Chapter 27 #2
“Not bad for a novice, but how is your flexibility?”
“What did you have in mind?”
She moved to the barre, one hand resting lightly, and without fanfare, she reached down, grabbed her arch, then lifted her leg in a controlled arc, high, toes pointed. Her heel stacked slowly over her hip, her thigh pressed close to her ribs, body straight as a damn arrow.
Breakneck stared, heat blooming low in his gut. Damn. It wasn’t just flexibility. It was the way she did it, with no apology, no drama. Just pure command over her body.
“I’m guessing this isn’t part of your usual training,” she said, not looking at him.
He walked up behind her, slow. Close enough to make her aware. “I can do that,” he murmured.
Her head turned slightly, mouth twitching. “Yeah? You sure about that?”
He grinned. Challenge accepted.
She stepped aside, making room, but he could feel the smirk radiating off her. She thought he was full of shit.
He set his hand on the barre, braced his stance, and exhaled through the tightness in his hamstrings.
Then, with steady control, he grabbed his arch, then pushed, lifting his leg.
Up. Higher. Then higher still. Her quiet breath caught behind him.
He pushed through the resistance, realigning his core, and extended the leg until it was a clean, vertical line.
Foot flexed. Then pointed. Balanced. He held it, the faint sound of her breathing and the weight of her eyes moving over his body.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
He didn’t look back. “I stretch,” he said casually, voice like warm gravel.
“You’re showing off.”
He smiled. “Only for you.” A long pause. He lowered the leg slowly, kept it clean, controlled descent. When he finally turned, she was still watching him, something unreadable in her eyes. Part awe. Part heat. Maybe something more dangerous.
One brow arched, clearly assessing his lines. He expected a smartass remark, but what she said next threw him. “I’ve danced with some of the top male dancers in the country.” Her voice was low. Honest. “Men who’ve been stretching and training their whole lives. That was impressive.”
His breath caught. That was respect. He turned his head toward her, a slow smile spreading. Then it hit.
A muscle spasm clamped down on his thigh like a vice.
“Fuck—” he bit out, stumbling as the cramp seized through his thigh and up into his hip. He went down hard, catching himself on one hand, leg outstretched and spasming beneath him.
In an instant, Blair was there.
She dropped to her knees beside him, all sharp movement and bare concern.
“Hey—hey. I’ve got you.” She eased him onto his back, her hands were already on his thigh, fingers digging into the knot, her voice shifting into that calm, take-command tone she used in the field. “Just breathe through it. Let me work it out.”
He gritted his teeth, sweat slicking his skin again, this time from pain. “Son of a—Christ, that’s deep—”
“I know,” she said, eyes focused, breath steady. “You locked your hip. Probably from trying to impress the ballerina.”
He huffed a breath that could’ve been a laugh but mostly wasn’t. “Worth it.”
She pressed deeper, her thumb finding the exact spot that made him jolt. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Almost there.”
He groaned, head tipped back, chest heaving.
The pain was a white-hot spike, a vise clamping down on the muscle.
Another spasm tore through his thigh, harder this time, a violent, uncontrolled contraction that sent his opposite leg kicking upward.
It caught Blair square in the side, a solid, unthinking blow.
She yelped, a sharp sound of surprise, and her balance was shot.
For a split second, she was a tangle of flailing limbs, and then she was on him.
Not a gentle landing, but a full-body crash.
Chest to chest. Groin to groin. Her thighs instinctively straddled his to steady herself, her hands splayed flat across his sweat-slick chest to break her fall.
Her face hovered inches from his, wide-eyed and…aroused. Fuck, he wasn’t sure what hurt worse, the screaming, locked-up muscle in his leg or his sudden, throbbing erection pressed directly between them, separated from her heat by only two thin layers of fabric.
She froze. He froze. The world narrowed to the points of contact between their bodies.
She was plastered to him, nose to nose, her breath ghosting across his mouth in quick, warm puffs.
He could feel the frantic beat of her heart against his ribs, a rhythm that mirrored the desperate throb in his cock.
Her lips parted, and he swore he could feel the heat of her pulse in the charged space between them, a silent, frantic scream.
His hands, which had been gripping his leg, now lay useless at his sides.
