I slump back against the wood. Lucia collapses against me, her face buried in my neck. I keep my cock buried in her slick cunt.
The beast is satisfied. The Commander reboots.
I stroke her spine, the shirt soaked in sweat. “We need to move.”
I lift her off my lap. My cock pulls free with a wet pop, a mixture of her juices and my cum spilling down her thigh. I adjust my pants. Lucia pulls on the canvas pants with trembling hands.
I zip her jacket to her chin. My hand stays on the zipper a beat too long. Then it rises to her jaw. I tilt her face up. Force her eyes to mine.
“You did so well for me.” The words are low, private, stripped of the Commander’s bark. “Now let Daddy get you somewhere safe.”
The comms unit on the floor crackles. “Commander,” Rafe’s voice barks. “The phantoms are packed. We need the perimeter cleared.”
I snatch the radio. “Copy, Beast. Heading back.”
I look at her. She is mine in a way that won’t wash off.
“Kaila, Daniel, and the others are heading back to the city to run the diversion,” I tell her. My operational tone is back. “We need to get inside.”
I trace her swollen bottom lip with my thumb.
“Know this, Principessa. That was a field extraction. The bare minimum.” Her chest rises sharply. “When we finish bleeding your brother dry, I’m going to strip you in a real bed and spend a week showing you exactly how many times a man can make you scream.”
I slide the deadbolt back. I pull the door open, letting the mountain wind bite into the shed.
My hand settles on the small of her back, guiding her out into the snow.
“Now,” I tell her. “Let’s go burn your brother’s empire to the ground.”
16
LUCIA
The cabin door swings shut behind us.
Nick’s bare, calloused hand leaves the small of my back before the latch even clicks.
One second it is there—warm, heavy, and still carrying the scent of the diesel and sex from the shed—and then it is gone. He is already moving toward Daniel. He’d shoved his tactical gloves into his pocket the moment we stepped back inside, the professional Commander reassembling himself with chilling speed.
I stand near the door for exactly two seconds. Long enough to feel the cold air still clinging to my jacket. Long enough for the room to register my return.
It does.
Nothing obvious. Nobody stops working. Nobody looks up with wide eyes or pointed expressions. But there is a shift, a quiet recalibration, the way a room changes when the barometric pressure drops before a storm. Kaila’s fingers pause on her keyboard for a beat too long. Oliver adjusts something on theequipment table that does not need adjusting. Mia’s eyes track to me and away again, smooth and practiced, but the corner of her mouth does something complicated.
They know. Or they suspect. In this cabin, with this crew, the difference between the two is negligible.
I pull the winter jacket off and hang it on the iron rack by the door.
Then the goodbyes start.
They do not announce themselves as goodbyes. The team moves like water, efficient, overlapping, already in exfil mode before anyone calls it. Bags come out from under tables. Equipment gets broken down and packed into hard-sided cases with the same economy of motion they apply to everything.
Oliver finishes first. He slings a black duffel over one shoulder and stops in front of me on his way to the door. He looks at me with something that is not pity and not admiration but sits in the strange territory between them.
“You’re tougher than most of the men I’ve worked with,” he says. Simply. Like a fact he is reporting. Then he is out the door, and the cold air rushes in briefly and seals behind him.
Mia is next. She zips her technical bag closed and crosses to me, and for a moment I think she is going to say something carefully professional and forgettable. Instead she stops close and says quietly, so only I can hear it: “I didn’t think I’d like you. I was wrong.” She presses her lips together like she is debating whether to say the rest of it, then says it anyway. “Tyra’s got good instincts. She picked the right men to trust.”