Chapter 21
RCMP WILD Headquarters, TOC, Gear Room, Outskirts of Kamloops, British Columbia.
Blair didn’t move in the silence he left behind. Ice slid a knowing look at her, subtle but unmistakable, an expression equal parts exasperation and amusement.
“You good?” Ice asked, voice mild in the way only someone truly dangerous could manage.
Blair breathed once. Twice. Her pulse still hammered from the feel of Kelly’s hands in her hair, the sheer weight of him pinning her to the wall, his breath scorching the hollow of her throat.
“Hell of a day. I’ll let you know when I settle,” she said. She didn’t sugarcoat anything, but discussing Breakneck with his boss wasn’t on her agenda. Ice’s eyebrow twitched upward.
He didn’t call her on it. Instead, he nodded toward the table. “Then handle his kit. He’ll sleep if he thinks someone competent is on it.”
Blair swallowed, nodded, and Ice left her there, alone with Breakneck’s weapons, his scent, his heat still imprinted on her skin.
For long seconds, she didn’t move. The whole room felt charged, like the air hadn’t settled from the storm he’d left behind. She pulled in a shaky breath, stepped to the table, and reached for his sniper rifle like it might burn her.
Like he burned her only moments ago with the sear of that tantalizing, barely there, full, aching lips.
This was his skill measured in metal and glass, a natural extension of the man, part of the machine, not in the cold, calculated way, although snipers did have that kind of focus, but in the preserve-life-by-taking-life way.
The way he moved in elegant glides, nothing wasted even when he was twisting his body in midair to get an impossible shot to deflect an RPG that would have ended not only his life tonight, but his teammates, her and Beef’s, and the man he’d come to save.
She had to wonder if that was all jumbled up in that impossibly handsome head of his.
Her hands stilled, her breath coming in small gasps.
Beautiful. He was beauty in motion, driven with the kind of will that was sexy and made her feel like she had been starving her whole life.
She wasn’t used to hunger that felt like there was only one source of sustenance…
him. That should scare her, but it didn’t, and she had no idea why.
He was the tip of the spear, as the Americans had described their SEALs. Sharp, measuring every angle around him without conscious effort.
He was prepared for violence, coiled with it, not tense, but effortlessly, ready to answer that call within a hairsbreadth of any threat.
Lethal didn’t even touch all that he was, both in his training and his skill, but his magnetic charm, not in the sense of magic, but an ingrained, indescribable spirit that sang with intent, force, and the capacity for a tenderness that she feared would bring her to her knees, to the brink of what it really meant to be intimate.
She shivered as the smooth metal met her fingertips and her palms, with only the memory of his velvety hard, terribly bruised skin beneath her hands.
Blair cleaned his rifle the same way she handled every fragile, dangerous thing in her life, with care, precision, and a quiet, steadying breath between steps.
But tonight something was different. Her hands weren’t just steady. They were deliberate. Every pass of the cloth was a balm to her nerves, every click of reassembly grounding the wild, unruly pulse still running through her like electricity.
He had leaned into her. He had kissed her back. When Ice walked in, Kelly Gatlin had looked at her like he wanted to commit a felony.
She cleared her throat, clicked the final piece into place, and set the rifle down gently. Her hands hovered over the weapon, then stilled.
He trusted her with this. Not just the rifle. Himself.
That knowledge settled deep in her chest, humming warm and bright.
Maybe he didn’t want this. Maybe he thought he shouldn’t. Her hand tightened around the stock. But she’d felt the truth under his skin, raw, aching, terrified, and as hungry as he was.
Breakneck woke to pain knitting itself along his ribs like someone had tied wire under his skin.
For a moment he didn’t recognize the room, the dark outlines of the barracks taking too long to resolve.
He inhaled carefully, winced, and sat up slowly, hand braced on the mattress until the world steadied.
His throat felt dry. His muscles ached. His mind wouldn’t shut off.
Milk usually helped. Warm, quiet, familiar. Something he’d done since he was a kid when nightmares made the night stretch too long. He could ask Kodiak for something stronger, something that would knock him out cold, but Breakneck avoided medication unless he was half-dead.
Still breathing meant he was functional.
He tugged on sweatpants, moving like a man twice his age, and padded down the hall toward the break room. The building was quiet, the hour late enough that even the Tier 1 chatter had died down. He expected silence. Darkness. The hum of the fridge.
