She woke before he did. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Gray light pressed against the curtains, thin and cold. Vincent was spooned tight behind her, his chest plastered to her back, his arm heavy across her waist pinning her in place. The lamp was off—she’d turned it off herself last night—and the room had settled into a heavy dark that felt almost safe for once. His breathing was slow and even, deeper than she’d ever heard it. The kind of slow that came from a man who had finally let every wall drop without meaning to, without realizing how exposed he looked with his body curled around hers like this.

She lay still. Heart kicking a little too hard against her ribs.

Asleep, he was harder to read, not easier. The sharp, deliberate edge that shaped every move he made when he was awake had melted away. Left behind something stripped raw. The scar on his temple caught the thin slice of morning light, pale against his skin. Her stomach twisted before she could stop it.

Sebastian’s words crawled back in uninvited, thick and heavy in her chest. A ghost. I think he found that person. The six minutes he’d burned tearing across the city. The contract that had been drawn up long before she ever stepped foot in that casino. The way he’d known her name, her history, her technique—details that took way longer than a two-day tip to pull together.

The thoughts hit messy, one right after the other. They didn’t line up clean. They just sat there, heavy and alive in her gut, making her pulse thump louder against her throat while she watched the slow rise and fall of his chest pressed to her spine.

His hand moved first. Palm spreading wide and warm over her stomach, slow and certain even before his eyes opened. Fingers pressing into the rise and fall of her breathing like he had to feel it to believe it. He was already hard against the curve of her ass. Thick. Insistent. The heat of him made her go very still. Not fear. Something hotter. Sharper. It flared low in her belly and made her thighs clench tight together.

His mouth found the back of her neck. Not rushed. A long, slow press of lips first. Then teeth scraping skin just enough to sting. Then his tongue soothing the sting right after. His hips rolled against her from behind—not pushing inside yet, just dragging the hard length of him along her skin, teasing, insistent.

"Good morning," he said against her neck. Low. Almost dry. Like he was daring her to pretend this was just another ordinary day.

Her mouth curved before she could stop it. "You’re still in my space."

"Yeah." He didn’t pull back an inch. If anything, he pressed closer, chest solid against her back.

His hand slid from her stomach down to her hip, gripping—not bruising, just sure—and yanked her flush against him. She felt every inch of him pressed tight to her lower back now, thick and already wanting. His other arm stayed locked around her waist like a promise he wasn’t letting go anytime soon.

She pushed back against him deliberately. Felt his breath catch sharp in his throat.

He groaned low, right against her skin, and rolled his hips again. The drag of him sliding hot against her from behind made her pulse spike hard. His hand moved lower, sliding between her thighs, and she was already wet—slick and ready against his fingers the second he touched her. He made a rough sound that vibrated straight through her chest and down her spine.

"Christ," he muttered, quiet, like it still caught him off guard every single damn time.

He stroked her slow from behind. Fingers working her open, careful but hungry, mouth still at the back of her neck—biting soft, kissing the sting, biting again. Her breath came uneven now, catching every few seconds. She pressed her palm flat over the back of his hand, not guiding him, just feeling the way he moved on her. Feeling him. The heat. The need.

"Vincent." Just his name. Rough. Needy. Nothing else.

He pushed inside her from behind in one long, thick stroke. The angle hit different this time—deeper somehow, fuller, his chest still plastered tight to her back and his arm locked hard across her waist so she couldn’t shift away even if she’d wanted to. She gasped loud and reached back, nails digging into his thigh, anchoring herself there against the stretch.

He moved slow. Deliberately slow. Not teasing—thorough. Like he meant to learn every single response she had in this position, every sound, every twitch. His lips dragged warm across the back of her shoulder. His hand slid up from her hip to cup her breast, thumb tracing slow circles over her nipple until she made a sound she hadn’t planned on making. She felt him smile against her skin, that private little curve of his mouth.

"Don’t," she growled. Rougher than she meant it to come out.

"Don’t what?" His hips rolled deep, pulled back, rolled again. Still unhurried. Still completely in control.

