Chapter 10
RYA
It’s a little after midnight, and the silence inside the fortified cabin is heavy enough to suffocate. I’m sitting at the command terminal, my eyes scanning the external camera grids, while Miller stands near the door, a dark, silent shadow holding his customized weapon.
The tension is like a living, breathing presence in the room with us, but neither Miller nor I make a sound. We’ve been waiting, silently preparing, reading ourselves for the moment of the attack. I’m wound so tight I swear I could snap from hearing a pin drop.
Suddenly, the bottom-left monitor flickers.
Just a tiny glitch in the infrared sweep, but my hacker senses instantly scream.
I click furiously around the code, my blood turning to fire.
"Miller,” I alert him, my voice quiet and yet sharp in the still night air.
“The external camera feeds are looping. Someone is overriding the local routing node. "
In less than a heartbeat, Miller’s entire stance and being changes.
The protective, tender man who cradled my face earlier disappears, replaced by a deadly, stealthy predator.
His blue eyes harden to steel and his jaw is set in a harsh line as he clenches his teeth.
A ripple runs through his muscles, each one flexing as if waking up and reporting for duty.
My ex-military bodyguard is on high alert, all of the instincts and skills he’s honed in his life now being used to ensure my safety.
We’re on the brink of an attack, yet I can’t help but take a second to appreciate how fucking hot Miller is when he’s on high alert.
His tactical gear covering his taut muscles, the strained muscles in his neck, the flex of his forearm as he palms his gun…
"Stay on the terminal, baby girl. Keep the locks live," his parting whisper echoes in the room, pulling me from my inappropriate thoughts. Without another word, he checks his weapon and slips out the heavy side door into the pitch-black night, moving with a terrifying, silent grace.
My fingers fly across the keys as I fight for control of our network. The Syndicate hackers are good, but I’m a digital Robin Hood, and I’m protecting my home. I tap into the perimeter defense matrix, locking and unlocking strategic gates to funnel the attackers right into Miller’s path.
We make an incredible team, if I do say so myself.
We could help so many people with our hacker skills and Miller’s deadly presence.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I’m picturing Miller helping me free animals from a kill shelter, and then punching a predatory landlord so he can’t keep raising the rent on families who can’t afford it.
All in a day’s work for Rya and Miller, the dream team.
A sound from the external audio feeds rips through the small, dark space, clearing my head of everything outside of this moment.
I almost don’t believe the primal, rabid roar I’m hearing could come from Miller, but I know deep in my bones it’s him.
This is what he turns into when someone threatens the most important thing to him.
There are muffled shouts, the brutal sound of bone snapping, and low, feral snarls ripping from my man’s throat as he completely neutralizes the threat.
It’s violent, primitive, and terrifying—and as completely fucked up as it is, hearing him go absolute beast-mode to protect me has me so insanely turned on I’m literally squirming in my seat.
My core throbs with a wild, primal heat.
He is my alpha predator. My beast. My shield against anything and everything.
I finally smash through the hacker's breach, regaining absolute control of the security cameras. I quickly override an external camera pan, pointing it toward the dark tree line to check on him.
My breath catches. Through the night-vision lens, I see Miller wrestling a massive operative to the ground, his strength a brutal force to be reckoned with.
I’m so mesmerized by Miller’s perfect execution of strength, I almost miss it.
Further back in the shadows, a second man is creeping up slowly behind Miller’s blind spot, raising a silenced rifle.
"No, you don't," I hiss. Rage floods my system, followed by unfettered fear. I push all of it down, down, down, forcing my heartrate to slow and my breaths to remain as even as possible. I can’t have a meltdown. Not when my man needs me. We wouldn’t be much of a dream team if I flaked out the moment things got tough.
I don't have time to yell through his earpiece. My eyes dart to the auxiliary controls. There’s a high-intensity, industrial-grade spotlight attached to the roof of the cabin—an old security feature that I imagine rarely gets used anymore.
I punch in a series of swift key commands, aiming the coordinates manually, and slam the enter key.
BOOM.
A blinding, stadium-level beam of white light cuts through the dark forest, shining right on the man sneaking up. The sudden, explosive brightness completely startles him, throwing him off balance and drawing the panicked attention of his remaining accomplices.
The split-second distraction is all Miller needs. Alerted by the light, he delivers a brutal pistol whip to the guy he’s holding, likely fracturing his jaw, swings his SIG Sauer around, and fires two perfectly placed shots right into the chest of the guy under my spotlight.
The remaining attackers scatter into the dark, completely broken. I scan the perimeter, seeing several bodies scattered motionless on the ground. My hands are shaking, but I don't feel a single shred of fear or remorse.
Looking at the monitor at Miller, who is breathing heavily, his chest heaving, looking like a ruthless god of war… I’m bursting with the desperate, aching need for this beast to come inside and claim me.
My heart is hammering against my ribs, a wild, rhythmic drumbeat that mirrors the fading echoes of gunfire outside.
I’m still standing at the terminal, my fingers hovering over the keys, but the digital battlefield is quiet now.
My skin feels electric, vibrating with the residual surge of adrenaline that set every nerve ending on fire while I watched Miller dismantle those men through the camera feed.
It was terrifying, yes, but God, it was exhilarating.
Watching him move, that lethal, calculated precision as he protected our space.
.. it did something to me. It awakened a hunger that has nothing to do with survival and everything to do with the man who just fought for it.
The air in the cabin feels thin, charged with the scent of gunpowder and the raw, dangerous energy still radiating off of him, even through the screen.
I let out a long breath, allowing some of the tension to drain from my shoulders and neck. My knees tremble slightly as the fight-or-flight high begins to ebb, replaced by a deep, heavy ache in the pit of my stomach.
I don’t want to be the tech-nerd behind the screen anymore.
I don’t want to be the one observing. I need to be the one he focuses on.
I need his hands, not for weapons, but on me.
I need him to stop being the machine and start being the man who is obsessed with nothing but claiming every inch of my skin, reminding me, and himself, that we both survived this together.