Anya finished securing the zip-ties around Reed’s wrists, her movements efficient and devoid of sympathy.

The captain sat slumped in a wooden chair, his eyes fixed on the cheap laminate floor. The confession had hollowed him out, leaving only a shell of gravel and regret.

“Rally point is thirty minutes out,” Anya said, not looking at Wade or Truenai. She checked her watch. “I need to move him now. This location is clean, but it won’t stay that way forever. You have until dawn.”

Wade gave a curt nod. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat. “Understood.”

Anya hauled Reed to his feet. The older man stumbled, but she steadied him with a grip that was all business. At the door, she paused, her haunted eyes finding Wade’s. “Don’t get comfortable.”

Then they were gone. The lock clicked shut. The silence they left behind was thick, ringing.

Truenai didn’t let it linger. She was already moving, rooting through the duffel bag Anya had provided. She pulled out a small, sterile medical kit. “Sit,” she said, her voice assuming the calm, directive tone of her ICU. She pointed to the edge of the bare mattress on the floor.

Wade obeyed, lowering himself with a gritted exhale. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving the raw, hot pain of the reopened gunshot wound in sharp relief. He shrugged out of his torn and bloodied shirt, letting it fall to the floor.

She knelt in front of him, opening the kit. The contents were arranged with a nurse’s precision. Antiseptic wipes, gauze, a suture kit, a small vial of local anesthetic. Her fingers selected the suture scissors, her gaze clinical as she assessed the damage.

The wound was ugly. A ragged tear in the meat of his shoulder, seeping fresh blood. The old stitches from the safe house had torn free during the fight with Reed.

“This is going to hurt,” she said, her hazel eyes meeting his. No tease there now. Just truth.

“Just do it.”

She cleaned the area first, the antiseptic cold and stinging. He hissed, his muscles tensing. Her free hand came up, resting flat against the center of his chest. A grounding pressure. “Breathe, Deputy.”

He did. He watched the top of her head, her dark ponytail falling over one shoulder as she worked. She injected the local, the pinch a minor thing compared to the deeper ache. Then she threaded the needle.

Her touch was everything her description promised: gentle, capable, sure. But it was different now. They were alone. The world had narrowed to this dim room, her hands on his skin, his blood on her fingers.

The first pass of the needle through his flesh made his stomach clench. He felt the tug of the thread, the intimate violation of being sewn back together. He focused on her face, on the slight frown of concentration between her brows, on the way her bottom lip was caught gently between her teeth.

She worked in silence for several minutes, the only sounds their breathing and the soft pull of suture. Each time she leaned in, he caught her scent—hospital soap and, beneath it, the unique warmth that was just her. It cut through the smell of blood and antiseptic.

His body responded to that scent, to her proximity, with a brutal, honest clarity. His cock stirred, then hardened, thickening against the rough fabric of his jeans. It was an involuntary punch of want, a physiological truth that had nothing to do with the pain in his shoulder and everything to do with the woman whose breath he could feel on his collarbone.

He didn’t try to hide it. There was no point.

She was finishing the last stitch when her gaze flickered down, then back up to his face. Her hands stilled. Her teasing glint was gone, replaced by something darker, hotter. She saw. She knew.

“Wade,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question. It was an acknowledgment.

The sound of his name in that tone, here, now, broke the last of his control. The words came out rough, scraped raw from a place he’d kept locked down since the first moment he saw her in that evidence room.

“The orders were to watch you. Not touch you.” He swallowed, his throat tight. “I’ve been lying to myself since the second you pressed that bag into my hand. Telling myself it was duty. That it was the job.”

Her eyes were wide, watching him, her fingers now resting lightly on his newly closed wound.

“It’s not the job,” he said, the confession leaving him like a surrender. “I crossed that line the minute I wanted to smell your hair. The minute I wondered what your laugh would sound like in the dark. I’m so far over the line it’s a fucking dot to me. And I don’t care.”

Truenai’s breath hitched. The professional mask shattered. Her hand on his chest slid upward, her palm coming to rest against the side of his neck. Her thumb found his pulse, hammering against his skin.

“You’re bleeding,” she said softly, her gaze dropping to his shoulder where a tiny bead of red welled at the edge of the fresh suture.

“I don’t care about that either.”

He brought his hand up, his fingers curling around the nape of her neck. He didn’t pull her in. He just held her there, in the space between what was and what was about to happen. His calluses scraped against her soft skin.

She leaned forward. Closed the distance. Her mouth found his not with a crash, but with a slow, searing press. It was an answer. It was a confession of its own.

