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She bristled. “This assignment isn’t the problem.”
He didn’t back down. “Then what is?” His jaw flexed. “What does Caspari have on you?”
Her mouth opened. Closed. A bitter laugh caught in her throat.
“She’s been watching me,” she whispered. “Found out I’ve been running silent queries into the drone breach that tanked my career.” His expression darkened. “She threatened to report me. Said if I didn’t take this op, she’d expose me. No one believed me.” Her voice trembling, she didn’t stop. “I got overridden that day. People died. Now I’m supposed to forget? Pretend the system wasn’t hacked? That my gut didn’t scream before everything went to hell? I tried to move on. I really did.” Her shoulders slumped. Her hands curled at her sides. “But I can’t.”
Nash’s face changed. The air shifted. His gaze dropped, shadowed and haunted. He blinked once. Twice. His next breath shook. “You don’t move on,” he said quietly, “when the people you took oaths with get left behind.” His fists clenched at his sides. “We both know what’s at stake here, federal charges…too many questions…pain, but…you don’t move on, Grace…wedon’t move on, unless we follow this train to the end of the line.” Nash’s fists clenched at his sides. The vein in his throat throbbed like a heartbeat trying to punch through the skin. "We’ll carry it. Every damn day."
He hesitated, then added, almost grudgingly, "I caught something, too," he said roughly.
"Doesn’t make sense, but now we’re shoved into the same corner. That bitch connected dots and we have one shot to make it right." He stepped closer, his body heat overtaking hers, and now the room was too full. Too intimate. Why did he smell so damn good?
A grim smile tugged at his mouth, bitter and broken. "You’re not crazy," he said, voice low. "Whatever you flagged, whatever you saw. It wasn’t nothing." His pain pressed into hers, warping the air between them. Her breath stuttered. The ache behind her ribs started to pulse.
He pressed his palm to the doorframe, towering above her but not threatening. Justthere. Heavy with sorrow and strength.
“I understand the threat of losing everything,” he said softly. “I know how that feels.” His voice dropped lower. “But I can’t do this without you. If you leave now, if we don’t finish this… we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.” Her eyes stung. “That bitch coerced us,” he continued, “but this…we get to choose what this becomes. We can choose to find the truth. Not for them. For us.” He swallowed hard, voice fracturing. “You remember every second of what happened to you, and I… I can’t remember a single one. Not how my brothers died. Not what I did, not what I didn’t do. Not what I said to them. Nothing.”
His voice was rough. “I need answers, Grace. Ineedyou.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
For the first time in longer than she could admit, someone needed her. Not her skills. Not her silence.Her.
It terrified her.
If she could have stayed behind her walls, tucked safe inside the bubble she had built out of loss and discipline, maybe she could have survived this. But Nash kept pushing past every barrier. Colliding against her mind. Her body. Her pulse. Tearing holes in the places she thought were impenetrable.
He was becoming something to her. She didn’t even have a name for it yet.
She didn’t know how to survive wanting it.
Or him.
She backed up, eyes wide, heartbeat hammering in her chest.
“I can’t,” she whispered. It came out broken. Too honest. Her control finally failing.
He stilled. The pain in his face, visible now, raw and devastating, clenched every muscle in his jaw. “I’ll talk to Caspari,” he said, stepping forward. “I’ll get her to back off. Just… please, Grace.”
Her chest seized. Her lungs burned. It wasn’t the threat. It wasn’t the case. She hadn’t cried in a year. But now her eyes stung.Why now? Why him?
He reacted to the look on her face. That’s what happened when her bubble burst, she couldn’t hide a damn thing. His voice thick, he asked, “What is it?”
He crossed the threshold. He stepped into her room. Into her.
Now that he was close,tooclose, his scent was more powerful than ever, wrapping around her like silk slipping down bare skin. It was heat and hunger, leather and spice, a dark musk touched with smoke and something elemental, like cedar smoldering under sunlight, oud steeped in want.
It wasn’t cologne. It washim.The scent of sweat and skin and restrained power. The memory of his body protecting her. The phantom echo of muscle and breath and need.
Her knees softened. Her breath hitched. That ache bloomed again, low and deep, hot as want, sharp as fear. She wanted to lean in.To sink. To give in to the pull of him, let that scent drag her under until she forgot how to breathe without it.
It made her feel alive.
God help her, it made herwet.
The shock of it, of how much shewantedhim, of how fast she was unraveling, was more than she could bear.