The words landed like a spark against dry tinder. My fingers found the slick heat already gathering there. The first touch stole the air from my lungs. I drew in a sharp breath, louder than I meant, the sound shattering the hush of the room.
Cam’s gaze pinned me where I lay. She didn’t move, didn’t close the space between us. Her stillness made every motion of my hand feel magnified. I circled my clit, slow at first, then faster when my hips rose in the water.
The ache deepened. My chest heaved as I stroked. When I dared glance at her, my eyes caught on her breasts. Her breathing had changed as her nipples became sharp peaks. She was holding herself in check with the same relentless discipline she aimed at me. The sight tore another shiver from me, a twisted rush of triumph and surrender all at once.
“Keep going. Come for me.” Her voice was steady, calm, a guide more than a lash. Dominant, yes, but not cruel. She spoke as though she already knew I would obey, and the certainty in her tone pulled me tighter than her hands ever could.
The water rippled violently as I lost the rhythm, my body trembling. Desire surged through me, blinding, stealing the edges of thought. My head tipped back against the porcelain, a cry breaking loose before I could catch it.
“That's a good girl.”
The praise was quiet, but it struck deep, threading through the pulse still wracking me. It was reward, yes, but also possession. The words settled heavier than the aftershocks in my muscles, branding me in a way no touch could. I had wanted to test her. Instead, I had given myself over, undone under her watch.
My body trembled in the aftermath, every muscle loose, every breath shaky. I blinked up at the ceiling, trying to steady myself. She moved at last, reaching for a folded washcloth on the counter. She crouched beside the tub and held it out. Our fingers brushed as I took it, and the contact lit a spark through my hand.
I reached for the bottle of body wash and poured a thin line across the cloth. The clean scent rose as I rubbed it over my skin, down my arms, across my chest, careful over the sore ankle resting against the side of the tub. Her eyes followed me, steady and unreadable, but I could feel the weight of them everywhere the cloth passed.
When I slid down into the water to soak my hair, the warmth closed over my ears and muted the world. I came up again, slick red strands clinging to my shoulders. Lather foamed between my fingers as I worked the shampoo in, and I was just about to dip back to rinse when Cam’s hand closed around the faucet. She filled a cup, tipped it over my head, and water cascaded through my hair.
She did it again, slow and thorough. Her long fingers combed through the strands, guiding the suds away. I let her, too stunned to resist, caught in the strange intimacy of it. The touch was practical, efficient, yet my scalp tingled under her care.
When the water ran clear, she set the cup aside. A towel waited in her hands, ready before I thought to ask. She lifted me from the bath as easily as she had set me down, the cotton wrapping close around me. Every motion was precise, each step without hesitation, but all I could think of was the echo of her voice commanding me, the sound of my breath breaking under her control.
I had meant to provoke her, to shake her stillness. Instead she had claimed the moment without a word of resistance. Triumph prickled under my skin, but it tangled with unease. I was too aware of how quickly I had yielded, how easily her silence had pulled me under.
That weight stayed with me as I balanced on one foot against the counter, awkwardly drying my hair.
14
Ellie
Kara had a wayof making everything urgent. I came back in through the side door, shaking the cold from my shoulders, and irritation rode close behind me. Holding a ladder while she fiddled with the porch camera was not how I wanted to spend my afternoon.
The angle had been fine. I knew it was fine. I had checked it yesterday, and the day before that, the feed clear as day on the monitors. But Kara wanted it shifted higher, then lower, then back again. If Alex had been off patrol it would have been her job to hold that ladder, but with her circling the perimeter, I was the one stuck bracing the damn thing while Kara craned over the third floor.
It felt like wasted time. I should have been inside, keeping track of Sabine, managing her injury, making sure she didn’t get herself into more trouble. Instead I stood in the cold, watching Kara argue with the wind over a piece of equipment that was already working.
The worst part was how normal it felt. Kara liked perfection, liked to press on every detail until it gave. She said the camera might have shifted in the weather, that a few degrees could be the difference between spotting a threat and missing one. Maybe she was right. But it felt more likely that she just needed something to control, and I had let her pull me into it. Fucking Kara.
I moved deeper into the house, jaw tight. The command room was quiet but for the low hum of equipment. I dropped into the chair, pulled up the feed controls, and set to work. Because Kara had shifted the porch camera, the whole system needed to be reset and resynced. Another slice of time wasted.
This was another thing that should have been Alex’s lane. She was the one who typically handled our tech. I handled it well enough, but the work I preferred was handling people, not wires and monitors. My value was in keeping bodies whole and safe, not babysitting pixels. Yet here I was, fingers moving through menus, adjusting calibrations while Sabine was upstairs with nothing but her own bad ideas for company.
I worked through it methodically, running the diagnostics, correcting the angle until the feed locked into place. The irritation burned steady in my chest. Every minute here was one I could be using where it counted. Kara could call it attention to detail. To me, it was busywork.
The feed blinked, then cleared. I leaned back, rubbing a hand across my jaw. On the central monitor, the split screen held steady. My gaze caught on the box marked for her room.
Sabine lay across the bed, a book balanced in her hands. No pacing or restless energy trying to test the edges of her cage. She looked settled, almost docile, her attention buried in the pages. The sight stopped me. It did not fit the woman who had bristled at every order, who had tried to take the stairs on a bad ankle just to prove a point.
Calm, contained, quiet. For a moment I wondered if the storm had broken, or if this was only the eye of it. I tapped the desk with more force than was necessary and stood, rolling the stiffness from my shoulders.
Cam’s steps sounded on the stairs just as I finished locking the feed back into place. I leaned back in the chair, rubbing the tension from my jaw, when her shadow darkened the doorway.
“Kara had me outside holding a ladder,” I said by way of greeting. “All so she could shift the porch camera a couple of degrees.” I shook my head, still annoyed at the wasted hour.
Her mouth quirked. “Sounds like her.”
“She would straighten a picture frame six times if it was off by a hair.”
