Chapter 12
Killian POV
Five-twenty-five in the morning. Session Fifteen. Thirty hours remaining on the mandate.
The air in the concrete bunker smelled of floor wax, chilled rubber matting, and the faint, sweet trace of the unscented lotion she used on her hands.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed in their steady, sixty-cycle hum, washing across the high stainless-steel diagnostic table where Nadia sat with her back turned to the door.
She hadn't moved when the latch clicked.
Her spine was an unyielding, rigid line beneath a fitted navy long-sleeve shirt.
Her chestnut hair was pinned up in those thin silver clips, but sleep or haste had loosened the knot; several thick, wavy tendrils spilled across the pale skin of her nape, curling over the cotton collar.
Her fingers were hammering across her laptop keyboard with rapid, aggressive strokes.
She was ignoring me. Deliberately. Scientifically.
A sharp, familiar ache flared behind my molars as my jaw locked into place.
I hadn't slept a full hour since Friday night in my truck.
Every time I closed my eyes, my palms burned with the phantom texture of her skin, and my skull echoed with the ragged sound of her breathing when my mouth had hovered a millimeter from hers.
Yesterday in the corridor, she had run.
Today, there was nowhere to run.
I dropped my heavy duffel to the mats with a dull, rubbery thud.
I stripped off my gray team jacket, tossing it onto the observation stool, standing in my black compression shirt and track pants.
The sub-basement was freezing, but the blood coursing through my neck and shoulders was running thick, hot, and restless.
I walked toward the diagnostic desk.
My bare feet made no sound against the rubber runners.
I closed the distance between us with slow, heavy deliberation, tracking the tension gathering in the line of her shoulders.
She knew I was approaching; the rhythmic clicking of her keys became slightly faster, slightly uneven, a telltale hitch in her mechanical armor.
I reached the back of her chair.
The heat radiating off her neck was immediate, carrying that crisp, winter-clean scent that made my chest tighten until breathing felt like dragging gravel through my lungs.
I didn't ask for permission.
I stepped in close, reached past both sides of her shoulders, and planted my hands flat on the top of her laptop, pressing the screen down until the plastic hinge snapped shut with a sharp, decisive crack.
* * *
The typing stopped dead.
The silence in the room returned, thick and dangerous.
Nadia went utterly motionless for two seconds, her hands frozen over the closed lid. Then, her shoulders drew back, and she spun the stool around with a violent screech of metal on metal.
She rose to her feet in the same movement, her chin tilting up at that defiant angle, her honey-brown eyes blazing with fury.
"Don't touch my equipment, Castaneda," she snapped, her voice trembling with an edge she couldn't hide.
I didn't step back. In fact, I closed the remaining foot of space between us, planting my boots firmly on the floor.
Her forward momentum betrayed her. When she stood, her chest brushed against mine, the friction of her cotton shirt against my compression top sending a jolt straight down into the muscles of my stomach.
She tried to take an immediate step backward, but the high stainless-steel diagnostic counter was right behind her. Her lower back hit the metal lip with a dull clang.
She was boxed in.
I brought my hands up, planting my palms flat on the stainless steel on either side of her waist, leaning my weight forward until my broad shoulders blotted out the fluorescent glare above her head. The scent of her soap washed over my mouth in a suffocating wave.
"Session Fifteen, Gregory," I rasped, my voice dropping into a dark, low register that vibrated in the tight space between our chests. "Open your eyes. Stop staring at the graphs."
Her breath hitched. A dark, furious flush crept up from beneath her collar, staining her neck and high cheekbones with heat. Her hands came up, hovering between us, her fingers curled into tight fists against her own ribs.
"Back up," she said, her voice dropping an octave, trying to summon that clinical, detached tone she used like a shield. "You're violating laboratory protocol. You have sixty seconds to step onto the force plate, or I log a refusal of compliance."
"Log it," I growled, leaning in another inch, my face dipping down until my nose was inches from hers. "Walk up those stairs, find Palmer, and tell him eighty-eight wouldn't give you room to breathe. Tell him you can't handle being in the same room with me."
Her jaw tightened, a microscopic tremor rippling through her lips. "I am not afraid of you."
"I know you're not," I murmured, watching her pupils blow wide, the black ink swallowing the amber in her irises. "That's your whole problem. You should be."
