Chapter 33 #2
He shifted his weight, a barely perceptible movement that screamed intent. His eyes darkened, the pupils swallowing the irises. It was a promise of everything she was daring him to do. The silence was no longer empty but thick with breath and pulse.
“Don’t… Blair…” Her name came out rough, strained.
She felt it straight through her ribs.
“Just so you know,” she said softly. “What you’re offering? I like mine with a side of more.”
He looked away, exhaling hard. “Let’s make this fucking cake for fucking Tyler. I’ll help you bake the hell out of it.”
She held his gaze a second longer than she should have. Long enough to feel the pull in her bones. Long enough to imagine what would happen if she ignored him.
She nodded instead, heat still coiled low in her stomach and turned away before she changed her mind. She led the way, aware of every inch of space between them, and after a few moments, he followed.
Blair faced him over the kitchen island, arms crossing more for containment than posture. “So what exactly are you good at?”
Breakneck rubbed the back of his neck. “Not cake. Not frosting. Not…whatever the hell a crumb coat is.” He blew out a breath. “I lied, and I never lie. I just wanted to spend time with you.”
She felt her mouth tip wryly. “Even under false pretenses?”
He looked instantly chastised, shoulders dipping, lashes lowering like a guilty little boy, and damn it, the sight of him being vulnerable was its own kind of weapon.
He nodded, sober. “My mom wasn’t big in the kitchen,” he muttered. “I can barely boil water.”
The confession tugged at something deep inside her.
Before she could stop herself, she stepped in, cupped his jaw, her thumb brushing the faint rasp of his stubble.
“You never have to lie to me, Kelly,” she murmured.
“Especially not about wanting to spend time with me.” She leaned in, breath brushing his mouth, and he moved, quick, slipping just out of her reach.
The little gasp tore out of her before she could stop it. She stepped back, stunned, but his hands shot out, gripping her shoulders gently, pulling her close without actually kissing her.
“Don’t move,” he whispered. His eyes were squeezed shut, jaw clenched like he was fighting for every ounce of control.
She watched his face contort, watched something raw flicker through him.
“It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you.
Fuck, Blair…I want it too much.” He opened his eyes, misty and mysterious as fog, devastated with want.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop, and I don’t want to move fast with you. ”
He let her go as if it physically cost him.
Her lungs weren’t working. She leaned in any way, slow, reverent, and pressed a soft kiss to the hard line of his jaw. “You may have a reputation for being a rebel, a sniper, a lethal pain in the ass,” she whispered. “But…you’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met.”
He swallowed, throat working. “Can we get to the cake before I lose my shit?”
She barked out a laugh, shaking off the trembling in her chest, and crossed to the pantry, wondering what it would be like for him to lose his shit.
Two aprons hung there. She snagged them both and tossed one to him.
He caught it, pulled it on, tied it behind his back, all while watching her like she was the only steady thing in his universe.
She planted her hands on her hips. “Something’s missing.”
He glanced down at the apron. “What—?” Before he could finish, she dipped her fingers into the flour canister and flicked a full handful into his face. Breakneck froze. Then a soft, low laugh rolled out of him, deep enough she felt it in her spine.
“Oh, babe,” he drawled, wiping flour from his lashes. “I may not know a damn thing about cakes…” He reached for the flour canister with slow, feral precision. “…but I’m a star pupil when it comes to food fights.”
Hours later, the fire snapped low in the hearth, casting golden light across the smooth pine floors. The scent of sugar and spice still lingered in the air, remnants of the cake they’d baked and the flour war she’d instigated, without one ounce of remorse, in the middle of her kitchen.
She smiled faintly, still tasting laughter.
Breakneck had flour in his hair. On his shirt. Smeared along one side of his jaw like war paint. God, he’d looked so alive. That rare, real smile splitting across his face like he didn’t know how to contain it.
She’d wanted to lick it off him. All of it.
After the cake was in the oven, she turned to find him lingering close enough to her, she could feel his heat.
