Chapter 7
SEVEN
Kade
The perimeter walk takes an hour. I point out sight lines, natural cover, and the three trail systems radiating from the cabin. She absorbs all of it with the same focused intelligence that got her into this mess, asking questions about distances, terrain, and what lies beyond each ridge.
The boulder sits a quarter-mile uphill—flat-topped granite with a clean view of the approach road. My usual overwatch position. Good cover, excellent fields of fire, multiple escape routes. She's breathing hard when we reach it, the elevation and accumulated stress taking their toll.
"This is where you'd make your stand?" She runs a hand over the sun-warmed stone.
"This is where I buy you time to run." I hoist myself up and offer her a hand. "The trail behind it leads to a fire road. Six miles to the highway."
"Six miles." She settles beside me, legs dangling. "I couldn't make six miles on a good day."
"You could if you had to. Amazing what adrenaline does."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Kandahar. Eleven miles with a bullet in my shoulder and a broken rib." I point to the trail. "The key is to keep moving. Don't stop, don't think. Just move."
She's quiet for a moment, absorbing that. Then: "Why are you helping me? Really. The real reason."
I could lie. Should lie.
"Because when I saw that asshole put his hands on you at the bar, something in me snapped.
Because you fought back instead of freezing.
Because you trusted me enough to get on my bike.
" The hardest part sticks for a moment before I push through it.
"Because when I woke up next to you, for the first time in three years, I didn't immediately plan my exit. "
"Three years. What happened three years ago?"
"I got someone killed." The words come out flat. "Not directly, but close enough. A protection detail. Diplomat's daughter. I followed protocol instead of my instincts. She died because I didn't trust my gut."
Wren goes still. Not the polite stillness of someone waiting for you to finish—the loaded stillness of someone who just received information that changes their map of you.
"That's why you didn't call this in officially."
"Partially." I hold her gaze. "The other part is less noble."
"Tell me."
"I wanted you the moment I saw you dancing. When that asshole grabbed you, I told myself I was intervening as a professional. The truth? I wanted an excuse to get close. To touch you." A short, bitter exhale. "Some protector. Getting you into bed while Black Helix had you in their sights."
"You didn't know—"
"I knew something was off. The sedan at the bar, the way you were being watched. My gut was screaming danger, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to fuck you."
She doesn't respond immediately. The silence has weight. Miles of forest spread below us, not another soul for hours in any direction. We could scream, and only the birds would answer.
"You broke your rules for a dead woman," she says quietly. "Not for her—after her. You saw something in me that reminded you of what you failed to trust, and you weren't going to walk past it again."
The precision of it hits like a blade. She's not being sympathetic. She's naming the thing accurately, the way she names vulnerabilities in code—finding the exact flaw, calling it what it is.
"Yeah." The word costs something. "That's most of it."
"And the rest?"
I look at her—the blue eyes, the dark hair, the intelligence that sees too much. "The rest is that I would burn every rule I've ever followed to keep you alive. And that has nothing to do with Amara."
She holds the look for a long moment. Then she reaches out and wraps her hand around mine where it rests on the stone—not grabbing, not urgent. Just deliberate. A pressure that says: I hear you. I'm not running from it.
"You don't get to carry her and me both," she says. "I chose to get on your bike. I chose to trust you. Whatever happens, that's mine."
"Wren—"
"I mean it." Her thumb moves across my knuckles. "Stop using her death as a reason to hold yourself at a distance from me. It's not protecting either of us."
Something loosens in my chest that I haven't let move in three years. She didn't offer absolution. She offered something harder—a refusal to let me use guilt as a wall.
She swings a leg over and straddles me in one smooth motion, her hands framing my face.
"I want you," she says. No performance, no pivot—still in the same register, still looking at me the same way. "Right here, in the sun. Not to forget any of it. Because I just looked at everything you carry and decided I'm staying anyway."
We manage to get my jeans down enough, then hers—the logistics awkward and frantic. When she sinks onto me, no preamble, just taking what she wants, the sensation rips a groan from both of our throats.
"Fuck, you feel good."
She sets the rhythm immediately. No slow build. Just raw need.
