"I missed the basement window. Because I was here with you. Because I let the structure go, and while I was doing that, he was in the cellar. Under our feet."
"That's not your fault."
"It is my fault. It's my job."
"It's your job to be perfect?"
"It's my job to be enough."
She unfolds. Stands. Crosses the room to where I'm sitting. Close enough that I can smell coconut from her hair.
"You are enough," she says.
"Kari—"
"No." Her hand on my jaw. Thumb against the tick point. "You are enough. Not the operative. Not the protocol. You. The man who brings banana bread to my neighbors. Who reads thrillers on the porch. Who told me about gas station magnets and didn't even know he was letting me in."
My eyes close. Her thumb moves against my jaw — a slow stroke that undoes something I've spent my whole life building.
"I can't protect you if I'm?—"
"You can't protect me if you're not here. With me. Not scanning the room. Not running the threat assessment you run every time I touch you."
My hands find her hips.
"So, don't stop," she says. Her forehead touches mine. "Just let me be inside the perimeter."
Something breaks. Not fractures. Breaks — clean, structural, the kind of failure that can't be repaired because it was never meant to hold. The wall between what I want and what I allow myself to have collapses in a single, silent implosion. What's underneath is raw enough that breathing hurts.
I pull her into my lap. Knees bracketing my hips in the old chair, springs protesting. My hands slide up her back —not assessing. Just touching. The ridge of her spine. Warmth beneath fabric.
"I don't know how to do this," I say against her throat.
"This isn't a skill, Liam. You don't have to be trained."
She kisses me. Slow. Deliberate. Not a question but an answer to something I didn't know I'd asked. Tips my chin up. Traces my jaw. Kisses the pulse point below my ear where my heartbeat announces everything my voice won't.
"Stay with me," she murmurs.
Not the house. Not the assignment. Here.
I let her lead.
Her hips roll against mine in the chair. A slow grind that sends heat straight through me, and my hands grip her waist — instinct, not strategy. She's warm through the thin fabric of her shirt. Warm everywhere. My cock hardens against her, obvious, impossible to hide, and she doesn't pretend not to notice. She rocks into it. Deliberate. Watching my face while she does.
"Still with me?" Her mouth curves.
"I'm not going anywhere."
She pulls her shirt over her head. No bra underneath. The lamplight catches her bare skin — the freckle on her collarbone I cataloged three days ago without meaning to, the soft weight of her breasts, the way her stomach contracts with each breath. I have spent two weeks training myself not to look at this woman. The training collapses in under a second.
My mouth finds her collarbone. The hollow of her throat. She makes a sound when my lips close around her nipple — a sharp inhale that I feel in my own chest. My tongue circles the peak while my hand cups her other breast, and her fingers tighten in my hair. Pulling. Not gentle.
Good.
We move from the chair to the bed. Not gracefully — the chair objects, my knee catches the bedframe, she laughs against my mouth. The sound cracks something open in my chest.
On the yellow bedspread, she lays me on my back. Takes her time — reading the structure, finding the places where the damage runs deeper than the surface. Her mouth on the scar, the hollow of my throat. Her hands unbuttoning my jeans with the steady competence of a woman who renovates houses — no fumbling, no hesitation.