“I have to head back for a bit,” he said, voice low. “Technically, I’m off-base without leave, during an active op. Ice is…on edge about me anyway, and if I don’t turn up soon, he’ll send out an annoying, nosy six-man search party.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You want me to drive you?”
He shook his head, already backing toward the door. “I’ll run. Clear my head.”
She hesitated, reading more in that than he probably meant to show. But she didn’t press. “Okay,” she said. “Be careful.”
“I always am,” he said, then flashed a grin that looked nothing like control. “Mostly.”
“Sounds like a good plan.” He hadn’t exactly expected to fall apart in her arms and end up here. She just nodded, trusting him to return.
When he did, twenty minutes later with a small bag, the sun had dipped lower, painting the ridge in gold. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt, sleeves pushed up over his forearms, collar open just enough to see the line of his throat.
He looked like a man rebuilt, but still carrying the weight of everything that had cracked open earlier.
Dinner was warm and simple. Conversation quiet. He helped with the dishes without being asked.
He’d been careful about making sure he showered alone, damn it, and now they were circling each other again. Cooling from the heat. No longer electrified, but crackling under the surface.
She could still smell him on the air. Just clean skin, heat, and something uniquely him, like sun-warmed linen and open air, the kind of scent that clung after hours outside and lingered long after he was gone. It was subtle, elemental, masculine in the quietest way.
Her body ached in all the ways that came with restraint.
He was right there, steady and quiet, and somehow that made the hunger sharper.
She didn’t just want his hands. She wanted his honesty.
His breath against her throat. The sound he made when he gave in.
She wanted to bury herself in the warmth of him and feel the difference between the man the world feared and the man who had chosen to hold back… for her.
“Let’s just sit and curl up in front of the fire,” she’d said, needing closeness more than pushing his boundaries too far. Needing him near.
So now they sat on her long comfy couch, wrapped in the wool blanket he’d dragged off the chair, her legs curled under her and his arm draped along the back of the couch, not quite touching her.
So she leaned into him gently, just enough to feel the weight of him at her side.
In the quiet, she fell asleep and woke to warmth.
His body was a solid wall beside hers, heat radiating through the blanket. His breathing was even, slow. One hand lay heavy on his thigh, the other curled slightly between them.
He was sleeping. Really sleeping. That was so good.
That devastating face, all angles and shadows, now soft with rest. God, he looked beautiful. The tension in his jaw gone. The faint scar near his temple smoothed out in the low firelight. The lines of exhaustion were still there, but something in his features had let go.
He’d had one hell of a day, and this was the first moment of peace he’d found.
Still…she couldn’t help herself. She reached out and gently, reverently, brushed her fingers along the edge of his hair, short and rakish, curling just slightly at the ends. Her touch moved lower, tracing the edge of his jaw, lingering at the dark stubble that had thickened as the sun went down.
God, that mouth. Full. Firm. Wicked. The man could kiss like a devil but somehow look like a fallen angel. It wasn’t fair. She was in deep trouble. No amount of training or self-discipline had prepared her for him.
She should just let him sleep. But she couldn’t stop looking at him. Her fingers stilled just above his cheek when his eyes opened, immediately aware, tactically ready.
But then his head tipped slightly, those storm-gray eyes locking onto hers.
All that intensity returned, barely restrained, simmering. Chemistry radiated off him like a heat signature, and she was helpless in the perimeter of it. No wonder women threw themselves at him.
She sighed, her fingers falling away, heart thudding hard in her chest. That wasn’t what he wanted now. He was still finding his footing, still holding the pieces of himself together.
She’d respect that. Even if her body was one long ache from her ribs down.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he rasped, voice like gravel and midnight.
She sighed again, softer this time. “I can control myself,” she murmured. “But don’t ask me to stop looking.”
Those dark lashes lowered, then lifted slowly, his gaze dropping half-mast. “So tell me, princess…” His voice was low, amused, rough with sleep. “Were you a ballerina in another life?”
She smiled, her chest catching on the breath. “In this one,” she said. He smiled back, like she was the only thing in the world worth waking up for.
But then he reached out, like he couldn’t help himself, and gently touched a lock of hair that had fallen across her cheek. “You still dance,” he murmured. “You move like you haven’t forgotten.”
