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Tau took two deep breaths and pushed himself off my back. He freed my wrists first, quickly, because he knew what the position cost.

“Fingers.”

I wiggled them. Pins and needles bloomed, and I hissed.

“Good,” he said softly. “Breathe.”

His fingers worked at the knots while he kept himself lodged inside. The rope came away from my chest in slow, loosening pulls, and I felt the blood rush back into my arms, warm and tingling. Even as he began to massage the ache from my shoulders and arms, kneading each muscle, pressing a kiss to each faint line the cotton had left behind, I still needed him inside me.

He seemed to sense it. He eased us down onto our sides, drew the sheet over us, and lay behind me, holding me close. His arm was heavy and warm across my waist. His breath fanned over the back of my neck, and the sweat cooled on my skin, and the pounding in my ears slowly settled.

“Comfortable?” he murmured.

“Perfect,” I whispered.

He pressed his lips to my hair, making me smile at his ridiculous whispered words. Something about my form being exemplary, and my performance exceeding all expectations.

He was giving himself to me in pieces, and I was quietly hoarding every one.

Chapter 24

Tau

I had been a single man for thirty-four years. It had taken one night with Zuri to end it.

I did not regret a minute. I could still feel her beneath my hands, red cotton against her skin, her voice breaking around my name, and the way she had curled into me afterwards and slept as though she had always belonged there. Whatever remained of the man I had been, he had been worth losing. If this was ruin, I would take every hour of it.

She walked into the tailor’s shop tucked beneath my arm, cocooned against my side, her hand resting flat on my stomach as if it had always been there. The bell above the door chimed. The air smelled of hot steam and chalk and lavender.

Keshishian looked up from his bench. He took the pins from his mouth, wiped his hands on a cloth, and went to a drawer beneath the counter. He turned a small key. He did not hurry. He drew out a flat brown envelope and set it down between us.

Then he paused and looked at us.

He looked from Zuri to me, and back again. His eyes crinkled behind the thick lenses. He studied the way her head rested against my ribs, the way my hand curved around her shoulder, and I felt his gaze settle on my face.

“Something has changed, no?”

I said nothing, as usual. My grip tightened around her. A low sound escaped my chest, somewhere between a grunt and a warning.

Zuri hid her smile against my coat.

“You are a very lucky man,” Keshishian said.

He slid the passport across the counter. It was new, stiff and impossibly real. I opened it, checked the photograph, the name, the numbers, every line, and handed it to Zuri. She took it with both hands, as if it might break.

“Zero sent a message,” Keshishian said. “The balance has been transferred, minus costs incurred. He is working to take the heat off you and your…” He smiled. “Beautiful wife. He will be in touch.”

The word landed in my chest and stayed. Wife. A cover. A placeholder. It did not feel like either.

I set the bag on the counter. A grenade sat on top of it, olive and quiet. Keshishian regarded it for a long moment.

“I will put this somewhere very safe,” he said.

We shook hands. His palm was dry and surprisingly strong. “God keep you both,” he murmured, in Russian, and then in a language I did not know.

Outside, the morning was bright and cold. Zuri hugged the passport to her chest, then opened it again and again, turning it to the light.

“I look like a hostage,” she said.