He wanted to push her away, to end this exquisite torture, but his body betrayed him.
All he could do was lie there, trapped and aching, as her weight settled more firmly against him.
The slightest shift of her hips was agony and ecstasy, a friction that sent a jolt straight up his spine.
His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth, to the full, glistening curve of her lower lip.
He was starving for a taste of her, a man dying of thirst in the desert.
He saw the exact moment her shock morphed into something else.
Her eyes darkened, the panic receding, replaced by a dawning, liquid awareness.
Her gaze flickered down, then back up to his, and the unspoken question hung between them, heavier than her body, hotter than his pain.
The air crackled with it. He was painfully, utterly hard, and there was no hiding it, no way to pretend it wasn't happening.
Slowly, deliberately, she shifted. It was the smallest of movements, a subtle roll of her hips, but it was enough to grind her core directly against his straining length.
A raw, guttural sound tore from his throat, half pain, half want, as her body pressed against his.
His hands lifted instinctively, then stopped midair.
He could grip her. He could roll them, take her mouth, lose himself in the fire roaring through him, and that was exactly why he didn’t.
His fingers curled into fists at his sides instead, every muscle locked in restraint as he forced himself to breathe through the ache. Through the need. Through the truth of how badly he wanted her.
She deserved more than heat born of pain and chaos. She deserved intention. She deserved him whole.
The heat of her, the feel of her was just sensation. What demolished him was the truth of her.
He didn’t know how to be present in the act with her, but he knew how to take. He knew how to drive pleasure hard and fast and leave nothing but wreckage in his wake. That had always felt like power.
She was different in the way she spoke to him in body and soul.
He didn’t trust himself not to overwhelm her. Not to lose control of the tidal force that lived under his skin. He had built his life around channeling that force into something sharp and contained.
With her, it wanted to surge, and the thought of sex without emotional distance of staying open while he burned made him ache with a need he’d buried most of his life.
His body screamed at the denial. His leg burned. His cock throbbed. His chest felt tight enough to split.
He stayed still because if he let himself go now, he wasn’t sure he could hold back. He needed to know that when he finally touched her, it wouldn’t be about conquest. It would be about connection.
Her fingers flexed slightly against his chest, as if she was about to push off, or pull him closer. He didn’t know which. He didn’t care. Her reaction only made him desperate to get to the answers he needed as soon as he could. With her, he just wanted...more.
He would’ve said something, anything, but that’s when the door opened.
Loud. Wide.
Footsteps. Silence.
GQ, dragging it out, murmured, “Geezus, I need some popcorn and a cold shower.”
Ice, furious, his jaw locked, teeth grinding, growled, “Fucking little shit, you’re supposed to be in bed.”
Kodiak said, way too calmly, “I think he’s working on it, boss.”
Breakneck groaned. Not from the pain this time. His head thunked back against the floor, and he cursed the universe.
Blair turned her head, still sprawled across him, and said with total deadpan precision, “He had a muscle spasm.”
A beat of silence.
Then Skull laughed softly. “I would too.”
Boomer, said with lifted brows, “Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”
Then Hazard, dry as dust, said, “Would that be your favorite muscle, Break?”
Laughter exploded in the doorway.
Breakneck let his arm fall across his face. “I hate all of you.”
Blair leaned in, voice low at his ear. “If this gets out,” she murmured, “my staff will have a field day, and I’ll lose all respect…
” He turned his head, met her gaze. “…but it’ll be worth it.
Because you’re simply the most beautiful, divine-smelling, hard-as-rock with skin like velvet man I’ve ever had the opportunity to get embarrassed with.
” She grinned, her lips brushing his jaw. “No regrets, gorgeous. Eh?”
His voice was still stuck somewhere in his throat. “I don’t think I can move.”
Kodiak stepped forward from the laughing mass at the door, shaking his head like the long-suffering big brother he was.
“I’ve got this.” He bent, grabbed Breakneck’s wrist, and hauled him up like he weighed nothing.
Before Break could protest, Kodiak shifted him and slung him right over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
Breakneck let out a helpless laugh, breathless and wrecked. He didn’t even care anymore.
“No man left behind,” Kodiak said with a wink. “But in this case, I think some dignity might be compromised.” He turned toward the door. “Later, ma’am.”