She didn’t look away. “I didn’t forget. I just…moved on.”
There was a pensive silence between them.
His hand lowered. “What happened?”
She exhaled through her nose and tucked one leg under the other. “You want the long version?”
“I want the real one.”
She tilted her head, smiled faintly. “You sure? I’ve got layers.”
“Good,” he said. “So do I.”
Blair rested her elbow on the couch arm, one hand curling against her stomach.
“I started ballet at three. My mother enrolled me because I was coordinated, graceful, and already learning to be silent and obedient. I took to it fast. By the time I was seven, I was in pre-professional classes. By ten, I was already winning competitions. By the time I was sixteen, I was in a boarding school in Toronto, training ten hours a day.”
Breakneck didn’t move, but he was locked in, watching her.
“I was obsessed. Not with the fame. Not even the art. With being good. With earning my place. My parents didn’t say it out loud, but it was clear.
I was the investment. The star. The girl with the future they could brag about at galas.
” She smiled, but there was no warmth in it.
“I had stress fractures at sixteen. A torn ligament at seventeen. I trained through all of it. Didn’t tell anyone.
I iced, I wrapped, I pushed through. God forbid I fall behind or be seen as fragile. ”
She looked down at her hands. “One night, I was dancing lead. Something simple. A solo variation I’d done a hundred times.
I was running on fumes, sleep-deprived, underweight, and terrified to lose my spot.
I did a jump I shouldn’t have even attempted and landed wrong.
” She went still. “I heard the pop before I felt it.” Breakneck’s jaw flexed.
“I blew my ACL, tore the meniscus, dislocated the joint. They had to carry me off the stage.”
He held eyes contact, quietly, even as her story caused concern to bloom.
“I was eighteen,” she said quietly. “I knew right then it was over. I’d trained my entire life for a single dream, and it ended on a stage floor under hot lights while my mother watched with disappointment in her eyes.
” She smiled again. This one was sad. “I spent a year recovering. Rebuilding. Not just my body, but my brain. For the first time, I asked myself if I was dancing because I loved it…or because I didn’t know who I was without it.
” She met his gaze again. “Turns out, it was the latter.” He shifted slightly closer. “So,” she went on, “I joined the RCMP.”
He blinked. “That’s a career pivot.”
She laughed under her breath. “Yeah. I didn’t pick it to shock anyone.
I picked it because it was the first time I felt real.
I didn’t need to smile through pain. I didn’t need to weigh my food or train to excess.
I could protect people. I could chase down bad guys and write reports and help domestic abuse survivors.
I could be strong. Not pretty. Not poised.
Not marketable. Just…strong.” Breakneck’s eyes burned into hers.
“I thought I’d buried it. That part of me.
The one that still missed the stage. The music.
The movement. The girl who loved it before it became a prison. ”
She paused. “Then my little sister Emily got cast in Swan Lake. She invited me to see her debut.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s where you went.”
She nodded back. “It wrecked me and made me see clearly. Emily…she wasn’t dancing to win anyone’s approval. She was joyful. Confident. She didn’t care about perfect lines or flawless pirouettes. She just loved it.” Blair’s voice turned softer. “She looked free in a way I never was.”
He was quiet. Letting her speak.
“I realized something during that performance. I wasn’t jealous.
I wasn’t bitter. I wasn’t mourning who I used to be.
” She touched her chest. “I was proud. Proud of her. Proud of me. Because I survived it. I chose a different path. Maybe…maybe I became the woman I needed.” She swallowed, her throat tight.
“The one I wish I’d had beside me in those dressing rooms, telling me I was enough. ”
The fire crackled low between them. Breakneck reached out slowly, his fingers brushing hers.
“You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met,” he said quietly.
For the first time in a long time, she believed it.
Blair didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until he reached for her.
Slowly. Deliberately. His fingers threaded through hers, warm and rough, then swept up her arm to her shoulder.
He cupped the side of her neck like she was something precious, something breakable, not because she was fragile, but because he was.
“Come here,” he whispered.