Chapter 14
Then Don’t Stop Me
Mira
The door slammed behind me harder than it needed to.
I didn’t slow down. Didn’t look back. Didn’t give myself even a second to stand there and feel what had just happened, because if I did, I already knew exactly where it would drag me.
Back to him. Back to the way my body still hadn’t learned the lesson my brain had been screaming for two years.
My pulse hadn’t settled by the time I hit the main corridor again, the noise of Ironhand crashed back in around me as if nothing had just shifted. Fights still roared, money still moved, people still bled like it was just another night. The world hadn’t paused for what happened in that room.
So, I didn’t either.
I moved. Fast. Purposeful. Like I had somewhere to be and something to do … because I did. I forced my focus back — onto the mission, onto the reason I was here in the first place, onto the thing that actually mattered.
Not him. Not us. Not whatever the hell that kiss was trying to pull me back into.
My chest tightened anyway. Because no matter how hard I pushed it down, my body hadn’t caught up yet.
It still buzzed under my skin, heat lingering where his hands had been, where his mouth had been, like it didn’t care that this was the exact situation I swore I’d never let myself fall into again.
I shut it down. Hard. Because that was the difference now.
Two years ago, I might’ve let myself get lost in that. Might’ve leaned into it, let it blur the edges of everything else until he was the only thing that mattered. Now? I knew better.
He’d left once. That was the only truth that mattered.
Didn’t matter why. Didn’t matter how clean his logic sounded or how much sense his explanation made when you stripped it down to survival and strategy. In the end, he chose to disappear, leaving me to deal with the fallout alone.
I wasn’t making the mistake of forgetting that. Not again.
My steps slowed just enough as I reached the lower-level access, my mind already shifting gears, locking back into the patterns I’d been building long before he walked back into my life and tried to tear through them like they didn’t matter.
If he thought that kiss was going to throw me off, he was wrong. If anything, it did the opposite. It reminded me exactly why I couldn’t let him back in, exactly why I couldn’t afford to get pulled into whatever this still was between us. And it pissed me off enough to push harder.
I rerouted my next move immediately, adjusting the intel path I’d been sitting on for the last two days. It wasn’t surface-level anymore. Not low-risk. Not something that kept me in the safe margins of Ironhand’s operation.
I went deeper into the financial channels I’d been mapping but hadn’t touched yet, into the transport logs that didn’t match what was being moved on the floor.
Into the connections that didn’t just tie Ironhand to local operations, but stretched further, into something bigger, something structured, something that screamed Syndicate without saying it out loud.
This was the part that mattered.
This was the part I’d been building toward.
And if the system was tightening, if Silas was starting to notice, then waiting wasn’t an option anymore. I needed proof. Real proof. The kind that didn’t just expose Ironhand, but ripped the entire structure open.
My fingers moved over the terminal faster now, pulled files, cross-referenced data, pushed past the access limits I’d been respecting up until now. It was riskier. Sloppier if I wasn’t careful.
I didn’t care.
Because standing in that room with him, feeling everything I shouldn’t have felt, almost letting myself fall back into something I knew damn well would destroy me if I gave it the chance?
That made one thing clear. I couldn’t trust myself around him. So, I leaned into the one thing I could trust.
The mission.
And if that meant pushing deeper, taking bigger risks, and getting closer to the fire than I’d originally planned? So be it because I wasn’t walking away from this.
Not for him. Not for anyone. And definitely not after everything it had already cost me.
I realized it quickly.
Not the easy part. Not how much he still wanted me. Because that had been obvious the second his precision cracked back there, the second his fingers stopped searching for me and started remembering me like I remembered him.
No, what was important was what that desire was doing to him. Because Aiden was always in control, hell, he had been way before everything fell apart, way before he became Ghost. He just knew how to push buttons in ways that made him unreadable and nearly impossible to unsettle.
But lately? Nothing could’ve prepared him for me. For us.
I knew the truth every time our paths aligned because his eyes lingered ever so slightly longer than human decency required. I saw it when he shifted his step whenever I entered his personal bubble, neither stepping back nor advancing. Controlling himself like he wasn’t sure he could if he didn’t.
Tell me something I don’t know.
Oh, but that hesitation? That wasn’t natural. Which meant it was something I could play.
I stopped actively avoiding him when our ships crossed.
Kicked the bait when I saw him planning his course to give us space.
I gave him what he obviously thought he needed to maintain whatever professionalism we pretended to have between us.
If anything, I leaned into it. Let the machines guide us through the same halls, the same jobs, corners so tight we’d be blatantly obvious if we avoided each other.
So next time we ended up in that narrow hallway together, I didn’t step aside to let him pass. I marched on through. Right. Into. Him.
I stopped short enough that we weren’t breathing on each other, but close enough that we brushed. My shoulder nudged his chest, my palm rested against his hip, as I balanced myself as if we’d collided unintentionally.
We hadn’t.
I watched him closely, knowing the fight would course through him in that instant. No guns blazing, oh no. Just enough for me to see the crack in his armor. A stutter in his step, a hundredth of a pause before he continued on his way.
