Page 35 of Hunted to Be Mine

That small praise shouldn’t have warmed me, but it did. I filed away his techniques, knowing they might mean survival later.

“So this is what you do? Turn ordinary moments into tactical operations?”

His expression softened. “This is what they made me do. But sometimes…” he paused, his mouth tightened then eased, “…sometimes I wonder if there was more before. Normal things. Grocery shopping. Walks in the snow.”

Those words hit hard. I found myself studying his profile in the golden glow of the streetlamps: the sharp jaw, the shadows beneath his eyes, snowflakes catching in his dark hair. For all that training, there was something human in his uncertainty.

“The sedan didn’t follow,” he noted after a beat, but the wariness didn’t leave his body. “Could be nothing. Could be they’re good.”

“Either way, we should hurry back.”

We walked in comfortable silence, my shoulder occasionally brushing his arm, white vapor trailing from our mouths in the cold air. The snow fell harder now, dulling the city sounds around us. For a moment, I could almost pretend we were just a couple heading home on a winter evening, grocery bags and pastries in hand.

Almost, but not quite.

But the weight of his missing memories hung between us, as real as the weapon I knew he carried.

We turned onto our street, the safehouse only a block away. The snow had thickened, softening the sounds of the city. I shifted the bakery bag to my other hand, fingers stiff from cold.

A figure in a black coat emerged from a side alley.

Before I could react, Specter’s hand clamped around my arm. He pushed me backward into a recessed doorway, his body pressing against mine. The grocery bags dropped.

He didn’t budge, pinning me in place. One hand already held a weapon I hadn’t even seen him draw.

“Don’t move.” His mouth was near my ear, warmth against my frozen skin.

I remained perfectly still, my back against the cold door, his chest against mine. Through the layers of our coats, I felt thesteady rhythm of his heartbeat, unnaturally calm compared to my rushed pulse.

The scent of him, clean snow, faint gunmetal, and something else uniquely him, cut through the cold for reasons that had nothing to do with danger. His face hovered inches from mine as he watched the street’s reflection in a darkened shop window across from us.

I studied his profile, the tight jaw, the focused look, the complete absence of fear. This was the operative in his element, the predator assessing threat.

The black-coated figure passed without slowing, hunched against the cold, breath billowing white in the freezing air. Just a local hurrying home.

Specter remained pressed against me for several beats longer than necessary, sharing the same thin pocket of air, small white clouds between us. I became aware of every point of contact, his hip against mine, his thigh alongside my leg, the hand that had moved to brace against the door beside my head.

“Clear,” he said, though he didn’t move.

He looked down at me, calculation easing for a moment. His attention flicked to my lips for a fraction of a second before he finally moved away, creating cold space between us.

He didn’t acknowledge what had just happened. “Let’s go.”

We continued toward the safehouse, walking closer together than before. The earlier lightness had vanished, replaced by a hard silence. The playful banter seemed to belong to different people in a different world.

The safehouse door closed behind us with a soft click. I set down the bakery bag on the kitchen counter while Specter secured the locks. He moved through the apartment, checking windows, sightlines, escape routes. Only when he’d completed his inspection did his shoulders lower slightly.

I hung my coat on the back of a chair. “All clear?”

He gave a brief nod, posture still wired from our near-encounter on the street. The playful man who’d joked about cobra venom in oatmeal had vanished, replaced by the operative.

I unpacked the groceries, stealing glances at him as he stood at the window, watching the street below through a narrow gap in the curtains. The charge from that moment in the doorway, his body pressed against mine, our shared air sat between us, sharp and present.

I opened the bakery bag. “You should eat something.” The rich scent of sugar and butter filled the small space.

He didn’t turn. “Not hungry.”

“That wasn’t a question.” I arranged the donuts on a chipped plate I’d found in the cabinet. “The girl at the bakery said these are some Eastern European specialty. I couldn’t understand half the flavors she described.”