Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
“Promise not to steal your sidearm.” My smile is shaky, but real.
He slides in, fully clothed, lying stiff as a board. I turn on my side, facing him. The duvet separates us, yet heat radiates between our bodies like an illicit current. I take one brave inch closer.
“You okay?” he murmurs.
“Not even a little,” I admit. “Someone wants to ruin everything good and colorful. But right now, with you here, I can almost pretend they won’t.”
He lifts his hand, hovers, then cups the nape of my neck, thumb stroking tiny circles. Fireworks ignite low in my belly.
“It won’t end like that,” he vows, voice earthquake steady. “I’m walls and doors, remember?”
“More than that,” I whisper. “You’re the reason I keep breathing deep.”
A soft, incredulous sound escapes him. He leans in, forehead resting against mine. We breathe each other’s air. If I angle my mouth two centimeters, I’ll taste him. Every cell begs.
He whispers, “After the gala.”
I nod, but my control snaps. I press the gentlest kiss against the corner of his mouth—barely a brush, a promise etched in air. He trembles, and I feel it. But he turns his head, captures my lips fully with his for a heartbeat—hot, sure, infinite—before pulling back. He never deepened the kiss, yet somehow, it was the hottest kiss I’d ever experienced.
His eyes are molten. “Sleep now, Cam.”
Somehow, wrapped in electric silence, I do. His heartbeat thunders under my ear, and the last thing my mind records is the safe weight of his arm above the covers, curved protectively around my hip without truly holding, yet holding everything that matters.
11
Sawyer
05:14 — Dawn drags pewter light across the eastern ridge and finds me on the roof, wind stinging my face while Orange-Team’s newest drone completes its final diagnostics. A month ago I would have relished the quiet click-hum of rotors waking up over a city that still half-sleeps. Today I’m wrestling an entirely different engine—the one idling under my ribs since Cam’s mouth brushed mine last night.
I told her after the gala.
I meant it.
But the taste of her—sweet wine and reckless hope—keeps replaying like shrapnel lodged in the memory, impossible to ignore.
“Telemetry clean,” Rae reports through the earpiece. She’s Orange-Team’s UAS wizard—pink pixie-cut blowing in the breeze as she checks her tablet. “We’ve got a four-hour dwell, switchable IR cam, and a perimeter loop every ninety seconds.”
“Good.” I sign off on her digital checklist, then scan the estate below. In four nights, this place will glow like Versailles—and feel twice as porous.
Across the lawn, two more Orange operators, Malik and Andersson, install portable stanchions that will form the guest magnetometer lanes. I key my mic. “Malik, status?”
“Conduit run set; fiber patched to Command. ETA on fencing install is fifteen.”
“Copy. Andersson?”
“Access-control kiosk online, facial-rec pre-calibrated.”
“Good. I want secondary credential scan ready by eighteen-hundred. No barcodes, no entry.”
They echo acknowledgements—steady cadence of competence—but my focus drifts inevitably back to the west wing windows. One of those panes hides Cam’s studio; sunlight now spears through the skylight into that riot of color where she’ll be awake soon, brushing pigment into rebellion.
I swallow the urge to climb down this roof and barge in, just to see her hair haloed in gold for two measly seconds. Iron discipline—that thing that kept me alive in IED alley—presses steel over my pulse. She’s still in danger. Eyes up.
08:32 — Gallery hall. The catering director, a clipped Brit named Hannah, quizzes me about load-in lanes for gala day.
“You’ll process the waitstaff through Gate Two,” I say, pointing to the floor plan. “Orange-Two escorts them to the service corridor. Lockers are here. No personal phones allowed past that checkpoint.”
Hannah frowns. “They rely on phones for plating instructions.”
“They’ll get printed packets.” I don’t budge. “Any staff caught with unvetted electronics crosses this red line and they’re off the property, no debate.”
She sighs but accepts. Andersson signs off her updated map. Moving parts nested within moving parts—exactly how you diffuse a bomb: define each wire, isolate current, never let circuits cross in unintended ways.
Except last night I let circuits cross—my mouth on hers, pulse synced, promise slipping. It felt less like detonation and more like finally stepping into the proper alignment.
“Sawyer!” Malik calls from the doorway. “AV crew’s here early. Want eyes?”
“On it.” I pivot down the hall.
13:05 — Command trailer. Riggs props his boots on a case of wired-fiber while scrubbing lunch crumbs from his beard. “You’re running hot,” he observes. “What’s the play after the gala? What if the gala isn’t their target? What if they decide to hit after?”
I arch a brow. “Then we’ll have contingency plans.”
He smirks. “And when do you plan on sweeping the lady off her paint-splattered feet?” The glint in his eye makes me roll a shoulder—half shrug, half threat. He chuckles. “Easy, brother. Just don’t let the fox see you guarding the henhouse with your zipper undone.”