Chapter 27
You’re Becoming My Weak Spot
Ghost
Inoticed it before anyone else did.
That wasn’t arrogance. It was familiarity.
I knew Mira too well not to catch the small things.
The rest of Ironhand saw competence. Calm. The same controlled medic who moved through blood and violence without flinching. They saw Lena Gray, sharp enough to survive this place without drawing the wrong kind of attention.
I saw the cracks underneath it. Tiny hesitations that lasted less than a second too long. Her focus drifts at moments it normally wouldn’t. The way her eyes occasionally locked somewhere distant before snapping back into place like she was dragging herself out of her own head manually.
Nobody else would’ve noticed. I did. And every single time I caught it, something tight and ugly twisted deeper in my chest. She was distracted because of me.
The realization sat there whether I wanted it to or not, impossible to ignore now that I’d started seeing the pattern.
It wasn’t constant. Mira was still good, probably better than anyone else inside Ironhand outside of the upper chain itself.
But she wasn’t as sharp as she had been when this started.
Emotional involvement was dulling her edge. And that scared the hell out of me.
I watched another example of it from the upper walkway overlooking the admin floor.
Mira stood near one of the routing stations, reviewing manifests while two lower-level runners moved equipment behind her.
One of them nearly clipped her shoulder with a crate when he turned too fast. Old Mira would’ve clocked that movement before it even got close. This version of her reacted late.
Not dangerously late. Just enough that she had to step back abruptly instead of already being out of the path before the mistake happened.
The runner muttered an apology before hurrying off. Mira barely reacted, already forcing her attention back toward the manifests in front of her. But I saw the frustration in the set of her shoulders afterward.
She knew.
That almost made it worse.
My jaw tightened as I leaned against the railing. My eyes tracked her movements while my brain ran through every possible outcome if it continued. Ironhand tolerated mistakes right up until it didn’t. The higher someone climbed into operational visibility, the less room there was for distraction.
And Silas was already watching her too closely.
That thought sharpened everything instantly.
I slowly pushed away from the railing and took the side route down toward the lower offices, keeping my pace slow enough not to draw attention. I didn’t approach her directly. Couldn’t. Not here. Not with too many eyes around and too much already hanging by a thread between us.
Still, as I passed behind her station a few minutes later, my gaze dropped briefly toward the open manifest she’d been reviewing. One line remained unchecked.
A routing discrepancy sat there untouched, obvious once you knew what to look for.
Mira caught it half a second after I did.
Her fingers stilled against the screen before she corrected it quickly, but the damage was already done as far as I was concerned… because she didn’t miss things like that. Not before. Not until we started letting each other back in.
The realization landed hard enough to hollow something out inside my chest. This wasn’t helping her survive Ironhand anymore. It was compromising her. And the worst part was, watching her slip like this didn’t make me want to pull away from her. It made me want to protect her harder.
Once I noticed the pattern, I couldn’t stop reacting to it. That was the problem.
Every instinct I had kept shifting toward her automatically now, recalculating routes, assignments, operational overlap, looking for ways to reduce the pressure around her before it became something she couldn’t recover from.
I told myself it was strategic at first. Keep Mira stable, keep her effective, keep her alive long enough for this operation to end. But deep down? I knew better. This wasn’t a strategy anymore. It was obsession dressed up as protection.
I slipped into one of the lower logistics terminals just after midnight, timing it to fall between shift rotations, when traffic through the admin corridors was at its lightest. The system itself wasn’t difficult to manipulate if you understood how Ironhand structured internal movement.
Small changes rarely triggered alerts immediately.
A rerouted assignment here. A delayed transfer there.
Enough to subtly shift Mira away from higher-risk intersections without making it obvious someone was protecting her.
At least, that had been true before Silas started tightening internal oversight.
The screen glowed low in the dark as I adjusted the next week’s routing overlaps, moving Mira off two external verification runs and replacing them with lower-priority med coverage closer to the central compound. Cleaner. Safer. Less exposure to outside transport routes.
Exactly what she needed right now.
I was halfway through scrubbing the access trail when footsteps hit the corridor outside.
Too close.
My focus snapped upward instantly as shadows shifted beneath the office door. Someone paused outside long enough to make my pulse narrow hard in my chest before the handle moved slightly.
Fuck.
I killed the active screen immediately, leaning back into the chair with controlled ease just as the door opened halfway.
One of the logistics supervisors glanced inside. His eyes narrowed briefly when he spotted me. “Didn’t know this terminal was occupied.”
“Wasn’t,” I replied evenly, already standing before he had time to study the system behind me too closely. “Network lag downstairs.”
His gaze flicked once toward the darkened monitor. Too long. Then back to me. Something about the look he gave me afterward sat wrong in my gut even after he stepped aside to let me pass.
By the time I reached her room, I sensed I shouldn’t be there. Silas’s tightening control and Mira’s struggles should’ve pulled me back to reality, but I knocked softly.
When she opened the door, exhaustion marked her face. For a moment, she froze; recognition flickered in her eyes.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she murmured, lacking conviction.
