He obeyed me. He slowed the rhythm of his hand, teasing the release, dragging her back from the edge of the cliff. It was torture. For her. For him. For me.
I watched. I forced myself to watch.
I cataloged every twitch of her muscles, every flush of color on her skin, every bead of sweat rolling down her temple. I was the witness. Ten years ago, I had looked away. I had stared at the back of her head, terrified of the mess, terrified of the biological reality of her heat. I had let her be dragged away because I was too much of a coward to witness her pain.
Not today.
I stood over them, a sentinel in a ruined suit, holding the line between life and death.
"170," I read aloud. "Cortisol is dropping. Dopamine saturation is rising. Okay. Finish it. Now."
Simon didn't hesitate. The shift in his body language was instant, from tentative to possessive. He drove into her, his wrist snapping with a rhythm that was pure, instinctual need.
Tessa screamed.
It wasn't the scream of the victim on the stage. It was the roar of a survivor. It was a shatter-point, the sound of a dam breaking.
The smell of her release exploded in the room, sweet, fermented berries and absolute surrender. It washed over me,heavy and slick, coating my tongue, drenching my clothes. My knees buckled. I had to grab the edge of the marble island to keep upright, my knuckles turning white as I fought the urge to fall to the floor and bury my face in her neck.
"Breathe," I whispered, the word lost in the sound of the rain and her gasping cries. "Just breathe."
Whatever Simon was doing to her, holding her through the aftershocks, whispering praise into her skin, I couldn't hear it. The rush of blood in my ears was too loud.
Then, silence.
The kind of silence that follows a car crash. The engine stops ticking. The glass stops falling. There is just the heavy, stunned reality of survival.
Tessa lay motionless on the floor, her limbs boneless, her chest heaving with slow, wet breaths. Simon slumped forward, resting his forehead on her knee, his hand still… connected.
"Clear," Daniel breathed, his head dropping back against the cabinet.
I looked at the tablet.
Heart Rate: 115 BPM. Temperature: 101.2 F.
"She's stable," I said. My voice sounded hollow, scraped out. "We’re out of the red zone."
I sat the tablet on the counter. My hand was shaking. A fine, high-frequency tremor that rattled the device against the stone. I stared at it, hating the weakness.
"Get off her," I said.
It came out harsher than I intended. Territorial. Sharp.
Simon flinched. He slowly withdrew his hand, the sound was wet and intimate, a visceral reminder of what he had just done, and sat back on his heels. He looked at his hand, stained with her and ink, his face a mask of conflict.
"Cover her," Simon whispered, standing up and stumbling toward the sink like a drunk man.
"I’ve got it," I said. "Both of you, step back."
I established the perimeter. I reasserted the hierarchy. They were the medics who had performed the procedure; I was the agent who managed the asset.
But as I stepped around the island, looking down at her, the professional distance vanished.
She was a mess. Sweat plastered her hair to her face. Her thighs were slick with the evidence of her crisis. She was naked, vulnerable, and asleep on a cold concrete floor in a house with no heat.
"Daniel, get me the blankets from the living room," I ordered, moving into the space Simon had vacated. I knelt beside her, ignoring the ruin of my trousers on the damp floor. "The heavy wool ones. And bring me the water bottles from the supply cache."
"Anders," Daniel started, his voice soft. "Maybe we should... move her first?"