Instead, the glow of a laptop lit the room.
Ayla sat hunched over the table, elbows braced, fingers dragging through her hair as lines of data flickered across the screen. The image paused on the RPG launcher. The trajectory. The heat signature. The angle of deviation before Breakneck’s bullet spun it off course.
Her shoulders shook once.
He stopped inside the doorway.
“You’re up late,” he said quietly.
She startled, head snapping up, eyes wide behind the faint shine of exhaustion and something that looked a lot like guilt.
“I’m—sorry,” she said, wiping at her cheek fast. “I know I shouldn’t be working. I just…needed to see it again.”
He took a few steps closer, slow enough not to crowd her. “What’s wrong.”
Ayla swallowed hard. Her voice shook when she finally managed, “It was my fault. The RPG. I should’ve caught the signature earlier. I almost got everyone killed.”
Breakneck exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck, ribs flaring with the movement. “You didn’t almost get everyone killed.”
She blinked at him, tears threatening again.
He nodded toward her screen. “You caught the signature as it emerged. At night. Through interference. On a moving system you barely had calibrated.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t fast enough.”
“No mission ever goes the way it’s supposed to,” he said, voice low, steady. “Things go sideways. They always go sideways. What matters is you saw it when it counted. You warned us. That’s why we’re all standing here.”
Ayla looked down, her breath quivering. “I should’ve been better.”
Breakneck didn’t think. He simply reached out and squeezed her shoulder, firm and grounding, the way Ice or Boomer would’ve done for him.
“You handled yourself well,” he said. “You kept your head. That’s more than most people can say after a day like this.”
Ayla’s breath caught.
He didn’t see the moment she misinterpreted the gesture. He wasn’t looking for it. He was tired and hurting and too raw to put up every wall he normally would.
She stared at him like he’d given her something she desperately needed, validation, steadiness, a piece of his confidence.
He let his hand fall and nodded toward the fridge. “Pretty sure there’s ice cream in there. Chocolate. Something with those candy chunks Skull keeps stealing.”
Her eyes widened faintly, a soft, shaken laugh escaping her. “Ice cream?”
“Best thing for the kind of night we had.” A faint smile ghosted his mouth. “Better than milk.”
She blinked at that. “Milk?”
“Never mind,” he said, turning toward the counter to warm his mug. “It’s an old habit.” She closed her laptop, and he smiled. “That’s a start. Come on, you know you want some.”
He expected her to leave then. Instead, she sat there, watching him with something bright and earnest in her eyes, and he felt good that he could help her.
The way she looked at him in that moment, quiet, open, almost tender, hit him like a ghost of what Blair stirred in him, and he shoved that thought away fast.
He nodded toward the fridge. “I’m sure there are sprinkles here somewhere, eh?” he said, mimicking the Canadian speech.
Ayla laughed and he smiled.
She cleaned the last of the gear, put everything back in perfect order, and shut off the light.
Then she murmured, because the empty room felt like it needed the honesty, “Madness isn’t always a bad thing, Kelly.”
She closed the door softly and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Cleaning Breakneck’s rifle shouldn’t have steadied her, but it had.
Something about its weight, the mechanical exactness, the quiet trust implied in the act.
Grounding. There it was again, that promise of real intimacy, but not in a way she could name.
Voices drifted from the breakroom down the hall.
One of them was unmistakably his. After what she’d been through with his weapon, the thought of seeing him again jolted through her.
Breakneck.
She moved toward the sound without thinking, drawn by that low, familiar gravel in his tone. When she reached the corner and glanced inside, she stopped.
He was standing beside Ayla in the break room, dishing up ice cream, shoulders loose, head bent toward her. Ayla said something, too soft for Blair to catch, and Breakneck’s mouth curved. A faint, tired grin, but real.
The kind of expression she hadn’t seen on him all day. The kind she hadn’t imagined he had left in him after the way he staggered out of the gear room an hour ago.
Her breath caught.
Ayla laughed quietly, relief threading the sound. Breakneck answered it with another low chuckle, soft and unguarded, and it slid under Blair’s ribs like a cold blade, sharp, unexpected, not fatal, but enough to bruise.
Not because of Ayla. Ayla was brilliant, kind, shaken after the RPG scare.
Of course, he’d check on her.