"I took it and crossed an ocean. And I've spent a decade proving it was mine all along, and the returns diminish every year because the people I'm proving it to aren't watching."
The silence after that is different from our other silences. No distance in it, no caution, no careful geometry of two people maintaining a perimeter.
"You're sitting on my bourbon."
I look down. The bottle has migrated during the conversation, wedged between my thigh and the base of the couch. "I'm protecting it from unauthorized access."
"Hand it over."
"Make me."
His fingers close around the bottle where it rests against my leg, and the contact isn't accidental, the brush of his knuckles against the outside of my thigh through thin fabric. He lifts the bottle free, takes a drink, and sets it down on his other side, out of reach.
"There," he says. "Secured."
The heat from where his hand touched my leg is a point of data I can't file properly. It doesn't fit in the category marked professional, and the category marked temporary is already overflowing, and there isn't a third category because I didn't build one.
"Griff."
"Nox."
"If we do this, we need to have the conversation first. The practical one." My voice sounds how it sounds when I'm delivering a technical brief. Measured, precise, nothing extraneous. "I have a contraceptive implant. It's current. I was tested clean earlier this year, and there hasn't been anyone since."
His expression doesn't shift toward discomfort or surprise. He just meets it. "Tested clean. Same situation."
"Then we don't need a condom."
"No."
"Good. Performative coyness is a waste of both our time."
"I know." The corner of his mouth shifts. "I've been watching you refuse to perform coyness for a while now. Not a surprise."
"Then you also know I don't do this with expectations attached. No morning-after analysis, no relationship audit, no recalibration of the arrangement."
"Nox."
"What."
"Stop talking."
He doesn't move toward me. He waits. The bourbon is on the floor beside him, the bay spread wide through the dark windows, and the absolute stillness in his body, a man who will not cross a line until invited, is the thing that makes me cross it myself.
I lean forward and kiss him. Waiting for Griff to breach his own perimeter would take the rest of the deployment.
His mouth is warm and tastes like bourbon and a layer underneath that's just him, and for one second he doesn't move, absorbing the contact, gauging the force before he responds. Then his hand comes up to the side of my neck, thumb along my jaw, and he kisses me back with a control that is worse than urgency.
Control is a choice, and choices can change, and the deliberateness of his mouth on mine says he's been thinkingabout exactly how to do this and the thinking didn't involve anything casual.
I pull back far enough to breathe. "Bedroom."
His hand finds the small of my back as we stand, guiding us through the living space, and I let him guide. My spatial awareness has narrowed to the points where his body meets mine and the furniture can fend for itself.
Moonlight through the bay windows paints his bedroom in shifting silver. The bed is made with military corners, and I want to wreck every one of them.
I pull his t-shirt over his head. The body underneath has been occupying too much of my processing power since the first time I saw him. He has broad shoulders, lean muscle that moves under his skin when he reaches for me, a scar along his left side that looks like shrapnel, and a tattoo on his inner forearm I'll ask about later.
My palms flatten against his chest and his stomach tightens under the contact, a visible response he doesn't try to mask.