The sun beats down on us, high and indifferent, scorching my shoulders while the mountain wind bites at our exposed skin.
I palm her breasts, thumbs dragging over her nipples, watching her arch back.
She uses my thighs for leverage, her hair whipping around her face like a dark flag.
The position gives me a perfect view—where we're joined, her body taking mine, the play of muscle under soft, flushed skin.
"Harder." Her head falls back, throat bared to the sky.
I grip her hips, bruises surely forming under my fingertips, and meet her rhythm with upward thrusts that shake the breath out of her.
We're not making love. We're fucking on a sun-warmed boulder in the middle of nowhere, and it's exactly what we both need.
Life-affirming.
Primal.
A middle finger to the death hunting us down the mountain.
Her rhythm falters, the slide of her hips changing from a ride to a grind.
Close. I work my hand between us, finding the slick heat of her, circling her clit.
She comes with a cry that echoes off the granite, her body clamping down on me with terrifying strength.
The sensation snaps my control, and I follow her over the edge, pumping into her as she collapses against my chest, my release violent and absolute.
Silence rushes back in.
The wind sighs through the pines below, louder now that our breathing has slowed. Wren rests her forehead against my collarbone, her heart hammering against my ribs. The crushing weight of these past few days lifts, replaced by the heavy, languid heat of her body draped over mine.
I wrap my arms around her, one hand tangling in the damp hair at the nape of her neck, the other tracing the line of her spine. Little aftershocks move through her, vibrating against my chest.
"You okay?" My mouth is close to her hair.
She lifts her head, resting her chin on my shoulder to look out at the endless expanse of pine and granite. "Better than okay. I feel... present. For the first time since the bar."
"Adrenaline crash. It clears the noise."
"Is that what this is? Adrenaline?" She pulls back enough to look at me, those blue eyes stripping away the operator mask I usually wear. "Biology?"
Her lips are swollen, her skin flushed with sun and sex.
"No." The words scrape out rough. "Biology is simple. This isn't simple."
“You’re right about that. It’s the best sex of my life.
I’ve never been this insatiable, but then we’ve established you’re a fucking god when it comes to sex.
” She traces the line of my jaw with her thumb, touch hesitant, almost reverent.
"I don't know anything about you. Not really.
I know you carry a gun. I know you have a brother who fishes.
" Her fingers drift down, stopping at the jagged, raised scar on my collarbone. "Where did you get this?"
"Knife fight. Caracas."
Her fingers trail lower, mapping the terrain of my chest until they find the white, knotted line on my ribs. "And this one?"
"Shrapnel. An IED that didn't quite finish the job."
"You're a map of violence."
"It's the life." I catch her hand, press a kiss to the center of her palm, tasting salt. "It leaves marks."
"I have marks too." Her voice drops, losing its strength. "They just don't show on the outside."
"Tell me."
She looks away, toward the jagged horizon where the mountains meet the sky.
"My parents died when I was seven. Car accident.
I spent ten years in the system before my grandmother found me.
" A muscle twitches in her jaw. "You learn pretty quickly that the only person coming to save you is you.
That's why I went into tech. Code makes sense.
It follows rules. If you build the firewall high enough, nothing gets in. "
"And yet." I tilt her chin back, forcing her to meet my eyes. "When a man with a gun broke into your house, you didn't freeze. You packed a bag. You got on the bike."
"I was terrified."
"Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision." I run my thumb over her lower lip, watching it part. "You have steel in you. I saw it the moment you let me blindfold you. That takes strength—surrendering control like that."
"I trust you."
The words land harder than a physical blow. Trust. In my world, it's a currency spent sparingly, only on men I've bled beside.
I think about Amara. Diplomat's daughter, twenty-six years old, with dark eyes and a laugh that filled a room. I followed protocol when my gut was screaming at me to move. I was going to do it right, keep everything clean, and she died for it.
When I walked into that bar two nights ago and saw the situation—a woman alone, a man who wouldn't stop—I saw that moment replaying.
The one where I trusted the rulebook over my instincts.
I told myself I stepped in because it was the professional thing to do.
Lying on this rock, I know better. I wasn't going to walk past that again.
Not for anything.