"You don't scare me, Killian," she whispered, her chest heaving in rapid, shallow bursts that brushed against the heavy muscles of my pectorals with every inhale. "You're just a bully who thinks he can push people around because he's two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle."
"Is that what you think this is?" I asked, my voice scraping low and raw against the shell of her ear as I dipped my head. "You think I'm pushing you around?"
"I think you're terrified," she fired back, her hands reaching out to plant flat against my chest, right over my sternum.
Her touch was like a brand, the heat of her palms searing through the thin compression fabric, straight into the bone. She intended to shove me back, but her fingers hitched, curling into the fabric of my shirt, bunching the black cotton in her fists.
She didn't push. She held on.
"You're terrified because you almost kissed me in that truck," she whispered, her voice breaking on the truth, her eyes searching mine with a wild, dizzying intensity. "And you know that if you do it, you won't be able to stop."
* * *
The air in my chest turned to pure fire.
The last shred of discipline, the last thread of restraint I had held onto for three agonizing weeks, snapped clean in half.
"You're right," I rasped, my voice thick with ruin. "I won't."
She gasped, her mouth parting to form a syllable, but the sound never left her throat.
My right hand shot up, fingers sliding into the dark, unruly hair at her nape, gripping the base of her skull with an unyielding, deliberate pressure that tilted her face up to mine.
My left arm banded around her waist, lifting her clean off her feet and planting her firmly on the edge of the high stainless-steel counter.
She didn't fight. Her small hands slid from my chest to tangle violently into the short hair at the back of my neck, pulling me down with a desperate, breathless urgency that matched the madness clawing at my ribs.
I crushed my mouth onto hers.
The collision was rough, starved, and devastating.
A ragged, broken moan tore from the back of her throat, swallowed instantly by my mouth as I parted her lips with my tongue. The taste of her was intoxicating—mint, warm skin, and a sweetness that obliterated every rational thought I had ever possessed.
Weeks of suppressed hostility, weeks of staring at her pulse fluttering in the dark, weeks of wanting to break her defiance collapsed into pure, unbridled friction.
I kissed her like a man dying of thirst. Deep, demanding, and thorough, my mouth moving over hers with a heavy, possessive hunger that left no room for hesitation.
Nadia arched into me, her small frame molding against my chest, her legs parting instinctively to bracket my hips as I stepped between her thighs.
The heavy fabric of my compression pants pressed flush against the denim of her jeans, a searing point of contact that sent a shockwave straight down into the heels of my feet.
"Nadia," I growled against her mouth, my hand tightening in her curls, pulling her head back just enough to slant my mouth deeper over hers.
She whimpered, her fingernails scraping against the bare skin of my neck above the collar, pulling me closer, as if she couldn't get enough of the weight of my body pressing her into the steel table.
Her lips were soft, swollen, opening wider for me, meeting every stroke of my tongue with a breathless, desperate hunger of her own.
"Good girl," I rasped, the praise torn from my throat in a low, gravelly rumble as my mouth trailed from her lips to the burning line of her jaw. "Look at you. Taking it for me."
She shivered violently, a long tremor running through her spine, her breath coming in ragged, broken sobs against my ear. "Killian... please."
"Please what, sweetheart?" I murmured, my lips pressing hot, bruising kisses along the sensitive tendon of her neck, right where her pulse was hammering like a trapped bird. "Tell me what you want."
"Don't stop," she gasped, her fingers tightening in my hair with frantic strength. "Don't you dare stop."
The surrender on her tongue was poison, thick and sweet, shattering the final barriers of my control.
I dragged my mouth back to hers, capturing her lips again in a bruising, breathless claiming that made the stainless-steel table groan beneath her weight.
My left hand gripped her hip, my fingers biting through her jeans, holding her flush against the hard ridge of my pelvis, letting her feel the raw, untamed evidence of what she did to me.
She met me stroke for stroke, her mouth hot and greedy, surrendering her pride, her clinical detachment, and every rule we had ever sworn to keep.
The world outside Sub-Basement Lab 04 ceased to exist.
There was no draft. There was no sixty-hour mandate. There were no scouts, no debts, and no ice.
There was only Nadia, shaking in my grip, her mouth tasting of ruin, and the terrifying, undeniable truth that I was never going to let her go.