“I know.”
She stepped aside, and I entered. The air felt thick with tension as Mira leaned against the desk, arms crossed.
“You’re distracted,” I said quietly.
Her jaw tightened. “You came to critique me?”
“No. You’re running yourself into the ground.”
She laughed bitterly, looking away. “I could say the same about you.”
I stepped closer, feeling her warmth.
“What do you want from me, Aiden?” she asked, steady.
The question hit harder than expected. I brushed her jaw, and as she leaned into my touch, something inside cracked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Her hand covered my heartbeat, and silence filled with fear deeper than violence. Then she kissed me, slowly and without urgency, just warmth as we reached for each other.
I kissed her back, our bodies drawing close. Familiarity lingered, as if part of us had waited here all along.
I guided her back until her knees hit the bed, pulling me down with her without breaking the kiss. The moment felt unhurried, intimate, as if we were afraid to rush and break what we had formed tonight.
My hands slid beneath her shirt and lifted it over her head, tossing it aside.
Her breasts were perfect, full and round with nipples already hardening in the cool air of the room.
I lowered my head to take one in my mouth, swirled my tongue around the sensitive peak while my hand rolled the other between my fingers.
Mira arched against me, her fingers tangled in my hair as soft moans escaped her lips.
“God, Aiden,” she breathed, her hips rocking against mine as I continued to worship her breasts with my mouth and hands.
I could feel the heat radiating from between her thighs, could smell her arousal growing stronger with each passing moment. My cock throbbed in response, straining against the fabric of my jeans.
I needed her. Needed to be inside her, to feel her wrapped around me, to lose myself in the warmth and wetness of her body.
My fingers found the waistband of her pants and slid beneath the elastic to touch the soft skin of her stomach.
She lifted her hips instinctively as I pulled them down, along with her panties, until they were pooled at her feet.
I knelt before her then, my hands gripped her thighs as I buried my face between her legs.
The first taste of her nearly sent me over the edge.
She was wet and ready for me, her folds slick with arousal as I ran my tongue along her slit.
I circled her clit slowly, deliberately, and watched as her head fell back, her mouth open in a silent cry of pleasure.
Her fingers tightened in my hair and held me in place as I continued to explore her with my mouth, licking and sucking and teasing until she was trembling against me.
“Please,” she whispered, her voice ragged with need. “Aiden, please.”
I stood up then, quickly shedding my own clothes until I was as naked as she was. My cock stood at attention, the tip already glistening with pre-cum. I positioned myself at her entrance, looking down at her as she lay before me, her eyes dark with desire, her body flushed with arousal.
“I’ve missed this,” I said quietly, my voice rough with emotion.
“Me, too,” she whispered back. She reached up to cup my face in her hands. “Now, Aiden. Please.”
I pushed into her slowly and savored the way her body stretched to accommodate me.
She was tight, so tight it made my breath catch in my throat, her walls clenched around me like they never wanted to let me go again.
I buried myself to the hilt, my hips flush against hers as we both adjusted to the sensation of being joined again after so long.
“Fuck,” I breathed against her skin. “You feel so good.”
Her hands tightened on my ass, pulling me deeper. “Move,” she commanded softly. “Please, Aiden, move.”
I started thrusting then, slow and deep, each movement deliberate and meaningful.
This wasn’t the frantic coupling from before — all anger and desperation and pain.
This was different. This was a reconnection.
This was remembering. This was two people who knew each other’s bodies as well as they knew their own, finding their way back to each other in the dim quiet of her room.
I increased my pace gradually, my thrusts becoming harder, faster, more demanding as her body responded to mine.
Her legs wrapped around my waist and pulled me deeper with each stroke.
Her hips rose to meet mine as we found our rhythm together.
The sounds of our lovemaking filled the room—the slap of skin against skin, the soft cries and moans that escaped her lips, my own guttural groans of pleasure.
“Right there,” she breathed against my mouth. “Don’t stop.”
I had no intention of stopping. I could feel her getting closer to the edge, her walls fluttering around me as her orgasm approached. I reached between us then, my fingers found her clit, rubbed in tight circles as I continued to thrust into her.
“Come for me,” I growled against her neck, my teeth scraping against her skin. “Let me feel you, Mira. Let me feel you come around my cock.”
That was all it took. Her body convulsed around me, her orgasm washed over her in waves as she cried out my name. I followed her over the edge a moment later, my own release hit me hard enough to steal my breath, my body tensed as I emptied myself deep inside her with a guttural groan.
We collapsed onto the bed, our bodies slick with sweat, our breathing ragged in the sudden silence. I rolled onto my side, pulled her with me until she was draped across my chest, her head nestled in the hollow of my shoulder.
Afterward, when we finally lay tangled together in the dim quiet of her room, her fingers traced absently against my chest while neither of us spoke.
The emotional walls between us felt thinner now than they had during the sex itself, stripped raw by the intimacy of simply existing beside each other afterward.
That was the part that terrified me.
Not wanting her.
Needing her.