I close my eyes.
The mistake is instantaneous.
Without visual input, my mind supplies the data. I picture steam fogging the glass of the shower stall. I picture droplets tracing slow, erratic paths down pale skin. I picture the curve of her neck, the arch of her spine, the water slicking hair back from a face looking at me with too much defiance and too much fear.
I shut that down. Hard.
I engage the mental lock, slamming the steel door on the visualization.
Discipline.
Then the water cuts off.
A pause. Silence.
I lock my teeth until the muscles ache.
Footsteps follow. Soft. Unhurried. Socks whispering over the polished concrete floor. The sound’s intimate, domestic, terrifyingly out of place in a safe house designed for war.
My mind fills in details I don’t want: bare shoulders, damp hair clinging to her neck, the scent of vanilla soap wafting into the hallway. I know exactly what that curve looks like. I shouldn’t. I do.
The rustle of sheets when she finally lies down is the worst of it.
An innocent sound for not-innocent images.
Her stretched out in the master bed. Wrapped in my space. The imprint of her body against sheets smelling like detergent and disuse. The memory of her pinned beneath me in the parking garage flashes unbidden. Heat, weight, the sharp intake of air when she realized she wasn’t going anywhere. The way her body fit against the armor, soft where I was hard, yielding where I was rigid.
I force myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Reset the autonomic nervous system.
This isn’t want. It’s contamination.
It’s proximity. It’s too much sensory input layered over adrenaline and the bone-deep need to protect. That’s what I tell myself as my skin tightens, as if I’ve been wound too far and left there under tension.
Compromised.
I shove the wool blanket aside and stand. The movement is abrupt, violent.
The den sits at a precise sixty-eight degrees, climate-controlled down to the decimal to ensure equipment functionality.
I still overheat.
My blood runs hot, a low-grade fever of awareness having nothing to do with infection. I’m too aware. Too alert. Too focused on the woman asleep in the room I shouldn’t even be thinking about.
I pace the length of the room. Twelve steps to the window. Twelve steps back.
It’s not enough. The pressure building behind my ribs isn’t just tactical anxiety. It’s a physical demand. A biological imperative screaming to be silenced.
I turn sharply, bypassing the monitors, and stalk toward the guest bathroom.
I lock the door behind me. The click of the latch rings loud in the silence.
I don’t turn on the light. The darkness is better. The darkness hides the man in the mirror I don’t want to look at right now.
I lean back against the heavy wood of the door, thumping my head against it. Silence stretches from the hallway.
Good.
I move my hand to my belt. The buckle gives way with a metallic clink. I shove my pants down just enough to free myself. The air feels cool against my skin, a cold rebuke to the heat coiling in my gut.
