, just above the collar of his shirt, visible in the blue glow of the screen light, steady but faster than typical before he forced everything back under control. Sister Mary Agnes used to check our pulse, telling us it was our only truth.
Caleb’s accelerated whenever I stepped closer or when he was angry.
Faster when he was trying not to be.
It always gave him away a fraction of a second before his voice did.
He didn’t step away from me. He didn’t tell me to leave him alone. He absorbed it and kept working, and that restraint was intentional. The span of my hand would’ve fit easily beneath his chin, thumb resting along the hinge of his jaw, fingers spread across the front of his throat. I could imagine how it would feel—pressure upward to expose the airway, then back into the van wall, tightening enough to control without crushing, testing how long he would hold my gaze before instinct overrode discipline. I liked that I made his heart race.
Caleb’s spine locked. His fingers halted mid-command, code suspended on the screen. A muscle worked in his jaw. He kept his eyes on the display.
“You need to fuck off now,” Caleb snapped.
“Do I distract you?” I asked quietly.
His typing didn’t falter this time. “No,” he said, his voice level.
I inhaled the scent of him again, leaned in, and his eyes flicked up to mine.
“Move the fuck back,” he snapped.
My erection pressed hard against my pants as I imagined licking his salty skin from his throat to his eyes. I wondered what he’d do if I closed the distance and put my hands on him, instead of just thinking about it. The urge to find out hit harder than itshould have, sharp and insistent, a pressure low in my gut that had nothing to do with the operation and everything to do with him standing there pretending he wasn’t affected. It would be a mistake to test that now, in the middle of a live op with Doc and Levi ten feet away, but the fact I had to talk myself out of it annoyed me. I was dangerously close to losing control, but I masked the messy impulse and focused on the screen. I was here for one thing, and that was to kill and leave nothing behind.
The impulse that had flared under my skin had no operational value.
Head in the game.
“We don’t breach through the front,” I said. “They’ll cluster toward the noise. We force movement toward the front exit. Doc and Levi take the back. I take primary and neutralize threats.”
Caleb turned his head slowly toward me. “Remember Ball-Cap and Skinny. We don’t need a fucking kill zone.”
“I’m assuming rational behavior,” I summarized. “Self-preservation. Predators protecting assets.” His jaw tightened at the word. “Quick removal of the hired security.”
“Keep them away from the kids.”
“It’s okay, if one of them grabs a victim as leverage, I’ll shoot through the adult, angle downward for a reduced exit trajectory.”
Silence.
Caleb held my gaze now, fully. “How about not shooting at all?”
That was confusing. “Then the victim dies.”
“Kids, Novak. They’re children. You don’t feel a goddamn thing, do you?”
“I feel efficiency,” I said, then considered the question because accuracy matters. “And outcome.”
“Fuck you,” he cursed.
I held his gaze because I was never going to be the one who looked away. I was hard. I wasn’t imagining sex with him, but I wanted to be closer and see how he reacted, and the idea of picking him apart and learning him was a familiar and intrusive thought.
