Chapter 28 #2
He spreads my legs, positions himself at my entrance. His crown swipes through my wetness, back and forth, teasing us both until I’m ready to beg. Then he pushes inside—just his tip—and pauses there, straining with control.
“Adrien.” I’m falling so fast, so hard. Does he feel it?
He wraps his arms around me, braces his knees, and with a shuddering groan, fully seats himself. The stretch, the fullness—I want all of him, and here he is.
“Fuck, you are heaven.”
He lifts my wrists, pinning my hands above my head, and his mouth drops to mine. I taste myself on his tongue—salt and intimacy—as his hips find their rhythm.
The sharp sound of skin meeting skin fills the suite. Tomorrow drowns beneath it. Every withdrawal leaves me wanting. Every thrust rubs my oversensitized clit. Every hard, hammering stroke sends my blood singing.
He’s not gentle. Not careful. Not the controlled strategist. Just a man who risks everything and needs this—needs me—like oxygen.
As I let go—back arching, crying out against his mouth—his thrusts grow erratic. His muscles tremble. His mouth devours mine, claiming, until his hips jolt and he groans my name and throbs inside me, pulsing his release.
His head falls to the cradle of my shoulder, forehead damp, and his hold on my wrists loosens. Breaking free, I wrap my arms around him, holding tight. Holding on.
Later, we’re entwined beneath the bedding. The city’s hum slips to a heartbeat beneath the pale spill of dawn light through gauzy curtains. I lie with my head on his shoulder, the rhythm of his breathing steady against my ear.
“Tomorrow,” he murmurs, eyes half-closed.
“Tomorrow,” I echo.
Tomorrow feels distant, an enemy with a clock I refuse to watch.
He turns his face toward mine and presses a kiss to my forehead, a quiet benediction.
The steady rhythm of his breathing lulls me backward in time—to another dawn, another bed, another impossible goodbye, and a memory of lying perfectly still, listening to the night sounds filtering through thick glass. Intimacy often does this to me—fractures time.
Somewhere in the marina, a halyard clanged against a mast. A gull squawked.
The air smelled of salt and polished teak, the faint sweetness of whatever soap he used still clinging to my skin.
Normal sounds of a world outside percolated while I remained suspended in this impossible bubble of a weekend that should never have happened.
I’d thrown my phone away in a Monaco alley thirty-six hours ago. Along with it went any ability for my handler to track my location or contact me. By now, Matthews would already have flagged me as compromised. In our world, silence is betrayal.
The mission had been routine until it wasn’t. Every contingency accounted for—except him.
Adrien shifted beside me, his arm tightening around my waist in sleep.
Even unconscious, his body curved protectively around mine, as if he could shield me from the world waiting beyond this safe harbor.
His skin radiated a slow, human heat against the linen sheets.
Moonlight washed across his face, softening him until he looked almost boyish—the cynical lines around his eyes smoothed away, his mouth relaxed, unguarded. The sight ached like a bruise.
I should have extracted myself shortly after evading the Russian. Should have activated emergency protocols, requested immediate exfiltration. Instead, I stayed—and in doing so, compromised my career.
The worst part was that I couldn’t even regret it. Lying there, I felt alive in a way I hadn’t in years—proof that some part of me still existed beneath the aliases, beneath the armor of competence and command.
But time off wasn’t compatible with the life I’d chosen.
I slipped from the bed with practiced silence, my bare feet making no sound on the polished deck.
Cool air kissed my skin, smelling faintly of salt and last night’s champagne.
Sophie’s dress hung in the closet, pristine now—someone had steamed out the wrinkles from when he’d torn it off me that first morning.
Even his staff took care of me here. I pulled it on, the fabric whispering as it slid over my shoulders, cool where his warmth had been.
With each movement, I killed her.
The art curator who played piano in the early morning hours, who came apart in his arms, who whispered childhood stories in the dark and believed them herself. Each breath rebuilt the operative—the woman who knew how to disappear, how to leave no trace except the kind that scarred.
