"I'm sure. Go be a professional soldier. I'll be a professional operator. Then we'll come back and be regular people who cook steaks and watch movies."
Logan left reluctantly. Mara settled on the couch with her laptop and pulled up Quinn's files. Three potential targets in Houston. All connected to the same trafficking network they'd just hit. Quinn's analysis was thorough as always. Probability assessments. Risk factors. Recommended approach vectors.
Mara made notes, flagged items for team discussion, and lost herself in the work. This was the other part of their life. The part where they both disappeared into their jobs. Where themission took priority and personal time got pushed aside. But they'd learned to accept it. To not resent the interruptions. To understand that this was who they both were.
Two hours later, Logan returned to find Mara still on the couch surrounded by files and notes.
"You're in operator mode," he observed.
"Sorry. Quinn's analysis is detailed. I got caught up." Mara started gathering the papers. "I'm done now. Ready to be regular person who eats steak."
"Leave it. I like seeing you work. Watching you think through problems." Logan sat beside her and pulled her feet into his lap. "Tell me about the operation. What's Quinn found?"
So Mara did. She walked him through the intelligence, the connections, the potential approaches. Logan listened with the attention of someone who understood tactical planning. Asked smart questions. Offered perspectives from his own experience. This was new too. The ability to share the work. To get feedback from someone who understood the stakes.
When dinner was ready, they ate at Logan's small table and the conversation shifted to easier topics. Mara told him about Winter's latest cooking disaster that had resulted in the fire department being called. Logan shared stories about the new guys on his team and their increasingly creative excuses for missing PT.
After dinner, they settled on the couch to watch a movie neither of them paid attention to. Mara curled against Logan's side, his arm around her shoulders, both of them content to just exist together after weeks apart.
"I've been thinking," Logan said during a quiet moment. "About after I get back from Afghanistan."
"Yeah?"
"I've got leave coming. Two weeks. I was thinking maybe we could actually take a trip somewhere. Not Louisiana. Not NorthCarolina. Somewhere neither of us has to work. Where we can just be together without missions or deployments or any of it."
Mara tilted her head to look at him. "Where would we go?"
"I don't know. Somewhere with beaches maybe. Or mountains. Somewhere we can disconnect and just focus on us." Logan's hand traced patterns on her shoulder. "We've been doing this for six months. Making it work. But I want more than just making it work. I want time with you that isn't squeezed between operations."
"I want that too." Mara sat up to face him properly. "But you know something's going to come up. Some mission. Some deployment. Something that means we can't just disappear for two weeks."
"Probably. But we can try. We can plan for it and hope it works out." Logan cupped her face. "I know our careers come first. I know the work matters. But you matter too. We matter. I want to prioritize that sometimes."
"Okay. Let's do it. Two weeks after Afghanistan. We'll plan a trip. Somewhere we can be regular people who don't rescue hostages or assault compounds." Mara kissed him. "We can probably manage two weeks without the world ending."
"Probably," Logan agreed, smiling.
They went to bed early, making love with the ease of familiarity and the urgency of knowing their time was limited.
The small apartment was quiet except for the low hum of the window AC unit and the occasional rumble of a passing truck on the main road. They'd left the bedroom windows cracked to let in the warm night air that carried the scent of pine and distant salt from the coast miles away. Streetlight filtered through thin blinds, casting gold bars across the mismatched sheets and their bare skin.
Logan pulled Mara close the moment they slipped under the covers, bodies slotting together like they’d never been separated.No need for words tonight; they knew each other’s rhythms now, knew exactly how to touch, where to linger. He kissed her slowly, deeply—long, unhurried strokes of tongue that tasted like homecoming. His hand slid down her spine, fingers splaying across the small of her back, drawing her thigh over his hip so they were pressed together chest-to-hip, heat building where they touched.
Mara sighed into his mouth, fingers carding through his short hair. “I love how you feel,” she whispered against his lips. “Everywhere.”
He gave her that small, private smile only she ever saw and rolled them so she lay beneath him, forearms braced beside her head so he could look down at her in the dim light. He kissed her throat, her collarbone, pausing over the faint scar along her shoulder—a quiet reminder of the night she’d refused to leave without him. When he reached her breast, he took his time: soft licks around the areola, gentle suction on the peak until it hardened under his tongue and her breath hitched in those quiet, needy sounds he’d learned to crave.
She tugged at him gently. “Come here.”
Logan shifted higher, settling between her thighs. He didn’t rush inside her. Instead he rocked against her slowly—his length sliding along her folds, coating himself in her arousal, nudging her clit with every deliberate pass until she was trembling, hips lifting in silent ask.
“Logan…” Her voice was soft, almost reverent.
He reached between them, guiding himself to her entrance. Their eyes met in the faint glow from the street—open, unguarded, full of everything they’d survived to reach this moment—as he pushed inside. Slow. So slow. Inch by careful inch until he was buried deep, hips flush to hers, both of them stilling to savor it: the perfect stretch, the deep fullness, the way their bodies locked together like they belonged nowhere else.
They stayed like that a long heartbeat—foreheads touching, breathing each other’s air—before he began to move.
Long, measured thrusts that dragged pleasure through them in lazy, building waves. Mara wrapped her legs around his waist, heels pressing into his lower back, urging him deeper without rushing the rhythm. Every roll of his hips ground against her clit; every slow withdrawal left her aching for the next careful glide home.
