16. Novak
SIXTEEN
Novak
I watched Caleb work without announcing my presence.
He didn’t react, which meant either he hadn’t registered me at all, or he had and had dismissed me as irrelevant.
Both were possible. He was bent over the screens, the glow from the monitors illuminating his face, sharpening his focus and turning everything else in the room into shadow.
He got like this when he worked—locked in, unreachable, consumed entirely by what was in front of him. It should have made him untouchable.
It didn’t.
I wanted to understand the way he moved through data was as if it were physical terrain and his mouth pressed into a line when something didn’t fit.
But not from the outside.
I wanted inside his head.
The thought was as clear as any operational plan. Not violence. Not damage. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to see how he worked—how his mind connected things, how he chose, what made him hesitate, what made him push forward.
What could make him want me in return?
I shifted slightly where I stood, forcing control back before the thought could develop into something else. The line was thinner around him. It always had been.
He dragged a hand through his hair, exhaled, and leaned closer to the screen, and I tracked him automatically—the angle of his neck, the steady pulse there, the play of muscle under his shirt as his shoulders moved.
I didn’t need to touch him to map it; I could already predict how he’d react if I did.
Observation without interference should have been enough, but it wasn’t.
The want came too fast, slipping past the part of me that usually filtered and assessed, settling low and sharp before I could assign it a function or push it aside.
My breath caught, and I held it there without meaning to, focus narrowing on him.
I wanted him. I wanted to take him apart without breaking him and learn how he reacted, how he breathed, and where his control slipped enough to show something real.
I wanted to taste him, and that hit harder, dragging heat through me, my pulse jumping out of rhythm for a beat before I forced it to steady again.
It wasn’t just sex, not just friction and release.
I wanted to know him through it, every inch, every reaction, every moment where he stopped thinking and started feeling.
Caleb was my choice. Mine to protect.
Not mine to break.
My chest hurts.
He frowned at the screen, unaware of how tightly my focus had narrowed on him or how close I was to stepping forward and testing every line I’d drawn.
I stayed where I was, holding position, forcing the control back into place.
I was in control.
And then he stretched, leaning back in his chair with a slow stretch, and his shirt lifted enough to expose a strip of skin at his waist—warm, alive, unmarked—and my focus snapped to it, tracking the line of muscle, the subtle shift of breath, the way he shifted without thinking, unaware of how completely the move held my attention.
“It’s just a waiting game now,” Caleb murmured and swung his chair to face me.
I didn’t like that, and the restlessness sat under my skin, pushing at me to go out there, grab Noah and Eden, and end this instead of standing still.
I knew we couldn’t—we needed to wait for darkness, but I needed something.
Caleb stretched again, slow and unguarded, and whatever control I had left thinned to nothing.
“I want you to fuck me,” I told him.
Caleb blinked at me, his mouth dropping open a little. “You want me to what now?”
“Fuck me,” I said, keeping my tone even, clinical.
“Thirty minutes should be sufficient—ten to prep, fifteen active, five to clean up.” I moved slightly, cataloging the data as I spoke.
“My last blood panel is clear—full screen, recent, and I’m on PrEP because Doc suggested it.
I brought lube and condoms, multiple types, in case of preference or failure.
Towels are in the bathroom. Water’s on the nightstand. We can keep it contained.”
Did I say all that right?
I tried to read Caleb’s reaction and realized I didn’t have a framework for it. Is this what nervousness feels like? He stood so fast the chair scraped behind him, and he closed the distance in two steps and jabbed a finger into my chest.
“You can’t say things like that.”
I tracked the contact automatically—the pressure point, the angle of his wrist, the proximity. His tone was hard, but there was something else under it I couldn’t classify.
He poked me again, and I stepped back until my shoulders met the wall.
I craved his touch and I needed him so bad I could barely breathe. Not to mention he was the only man—the only person—who got to touch me like this and walk away from it.
“If there’s a preferred phrasing,” I said, “you can specify.”
Caleb shook his head, and then his hands came up, cradling my face with unexpected care.
He brushed his thumbs along my cheekbones, over my jaw.
He stared at me, searching, and when he spoke, his voice had softened, the edge gone.
“Freak,” he said, quieter now, not an insult, not rejection—something warmer settling low and dangerous in my chest.
I froze. The contact held me in place in a way nothing else could.
My focus narrowed to the drag of his thumbs, and the way he looked at me as if I was something he didn’t understand but wanted anyway.
I could work with that. If that was the only way I could have him—through his hesitation—then I’d take it.
I’d stay in his life and wear him down, the way I had with other outcomes, patient and deliberate.
He’d get used to me being there. He’d learn to rely on it—on me—watching his back.
He glanced at the nearest screen where an upload crawled along and showed seven percent—important, probably—but his attention was back on me almost immediately.
“I have ninety-three percent,” he murmured, tilting his head as he moved closer. “I want to kiss you.”
The words hit harder than they should have. I swallowed, my throat tight. Kissing did something to me—cut my breath, stripped control in a way I didn’t understand and couldn’t predict. “I don’t?—”
He closed the distance and took the first kiss, and my heart kicked hard against my ribs as everything else narrowed to him.
“You taste good,” he murmured, and went in for another kiss, his tongue tangling with mine.
I’d never kissed anyone like this. I couldn’t breathe.
I jerked back. “I just want you to fuck me.”
He considered me for the longest time, his lips wet, his eyes narrowed.
“Kissing, taking my time, not being on a schedule, and rocking your fucking world is non-negotiable.”
This was the part I couldn’t map. He wanted me, but he wanted it softened, shaped into something I didn’t understand. Why complicate it? I could fake it. I knew how. But he’d asked for something real, and I didn’t know if I had that.
“Then show me,” I said quietly. “Because I don’t know how to do it your way.”