Her lips were softer than he’d imagined. They parted under his, and the taste of her—coffee and warmth—flooded his senses. He groaned into her mouth, the sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest. His good arm wrapped around her back, pulling her from her knees into the vee of his legs, flush against him.

The heat of her was instantaneous. Her hands came up to frame his face, her touch fierce now, not gentle. She kissed him back with a hunger that matched his own, a hunger that had been building through safe houses and gunfire and motel rooms. Her tongue swept against his, and fire shot straight to his groin. His cock was fully hard now, a relentless ache pressed against the zipper of his jeans, trapped and straining for her.

He kissed her harder. The slow press became a claiming. His tongue delved into her mouth, tasting, exploring, and she met him with a gasp that vibrated against his lips. His hand at her nape tightened, angling her head to take her deeper. The world—the safe house, Reed, Anya, the bleeding wound—dissolved into the heat of her mouth.

His other arm, the one wrapped around her back, tightened. He pulled, lifting her from the floor and onto his lap in one rough, possessive motion. She straddled him, the denim of her jeans rough against the inside of his thighs. The sudden, intimate pressure made him groan. His hard cock, trapped and aching, now pressed firmly against the seam of her jeans. Her heat, even through the layers, was an agony of promise.

Truenai broke the kiss, breathing ragged. Her hands slid from his face to his shoulders, bracing herself. Her hazel eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. She looked down at where their bodies met, then back up at him. A slow, shaky exhale escaped her. “Wade.”

“Tell me to stop,” he growled, his voice raw. His hands settled on her hips, fingers digging in. His thumbs stroked the sharp points of her hip bones through her shirt. He was giving her an out. He was begging her not to take it.

She didn’t tell him to stop. Instead, she rocked her hips forward, a deliberate, grinding slide against the rigid length of him. A sharp, punched-out sound left his throat. Her lips curved, not in a tease, but in something triumphant and desperate. “You feel that?” she whispered.

“Christ, Truenai.”

“That’s how long I’ve wanted this. Since the interrogation room. Since you looked at me like I was a person, not just evidence.” She rocked again, slower this time, making him shudder. “Your hands are shaking.”

They were. A fine tremor ran through his fingers where they gripped her. It wasn’t from the fight, or the blood loss. It was from the sheer, overwhelming force of wanting her. From the dam breaking after days of holding the line.

A deliberate cough shattered the silence of the room.

They froze. Wade’s head snapped toward the sound. Anya stood in the doorway to the kitchenette, her expression unreadable. Captain Reed was behind her, his wrists still bound, his face a mask of weary resignation.

“Rally point is forty minutes out,” Anya said, her voice carefully neutral. Her eyes flicked to Truenai, still straddling Wade, then away. “I need to move him. Now. Before his absence is noted.”

Wade didn’t let go of Truenai’s hips. His body screamed in protest at the interruption. He gave a tight, single nod. “Go.”

“You’re compromised here,” Anya stated, no judgment, just fact. “This location is clean, but it won’t stay secure if you make a habit of… broadcasting.”

Truenai shifted, beginning to climb off his lap. Wade’s hands tightened, holding her in place for one more second—a silent declaration—before he forced his fingers to relax. She stood, her back straight, facing Anya. The nurse was back, but her lips were swollen, her hair mussed. “How long will you be?”

“Two hours. Maybe three. Stay inside. Do not answer the door. Do not look out the windows.” Anya’s gaze landed on Wade’s shoulder. The tiny bead of blood had smeared, a crimson streak against his skin. “Try not to reopen your stitches, Deputy. I don’t have time to scrape you off the floor.”

Without another word, she nudged Reed forward. The former captain didn’t look at them as he passed. The front door opened, the chain lock rattling, then clicked shut. The silence that followed was different. It was theirs.

Wade stayed on the edge of the worn armchair, his breathing still uneven. The absence of her weight was a physical ache. Truenai stood a few feet away, her arms wrapped around herself. The bare bulb highlighted the dust floating between them, the tension now a live wire, humming.

He pushed himself to his feet. The movement pulled at his shoulder, a sharp twinge he ignored. He took a step toward her. Then another. She watched him come, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

He stopped inches from her. He didn’t kiss her again. He lifted his hand, his fingers tracing the line of her jaw, so gently it made her eyes flutter closed. “You’re sure?” The question was gravel.

She opened her eyes. The teasing glint was gone, replaced by a naked honesty that stole his breath. “I’ve been stitching you up and patching you together while all I could think about was taking you apart.” Her hand came up, covering his where it rested against her cheek. “I’m sure.”