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But maybe respect.
“Someone’s nervous,” she said, and he nodded.
The door dinged. They stepped into a lower corridor, this one colder, air processed too many times to feel like anything but manufactured.
The lab setup was functional. Twin monitors. Secured keyboard. Dual login. External hardware docked but unplugged.
Grace sat.
Nash leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He wasn’t crowding her. But he wasn’t retreating either.
She tapped in.
Systems booted. Access credentials populated. Firewalls flexed.
She was the sharp one. The capable one. Quiet, efficient, invisible. That was how she stayed safe. That was how she stayed viable. Stay in the lines, don’t ask for too much, and don’t ever, ever let them see you tremble.
He shifted and she snapped. “Could you sit?”
He unspooled that flexible, very male body, and she heard a chair creak as he slid into it. She typed and watched the screen. Then she frowned. This wasn’t right. Had she typed in something wrong? She went back to her code and gasped. She had. She gritted her teeth. Stop getting distracted, she told herself. She worked at resurrecting her bubble, it would have worked and she was almost there. But she hadn’t expected his scent, and her fortification crumpled.
She sat at the console, trying to focus on the task at hand. The room was quiet, save for the soft hum of the air conditioner. Yet, her concentration was slipping away, drawn irresistibly to Nash's presence. He was standing again. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. He had to move, it seemed, and every time he did, just a few feet away, his scent intoxicated her.
He smelled like the desert after rain. Like cedarwood and spice, oud and something sun-warmed, resinous and ancient. There was the faint bite of pepper, the whisper of crushed cardamom pods, and a sweetness that curled behind it like smoke drifting through an old souk.
She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, but the scent was too powerful. It was sexy, confident, and undeniably Nash.
Grace knew she was lost, unable to escape the allure of his presence. She realized she hadn’t typed a single thing for a full minute. Her bubble was terribly compromised, and panic set in.
How was she supposed to do this with him in the room? He was supposed to be her partner in this, and he would be a valuable one. Everything was there on paper, but reality, oh God, he was a codebreaker, her codebreaker, bubble popper. He moved, his clothes rustling. It should be against the law for him to wear a leather jacket. It just should. The scent of it mixed into the heady effect of him, and the movement of fabric only reminded her what was beneath those clothes, which in turn made her remember all that hard, protective muscle surrounding her.
She tried to focus on the screen, made two more mistakes, and trembled with the annoyance of it. She corrected the errors, then waited. Nothing happened. What? She should be getting an answer to her query.
Sloppy. She didn’t make mistakes. Not twice in one sitting. She was the analyst who never broke, until she broke once and lost everything. This wasn’t about attraction. It was about control, and she was losing it.
Grace's heart pounded in her chest as she tried to maintain her focus. It wasn’t a scent she’d ever forget. Not after this morning. Not after the way it had seeped into her skin during impact and refused to let go.
The room seemed to close in around her, every sound amplified, every movement magnified. Nash's presence was overwhelming, and she was acutely aware of every breath he took. Each inhale and exhale were a symphony of sensation, a reminder of his proximity and the undeniable attraction she felt.
She had already made several errors, her composure collapsing under the pressure. The panic of trying to keep her focus was palpable, and every time Nash moved, the rustle of his clothes changed the air. Shifted like the world had realigned. Her bubble crumpled, quiet and pathetic, under the weight of that presence.
The environment seemed to conspire against her. The soft hum of the air conditioner, his overpowering essence, just…him. All of it combined to create a sensory overload. Grace's emotions were a whirlwind, a mix of curiosity, frustration, and the desperate need to maintain control. Her thoughts scattered like dropped pins. No order. No logic. Just heat and breath and the memory of being caught like she was something breakable, which she hated. Which she wanted again. God help her, she wanted it.
The room seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them, caught in a dance of attraction and tension. Grace's control slipped further with each passing second, and she was powerless to stop it.
The console beeped and she looked at the screen. This wasn’t what she’d asked for. This was food prep logs from the cooks in the cafeteria.
“How’s it going?” His voice was gentle, just as distracting as he was. She flinched anyway. This was the part where someone noticed the fractures. Where they saw the brilliant analyst glitch. Where they realized she was more scar than code. If he saw that, he might ask too many questions.
She couldn’t break down again. Not here. Not in front of him. Not when the only thing that had kept her standing was being the girl who didn’t get rattled. The girl who was useful. If she wasn’t useful, she wasn’t anything.
Grace stared at the monitor like it had betrayed her. She was a cyber specialist. A systems genius. That wasn’t arrogance. It was fact. She saw patterns where others saw noise, anticipated code behaviors before the compiler finished its loop.
This was something else.
She’d been locked in a silent battle of wills with a system that shouldn’t have had one. Queries rejected without reason. Access rerouted through dead channels. Fragments of logs appearing and vanishing like ghosts.
She typed faster. Refined. Adjusted. Nothing. It was as if the code had a pulse.As if it were choosing not to answer her. Which was impossible. Code wasn’t sentient. Unless…