My shoes were on the upper deck where we’d first kissed. I climbed the narrow stairs quiet as a ghost, muscle memory guiding me through the yacht’s layout. The night air was cooler up here, sharp with sea spray and diesel and something metallic that reminded me of the blood in my veins.
From the upper deck, I could see the lights of Monaco’s harbor spreading like scattered diamonds.
Somewhere in that maze of streets and luxury hotels, my old life waited—a handler to contact, reports to file, questions to answer.
I could already hear Matthews’ voice, sharp with controlled anger: You compromised an active operation for a civilian relationship.
Do you understand the security implications?
But standing there in the moonlight, watching Adrien sleep through the open cabin windows, I understood something else entirely. I understood why people left this work. Why they chose complicated, messy, unpredictable human connections over the clean lines of duty and protocol.
I understood, too, why my parents had never called when they were working. Not because they didn’t care—because they did. Because they knew what the job costs. Because they’d made the same bargain, and they’d raised us to believe the price was worth it.
But what if we’d all been wrong?
My fingers found the railing, gripping the cold metal as I fought against the pull of possibility. The chill sank into my palms, grounding me, reminding me what was real. Two days ago, the answer would have been clear. Now it felt like standing on a fault line.
A sound from below made me freeze—the soft creak of a floorboard. Adrien was awake.
“Sophie?” His voice carried through the cabin, rough with sleep, threaded with confusion.
My hand tightened on the railing until my knuckles ached. If I answered, I’d never leave.
I closed my eyes, memorizing how my false name sounded like the truth in his mouth. By tomorrow, Sophie Dubois would cease to exist, just another identity dissolved back into the ether of classified files and forgotten operations. But for this moment, she was real.
The marina was quiet at this hour, most boats dark and still. I could slip away now, vanish into the night the way I’d been trained to do. By sunrise, I’d be nothing more than another dream Adrien would eventually convince himself had been too perfect to be real.
Or I could stay.
Love and duty balanced like a blade on my tongue. One cut either way, and I’d bleed for it.
The decision crystallized with brutal clarity. I had to leave, and there could be no goodbye. I couldn’t trust myself not to waver if he asked me to stay, or to give him some way of finding me, some way of keeping in touch.
I knew what was expected of me: clean exits, no emotional entanglements, no loose ends that could compromise future operations.
The woman who’d shared stories about her family and played piano onboard a yacht in the pre-dawn light was a side of me that I couldn’t allow to exist. She was the kind of vulnerability that got people killed in my line of work.
My bare feet made no sound on the plank connecting the ship to the marina, though each step felt like walking through quicksand, my body fighting what my training demanded.
On the dock, I paused only long enough to slip on my heels. The click of expensive leather against weathered wood echoed too loudly in the pre-dawn quiet.
Behind me, I heard a door slam open, footsteps on the deck. His voice, louder now, edged with something that might have been panic: “Sophie! Sophie, where are you?”
I ran. Actually ran, like an amateur, like someone with something to lose. Designer heels clicking against wet dock, dress riding up my thighs, lungs burning with something that wasn’t just exertion—running from the only man who’d ever made me want to stay.
I didn’t look back. Couldn’t. Because I knew that if I saw the yacht one more time—saw the porthole that looked into the cabin where we’d made love until we were both breathless and undone—I might lose my nerve entirely.
By the time the sun heated Monaco’s harbor, I was gone. By the time I reached the airport, Sophie Dubois was filed away and forgotten, just another alias in an intelligence career.
I made my choice when I deboarded the yacht. The same choice I always made. But for the first time in my career, as the aircraft lifted into the sky, I wondered if I’d made a mistake.
His lips graze my shoulder, and I come back to Paris, to the man beside me, to the fact that the day could take everything. I curl closer anyway—choosing him in the only way that matters: while I still can.