She turned her head and bit his forearm. Hard enough to leave a mark. A warning.

He laughed—a low, private sound she’d never heard from him in any other moment—and drove into her harder. Once. Twice. The headboard shifted against the wall with a dull thud. She shoved back to meet him, hips working, and his arm tightened across her waist like iron. His mouth found the side of her throat, teeth grazing, breath hot and ragged. Everything shifted gears fast. Less patient now. Hungrier. Rougher.

His thrusts deepened. The rhythm built quick. Her fingers fisted the sheet tight. The way he filled her from this angle—the way he pressed right up against her spine, breath rough at her ear—layered over the slow tenderness from last night and made her whole body tighten up hard. His fingers slipped back between her thighs, working her clit in tight circles while he kept fucking her deep, and the combination hit her like a punch. Vision narrowing. Pulse roaring in her ears.

"I’ve got you," he said against her temple. Low. Certain. Not soft. Just true.

She came with her teeth sunk hard into her own forearm, muffling the sharp cry, clenching around him in tight, desperate pulses. Hips jerking back against him. He followed a moment later—arm crushing her tight to his chest, whole body going rigid, a rough groan tearing out of him against her neck as he spilled deep inside her in long, hot pulses. He kept moving through it, slower now, greedy, wringing out every last shudder until they were both wrecked and breathing too hard.

He didn’t pull out right away. Just stayed buried deep, arm locked around her, face pressed to the back of her neck. She could feel his heartbeat slamming against her spine—fast, frantic, then slowly, slowly steadying.

Eventually he exhaled, long and shaky, like he’d been holding it for hours.

She lay there and let herself feel it all. The heavy weight of him still inside her. The particular quiet of a man who had no performance left in him. Something warm and terrifying settled deep in her chest at the same time. She didn’t name it. Just let it sit there, messy and alive and unnamed.

He brought her water and coffee himself later, no staff called. Checked her stitches with careful fingers. His thumb brushed the fresh bruising on her hip from his grip the night before and his jaw tightened—not darkening, just that small compression she’d learned to read as self-directed anger.

"That was me," he said.

"I know." She held his gaze steady. "I’d tell you if I wanted you to stop."

He looked at her for a long moment. Then let out a slow breath and handed her the coffee.

"You’re not going into the field today."

She tested him anyway. "My ankle—"

"Not today." His voice didn’t rise. It just dropped heavy. Final. Like stone. "Caruso knows the ambush failed. They’ll adjust. Come harder next time with a corrected approach. I need you thinking straight, not bleeding out again."

She held that for a beat. He wasn’t wrong. The ankle would slow her down in the field. Another impact to the stitched hairline could fuck her up worse than she could afford. And her mind was already spinning ahead anyway—the funnel point Lucian had flagged, the warehouse recon data, the loading bay rotation windows. She could compress days of counter-strike planning if she worked it from here.

"I want everything Lucian pulled on that deviation," she said. "Before anything else."

He studied her. Something shifted in his face—the look of a man who had braced for resistance and gotten something sharper instead. The corner of his mouth twitched up. "After breakfast."

"Before."

A pause. Then: "Before."

She drank her coffee slow, watching him move around the room—precise, no wasted motion, the same whether he was in the war room or here in the quiet with her. A man who never performed anything for anyone because he’d never needed to. The control wasn’t armor. It was the architecture. The thing that held everything else in place so nothing could collapse.

The ghost Sebastian had named still sat heavy in her chest like a live wire waiting to spark. The question burned there—Is it me?—but she didn’t push it out. Not yet. Not while his thumb kept tracing that bruise on her hip and his eyes kept flicking back to her stitches like he was scared she might vanish if he looked away too long.

He was failing at hiding it. She felt that confusing pull again—want and fear and something ugly-sweet all twisted up tight in her gut—and leaned her shoulder against his instead of saying a word.

His arm came around her. Careful of the stitches. Certain about everything else.

Outside, the war kept its patience. Still moving. Still waiting.

She let it wait.

For now.