Chapter Six
Ethan led Niko down the quiet corridor that branched away from the operation’s wing, past layers of reinforced doors, and into a part of the complex that very few people ever saw.
His private suite.
He hadn’t brought anyone but Poppy here before.
Not Lucy. Not the staff. Not the handful of people who knew the full shape of what he did.
This space wasn’t operational.
It was personal.
The door slid open with a soft hum when he pressed his palm against the biometric reader, and Ethan stepped inside first—just long enough to make sure the lights were on, the space warm, the illusion of normality intact.
Niko followed.
And stopped.
Ethan watched it happen in real time: the way Niko’s gaze lifted, then froze, then slowly began to move across the walls.
Photographs.
Not framed like trophies. Not curated for display. Just ... there. Lined along the shelves, the sideboard tucked between books and small pieces of collected history.
Niko. The two of them. Laughing. Leaning into each other. Sitting on the wing of a training aircraft with helmets under their arms, sun in their eyes, the world still uncomplicated.
One of them, mid-flight school chaos, hair windblown and stupidly young.
Another taken on a beach, Niko barefoot and grinning, Ethan’s arm slung around his shoulders like he belonged there.
He had belonged there.
Ethan closed the door quietly behind them and followed Niko into the living area.
The suite was all glass and dark wood, floor-to-ceiling windows opening out onto the lake and forest beyond.
Firelight flickered in a recessed hearth.
A massive sofa faced both the view and an equally massive screen.
Bookshelves stretched along one wall, filled with a mix of technical manuals and well-worn novels.
Comfort without excess.
Beauty without pretense.
Niko reached out and picked up a small, battered flight tag from the sideboard.
“Is this...?”
“Yeah, from our first solo,” Ethan said quietly. “You nearly overshot the landing.”
Niko huffed a laugh. “Nearly.”
Another object. A compass. Old, scratched.
“You carried this for three years,” Niko said.
Ethan nodded. “You gave it to me the night before your first deployment. I will cherish it always.”
Silence settled between them, thick and heavy with memory.
Then Niko stopped at one photo.
Ethan felt it before Niko said anything.
The picture was small, tucked half-behind a book. The two of them on a balcony, city lights blurred behind them, Niko looking up at him with something dangerously close to vulnerability in his eyes.
Just before the first time they’d crossed the line.
The first time they’d stopped pretending.
“That was...” Niko began.
“The happiest night of my life,” Ethan said simply.
Niko didn’t look at him.
“You kept all of this,” Niko said.
“I needed to remember who I was before everything else,” Ethan replied.
They stood there for a moment, surrounded by ghosts of a life that should have continued.
Niko finally turned. “Why didn’t you reach out when she died?”
Ethan had expected the question.
He just hadn’t expected how much it would still hurt.
“I didn’t feel like I’d earned that right yet,” he said quietly. “I was still dismantling his empire. Still watching blood money move through channels I’d once helped build.”
He exhaled slowly.
“I felt ... tainted. Like I didn’t get to touch anything clean until I’d torn out as much of his power as I could.”
Niko stepped closer.
“That’s guilt,” he said, voice low and steady. “And it’s bullshit. There’s no room for that between us, and I sure as shit ain’t clean.”
His hand came up, resting at the nape of Ethan’s neck, thumb warm against skin, steady and sure in a way that cut straight through the noise in Ethan’s head.
The lake beyond the glass was dark now, the forest reflected back at them in fractured shadows, the quiet broken only by the low crackle of the fire.
Ethan closed his eyes for half a second, breathing him in, anchoring himself to the reality of Niko standing here—alive, solid, close enough to touch.
“Tell me about the morning you left,” Niko said.
Ethan opened his eyes.
“He told me he’d kill you,” Ethan said. The words tasted like rust. “And Marcus. And he knew that I wouldn’t survive losing either of you.”
Niko went very still. Not frozen—coiled.
“What do you mean he knew?”
“He knew who you were to me,” Ethan said. “He’d been watching for months. Studying. Waiting for the perfect time to bring me into line.”
Niko turned away, boots thudding hard against the wood as he paced the length of the room, hands raking through his hair, shoulders tight with a rage that had nowhere to go.
“I am going to kill him,” he said. “I am going to take my time, and I am going to enjoy every second of it.”
The fire popped in the hearth. Outside, something moved in the trees, a distant crack of sound that felt too sharp in the quiet.
