2. Blade
BLADE
Seven AM came too fucking early after a night on my own couch listening to Tiffany breathe in my bed.
She'd emerged from my bedroom looking like sin wrapped in sunshine—wearing fresh scrubs from the bag we'd grabbed from her place, hair twisted up in some messy knot that exposed her neck. The neck I'd spent half the night imagining putting my mouth on.
"Morning." Her voice carried that rough, just-woke-up quality that went straight to my cock.
I grunted acknowledgment from where I stood at the counter, drowning myself in black coffee and trying not to notice how her scrub top pulled across her chest when she reached for a mug.
Twenty-four years old. Sixteen years younger than me.
Math I'd done approximately fifty times between midnight and dawn.
"Did you sleep at all?" She moved beside me, close enough that her warmth invaded my space. "The couch looked uncomfortable."
"I've slept in worse." Afghanistan. Iraq. Detroit. Places that didn't matter anymore because none of them had featured a curvy brunette in my bed, wearing my t-shirt, legs bare and perfect in the moonlight when she'd padded to the bathroom at two AM.
"I could have taken the couch—"
"No." The word came out harsher than intended. "You're under my protection. You get the bed."
She studied me over her coffee mug, and I forced myself to look away.
In daylight, without fear clouding her features, she was even more dangerous.
Fresh-faced, hopeful, the kind of woman who still believed in good outcomes and happy endings.
Everything I'd stopped believing in a decade ago when I'd held Torres while he bled out in Kandahar.
"We should go," I said. "Your shift starts at eight."
The drive to the clinic tested my focus.
She sat behind me on the bike, those soft curves pressed against my back, arms wrapped around my waist like she belonged there.
Every red light became torture, feeling her shift, feeling her breathe.
Her thighs bracketed mine, and I spent the entire ride fighting images of those same thighs wrapped around me in different circumstances.
At the clinic, Dr. Tad raised an eyebrow when we walked in together. "Everything alright?"
"Quiet night," I reported while Tiffany disappeared to start her shift. "But they're already tracking. Saw a sedan creeping past my building at dawn, unfamiliar plates, driver watching windows."
"They found her new location that fast?"
"These fuckers are motivated." I'd texted Phoenix about it, had him run the plates. Dead end—stolen tags. "Got my brothers taking shifts watching. We'll know if they come back."
Dr. Tad's expression darkened. "I've got a full patient load today. Can you—"
"I'm not leaving."
The morning stretched into afternoon, and watching Tiffany work became its own form of torture.
Every patient got her full attention, her genuine care.
She held Mrs Little’s hand during a blood draw, chatting about the older woman's grandchildren.
She made Conrad laugh despite his arthritis pain.
She moved through the clinic with quiet competence, and every glimpse of her made my chest tight with want I had no business feeling.
When she bent to retrieve dropped supplies, her scrub pants stretched across the perfect curve of her ass, fabric straining in ways that made my jaw clench.
When she reached for high shelves, her top rode up.
She was all curves—generous breasts that stretched her scrub top, a waist that dipped in before flowing into hips made for gripping.
Real woman, not gym-sculpted. The kind of soft that promised give under my hands, cushion against my hard edges and scars.
Too young. Too innocent. Too fucking good for someone like me.
But when she glanced my way between patients, color rising in her cheeks when our eyes met, my noble intentions crumbled a little more. She wanted me too. Wrong as it was, dangerous as it could be, the attraction ran both directions.
"Checking supplies," she announced around three, heading for the storage room.
I followed, maintaining distance but keeping her in sight. She knew I was there—her movements had taken on a self-conscious quality, awareness in every gesture. When she dropped a box of gauze and bent to retrieve it, I had to lock my jaw to keep from groaning.
"You don't have to watch me every second," she said without turning around.
"Yeah, I do."
"It must be boring."
Boring wasn't the word. Torture, maybe. Sweet hell. Watching her gentle hands that moved with such practiced care, hands that had no business touching someone who'd done the things I'd done. Yesterday she'd noticed my scars, and the concern in her expression had nearly broken my resolve.
"I've had worse assignments."
She turned then, leaning against the supply shelf. In the small room, we stood too close.
"Have you? Had a lot of assignments like this?"