Perfect.
The next time we were assigned the same storage container refill, I didn’t reach across the bench to grab my end of the supplies.
Instead, I moved closer to him. Close enough that I was pressed against him, close enough that if we both took two steps in any direction, we’d end up where we shouldn’t be.
“Hey, move,” I hissed quietly, keeping my voice low enough that those around us wouldn’t catch the bite, “or are you just gonna stand there, act like this isn’t throwing you off?”
Heat flooded his features. He said nothing. But he also took a step back. And that was confirmation enough for me. This wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t need to be.
We… shifted.
And for once, since he’d stomped back into my life, Aiden wasn’t the only one calling the shots between us. God forbid I let him forget it.
A week. That’s how long we dove right back into it.
Circle, test, push enough to gauge how far the other person would go without actually doing it.
Every glance, every touch lingering just slightly more on top of everything that already broke us until we weren’t just tiptoeing around tension.
We were living in it. And I wasn’t going to let him dictate when we stepped out of it anymore.
I found him off to the side in a hallway that connected to the main floor.
Quieter. Still populated but not so obvious that someone walking by would look twice.
He paced, dark head snapping every few steps like he had somewhere important to be, like he wasn’t already acutely aware that I’d cut him off.
Only this time, I didn’t let him pass. I stalked him back.
Slow. Controlled. Not aggressive, just enough forward momentum to force him to either fall back or cause a scene. He decided to fall back, predictably, inching backward until the wall behind him bumped solidly against his spine.
And there we stood. Breathing. No space between us.
No room to dance around whatever it was anymore.
Close enough that my breath brushed along his jaw when I spoke to him.
Close enough that if he took one step towards me, we would be touching in a way that neither of us could pretend to walk by simply.
“You’re so fucking consistent with yourself,” I murmured, biting but even, staring him down. “Test my boundaries and then act like you’re offended whenever I check yours.”
His jaw clenched, but he remained perfectly still. He didn’t push me off. Didn’t fight to keep control of the situation.
Good. Because I wasn’t letting him have this.
“This is your fault,” I murmured against his mouth, darker, not quieter, each word hitting its mark. “Don’t pretend like you get to stand around now.”
I pinned him with my eyes and wouldn’t let him look away.
Because if he was going to play…
If he was going to stand here and look at me like that, touch me like that, want me like that…
Then he sure as fuck wasn’t getting to play nice with me. Not ever.
He didn’t move away. That was the only permission I needed.
The second the words left my mouth, something shifted in his expression, not obvious, not loud, but enough. Enough that I felt it, that I knew I’d hit exactly where I meant to. The control he’d been holding onto cracked just a little more, and this time?
He didn’t pull back from it.
His hand came up fast, sliding to my waist and pulling me flush against him, the contact immediate and undeniable. Heat flared: sharp and sudden. Tension snapped into something heavier, something that had been building for weeks and finally found somewhere to land.
My breath caught, but I didn’t step back. Didn’t stop him.
His mouth crashed into mine again, harder this time, less restraint, less hesitation.
There was nothing careful about it now, nothing measured.
It was want, pure and unfiltered, dragging everything else under with it.
My hands found him just as fast. They gripped his shirt, pulled him closer, as if that were even possible with the way our bodies were already pressed together.
This wasn’t controlled anymore.
His hands moved and slid up my sides. His fingers dug in just enough to ground the moment before shifting higher, pushing under the edge of my top as though he’d already made the decision not to stop.
The contact burned, every inch of it sending heat through me that I should’ve shut down, should’ve fought against.
I didn’t.
I leaned into it instead, into him, into the way his grip tightened, into the way everything blurred down to just this, just us, just the collision we’d been circling since he walked back into my life.
His mouth left mine just long enough to drag down my jaw, my throat, his breath hot against my skin as his hands pushed higher, fabric shifting under his grip as he—
“Lena!”
The voice cut through everything like a blade. Sharp. Immediate. Too close.
I froze. So did he.
“Lena, where the hell are you?” the fighter called again, footsteps echoing down the corridor, getting closer.
Reality slammed back in hard.
I shoved against Aiden’s chest, breaking the contact fast, breath uneven as I stepped back, yanking my top down and forcing everything back into place like I hadn’t just been seconds away from spiraling completely out of control.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, dragging a hand through my hair, forcing my expression back into something neutral, something that didn’t scream exactly what had just happened in this hallway.
The footsteps were right outside now. Too close. Too risky.
I shot Aiden one last look, something sharp and unresolved passed between us before I turned and moved toward the door like I hadn’t just been pressed against him … like my pulse wasn’t still racing from it.
“Coming,” I called out, voice steady enough to pass.
The second I stepped out into the corridor, the fighter grabbed my attention immediately, clutching his side and already complaining.
“I need you to look at this,” he said, urgency overriding everything else.
I nodded once, already shifting back into Lena, already pushing everything else down where it couldn’t interfere.
But the damage? It was done. Because that wasn’t a close call, that was exposure waiting to happen. And if anyone had seen even a second of that? Silas wouldn’t just be watching the system anymore.
He’d be watching me.