“How dare he?” Niko went on, spinning back toward Ethan, eyes bright and furious.
“How fucking dare he decide who you get to love. How dare he take you away from me and make me think—” His voice cracked, just for a heartbeat.
“—make me think I didn’t matter. That I was disposable.
That you could just walk away like what we had was nothing. ”
Ethan tried to speak. "Niko, I—"
Niko steamrolled straight over him.
“I tore myself apart over that,” Niko snapped. “Years of replaying every conversation, every look, wondering what I missed. Wondering what I did wrong. And all that time, it was him pulling the strings like some sick puppet master?”
He tried again. "Babe, he—"
Niko rolled on and let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “I swear to God, if I ever get him in a room alone, they’re going to need dental records to identify what’s left.”
The words were violent, but the pain beneath them was raw and naked.
“I will end him,” Niko said again, quieter now, deadly sure. “For you. For Marcus. For thinking he could break you and survive it.”
Ethan stepped into his path before the rage could turn into something sharper, more dangerous. He lifted his hands, cupping Niko’s face, forcing him to stop, to look at him.
Then he kissed him.
Not careful.
Not restrained.
It was desperate and grounding all at once, years of restraint breaking open in a single, undeniable truth.
The kind of kiss that said I chose you, even when it cost everything.
And for the first time since flight school, since fear, since loss, Ethan felt like he had finally come home.
****
The kiss didn’t stop.
It deepened.
Niko felt it in his chest first—the way years of wanting collapsed into a single moment of contact. Ethan’s hands were still on his face, thumbs warm and steady, like he was afraid Niko might disappear again if he let go.
Niko kissed him back without thinking.
Not gently. Not cautiously.
Like a man who had waited years to do this.
When they finally broke apart, Niko rested his forehead against Ethan’s, breathing him in, laughing softly despite the sting in his eyes.
“We lost so much time,” he murmured.
Ethan swallowed. “I thought about you every day.”
“Yeah,” Niko said quietly. “Me too.”
They stayed like that for a moment, hands still on each other, the fire crackling behind them, the dark lake stretching endlessly beyond the glass. Everything outside this room—Gregory, Pyre, Black Tide, the war waiting for them—fell away.
“Will you make love to me?” Ethan asked.
The vulnerability in the question hit Niko harder than the kiss had.
“I need to feel how much I still mean to you,” Ethan said softly. “I need to know I stand a chance. That you don’t hate me for leaving.”
Niko didn’t answer with words.
He took Ethan’s waist in his hands and walked him backward toward the bedroom, slow and deliberate, never breaking eye contact.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Niko said. “You never stopped meaning everything to me, and I never stopped wanting you.”
They kissed each other, driving their arousal and pleasure up, but they didn’t rush.
Every touch carried memory—flight school laughter, stolen nights, the way Ethan always breathed a little deeper when Niko touched him just so.
Niko whispered against Ethan's lips. "Are you sure you want this?"
Ethan leaned in and kissed him again. "I have dreamed of this, baby. I want this more than you can imagine."
Niko moved Ethan and encouraged him to stand by the foot of the bed, and then he undressed him slowly, reverently, telling him with every item he removed how much he adored him.
He also kissed as much of the expanse of skin that came into his view as possible.
When he was deliciously naked and very obviously aroused, he urged him to sit on the bed.
The Niko stepped back and undressed with more speed than style, but from the way Ethan’s gaze did not leave his body, he was certain his lover still liked what he saw.
When Niko stepped into him again, Ethan reached out and drew a hand down the tribal ink he had down his neck, and across his shoulders.
“I dreamed of these,” Ethan whispered. “Such beautiful art.”
Niko smiled as he knelt between Ethan’s legs, tall enough that his head was even with Ethan’s. “I remember how much you loved to travel every curve and line with your tongue.”
Ethan leaned in to press a kiss against the ink on his shoulder. “Usually, on my journey to more interesting parts of your body.”
Niko laughed and cupped Ethan’s face in his hands. “Yes, you were, and you will do that again, but not now. I am so on the edge, just one touch of your lips or tongue on my cock, and I’m gone, and I do not want that. Not now, not for our first time in so long.”
Ethan smiled the smile that was only for Niko and lifted his arms onto his shoulders. “Then, what did you have in mind, baby?”