"Never had one like this." Never had to protect someone who made me want to be the danger instead. Never had to watch someone I wanted to claim, mark, possess in ways that would scandalize this small town.
Her tongue swept across her bottom lip, and my control cracked. "You should get back to work."
"Probably." But she didn't move, just stood there looking up at me with those doe eyes that belonged on someone who didn't make my cock ache. "Blade—"
"Don't." I stepped back, needing distance. "Just... don't."
Confusion flickered across her features before she nodded, slipping past me to return to the clinic floor. Her shoulder brushed my chest in passing, and that brief contact lit up every nerve ending.
The rest of her shift passed in professional silence, but the tension thickened with each hour. By the time seven o'clock arrived, we were both wound tight as piano wire.
Back at my apartment, she stood in my kitchen looking lost. "I could cook something? If you have... anything?"
I opened my fridge, displaying the bachelor's paradise within—protein shakes, beer, leftover takeout from Buck's that might have been from Tuesday. Or last Thursday.
She laughed, the sound filling my sparse apartment with warmth it had never contained. The movement made her breasts shift under her scrub top in ways I shouldn't notice but couldn't stop cataloging. "Okay, challenge accepted. You have eggs?"
"Maybe?"
She found eggs, somehow still good, and half a bag of shredded cheese that hadn't gone bad yet. Within minutes, she'd transformed my pathetic supplies into omelets that actually looked edible.
"You don't have to take care of me," I said as she set a plate in front of me.
"You're protecting me. Least I can do is feed you." She sat across from me at my small table, and the domesticity of it made my chest constrict. Normal people did this. Shared meals. Conversation. Things I'd never wanted until a terrified nurse with dangerous curves walked into my life yesterday.
"You served," she said, not a question. "Military, I mean."
"Army. Special Forces." I focused on the omelet rather than her face. "Long time ago."
"The scars aren't that old."
Observant. Of course she was—nurses noticed everything. "Some are. Some aren't."
"Is that why you're called Blade?"
The question everyone asked eventually. "Training exercise.
Knife fighting. Instructor said I moved like a blade through water.
Name stuck." Better than the truth—that I'd earned it putting a knife through an enemy combatant's throat to save my squad.
That I'd been their blade in the dark, cutting down threats before they knew death had arrived.
"You don't talk about it much. The service."
"Nothing worth talking about." Dead friends. Failed missions. Scars inside and out that would never fully heal. Nothing a twenty-four-year-old nurse needed poisoning her sunshine world.
She reached across the table, her fingers grazing my hand. "I don't believe that."
I pulled away, standing abruptly. "You should shower. Get ready for bed. Long day tomorrow."
Hurt flashed across her features before she nodded, disappearing into my bathroom. The sound of water running became another form of torture. Tiffany naked in my shower, water sluicing over those curves, using my soap, my towels.
Fuck.
I checked the windows, the door, anything to distract from the images my mind supplied. When she emerged twenty minutes later, hair damp and wearing my t-shirt—the one I'd tossed her last night—I nearly broke.
The shirt hit mid-thigh, drowning her but somehow making her sexier.
No bra underneath—the soft bounce when she walked made that obvious, nipples pressing against worn cotton in the apartment's cool air.
Those legs, soft and pale, made for wrapping around my waist while I buried myself deep enough to forget my own name.
"The bedroom door stays open," I said, voice rougher than intended.
"I know. You mentioned that last night." She moved toward the bedroom, pausing in the doorway. "You really should take the bed tonight. The couch is—"
"I'm fine."
"Blade—"
"Go to bed, Tiffany."
She disappeared into my bedroom—my fucking bedroom where my sheets would smell like her, where I'd never be able to sleep again without remembering her there. I grabbed a beer, then thought better of it. Needed to stay sharp. Alert.
The sedan from this morning hadn't returned, but that meant nothing. They were out there, planning, waiting. And I'd be ready when they made their move.
I settled on the couch, hyperaware of every sound from my bedroom. The rustle of sheets as she got comfortable. A soft sigh that made my cock twitch. The quiet rhythm of her breathing that gradually deepened toward sleep.
Two hours passed. Then three. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her in that storage room, looking up at me with invitation in her expression. Saw her in my kitchen, making herself at home like she belonged there. Saw her in my t-shirt, legs bare, looking like everything I didn't know I wanted.