As they moved, Breakneck lifted his head for just a second.
Blair stood where he’d left her, flushed and sweat-slicked, the room glowing around her like she belonged to every kind of light, and she was looking at him with a sweet, tender, fierce expression.
It was a look that challenged every fear, every scar, every lie he’d ever been told. To be wanted. To be worth it.
Then, still holding that look, she lifted her hand and blew him a kiss.
Something inside him cracked wide open.
Boomer, watching from the side, muttered to no one in particular, “Oh yeah. He’s fucked.”
She stood alone in the practice room long after the laughter had faded down the hall.
The air was still thick with heat and tension, her pulse still a rapid stutter in her neck, her body humming with everything she’d felt, everything she hadn’t acted on.
She ran her hand down her ribcage, where his leg had caught her, a solid, unforgiving reminder of just how strong he really was, and let out a slow, unsteady breath.
It wasn’t the pain of impact that rattled her. It was his eyes.
That split second, when he’d looked up at her like she was both salvation and the thing that might break him in half. All that longing, that grief, that tightly leashed hunger pulsing behind his storm-gray eyes. He had been brutally turned on, and just as brutally restrained.
She’d never seen anything like it. Never felt anything like it.
Not even with Darrow.
She rose from the floor, body still overheated from exertion, from him.
From the need that had curled low and tight in her belly and hadn’t left.
She needed to talk to him. To clear the air.
Not just for her own sanity, but because if they were going to operate together, they couldn’t carry this chaos into the field.
There were too many emotions flying between them. Too many consequences she couldn’t afford to ignore. She was falling, and that terrified her more than anything.
Darrow had hurt her. Coldly, clinically. But Kelly Gatlin? He would demolish her.
That man was dangerous. Seductive. Quietly unraveling right in front of her eyes. She could feel it. This was no game to him. No smooth-operator routine. What they’d just shared, without sex, without even a kiss, was the most intimate moment of her life.
She wanted more. She wanted what he kept locked behind those haunted eyes. She wanted to reach in and touch it. Feel the truth of it.
Even if it burned her alive.
She hesitated outside the barracks later that night, hand raised to knock, stomach in knots. She didn’t even know what she’d say. She just…needed to see him. To know he was okay. That he hadn’t fallen too deep into whatever black hole he’d been circling.
Kodiak opened the door before she could knock.
He didn’t look surprised.
“Sleeping,” he said simply, stepping aside. “But you can see for yourself. He’s resting well.”
She nodded, stepping into the dim room.
The other guys were gone. Kodiak just gave her a look that said he knew and left her alone with the sleeping sniper.
Breakneck was on his bunk, shirtless, the sheets twisted low around his hips. His skin was still flushed with exhaustion, his lashes dark against his cheeks. Peaceful. Almost.
But she could still see it, the tension in his jaw. The way his hand twitched occasionally, as if still reaching for a weapon.
She sat beside the bed, quiet, just watching him breathe.
Then his body jerked. A sharp inhale. His hand clenched into a fist, and his head rolled against the pillow.
“No,” he muttered, voice raw, cracked. “Don’t—”
She leaned over instinctively, placing her hand gently on his chest. “Kelly,” she whispered.
His eyes flashed open, disoriented, full of shame, pain, and fear. He grabbed her wrist as if he didn’t know who she was. Then his eyes cleared and he blinked. When she shifted, he said, softly, painfully, “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
“It’s okay,” she soothed, giving in to her need to touch him.
She ran her hands through that mad tousle of hair, the strands like dark silk threads beneath her fingers and palm.
His skin was like velvet, that dark angel face, softening from her words, his fog-shrouded eyes like a mist she could get lost in. “You’re safe. You’re okay. I’m here.”
His breathing slowed. His hand unclenched, catching hers and pressing it over his heart, holding it beneath his big, wide palm.
His whole body sank back into the mattress, muscles releasing inch by inch.
Those thick lashes dropped over his glazed eyes, and he sighed, his chest rising beneath her hand.
She stayed beside him, fingers still lightly pressed to the hard muscle beneath that strong, beating heart.
As she watched him sleep, she realized with terrifying clarity that she wasn’t sure she’d ever get the pieces of her heart back. Even if she wanted them.