CHAPTER 48
Jameson
Tallinn, Estonia
Night Thirty-Three into Day Thirty-Four Off Grid
We didn’t speak for the remainder of the drive to Tallinn.
I found a hotel near the edge of the old city, close enough to disappear into foot traffic if we needed to move, far enough from the main square that no one lingered outside without a reason. Three exits, a service corridor, and cameras placed for appearance more than coverage.
Good enough.
The clerk at the desk didn’t ask much, just the name I gave and a signature I borrowed from a man long dead. Top floor. Two rooms. Not that we needed the other.
But it did offer a secondary escape if necessary.
The first thing we both wanted was a shower. We took it together. No words, no pretense. Just the sound of hot water and five whole minutes of still being alive.
We were both wrecked. But she didn’t hesitate. She stepped in behind me, arms sliding around my waist, her body warm against mine. Her mouth brushed between my shoulder blades.
She pressed a kiss there. Soft, like a promise. No words followed.
“Brynn,” I rasped, already unraveling. “I understand if this is too much. What I do. What I am. I won’t ask you to make peace with it just because I have.”
For a moment, she didn’t answer.
Then she laid her head against my back. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I closed my eyes, but only for a second.
We finished our shower and fell into bed, still damp. Still warm. She curled into me, skin cooling against mine. My arm wrapped around her before I thought about it. Instinct, not strategy. I held her until her breathing evened out. Until exhaustion finally dragged us both under.
***
The sun had barely breached the curtains as I kissed the inside of her thigh, then the other. When my mouth found her, she gasped, already soaked, already shifting against me like her body had been waiting even in sleep.
She moaned, soft and broken. I didn’t stop. Didn’t speak. Just hooked my hands beneath her thighs and kept going until she broke.
She pulled me up, kissed me hard, then pushed me back against the pillows and straddled my hips.
Never breaking eye contact with me, she lifted the shirt she had on over her head and dropped it to the side of the bed.
Her fingers hooked into the waistband of my boxers, tugging them down my thighs with slow, deliberate intent, freeing me. Her gaze dropped for a heated second before returning to my eyes.
With a trembling breath, she leaned forward and pressed herself against me.
She began to move, gliding her silken heat along the rigid length of my shaft in long, languid strokes.
Every slow roll of her hips coated me, teasing as she rocked over me, her breath catching each time her most tender spot brushed against my hardness.
Her thighs quivered on either side of me, her body already preparing to unravel again.
At last, she rose slightly, aligned me with her entrance, and sank down with a deep, needy groan. She took me inside her until I was buried so deep I didn’t know where I ended and she began, her body clenching around me as she found a new rhythm she liked.
Her hands drifted to her breasts, fingers gently pinching her nipples as the most exquisite sounds spilled from her lips, soft, breathy moans that made my fingers dig harder into the curve of her hips. Then I slid my hands up her ribs and replaced hers.
She began to really move then, rolling her hips in a slow, deliberate pattern.
Not rushed, but deep, taking me fully with every descent, her body rising and falling in unhurried waves that let me feel every inch of her warmth enveloping me.
Each time she sank down, a quiet, shuddering breath escaped her as our bodies met completely.
The slow grind of her hips was pure torment and bliss, drawing out every sensation until the pleasure bordered on sacred.
But I needed one thing.
Her eyes.
I reached up, gripping her chin and angling her to me. “Look at me, Brynn.”
Her eyes met mine. Steady. Bright. Burning. She didn’t stop moving, those deep, languid rolls drawing me even deeper inside her with every sway.
The words arrived before I could bury them.
“I don’t want a life that doesn’t have you in it,” I said.
For one suspended second, she just stared at me.
Then she clenched around me. Not conscious. Not planned.
But it made me smirk anyway.
“Oh,” I murmured. “You like hearing that from me.”
She dropped down and kissed me like the words had lit a fuse inside her. Her pace quickened. Breath stuttering. Mouth hot against mine.
And then she broke apart again, hips faltering, moan caught halfway between a sob and a gasp. Her body locked around me.
I took over. Hands tight on her waist. Rocking up into her. Slow, deep thrusts turning harder, sharper. Each one dragging us closer to the edge.
Pleasure tore through me like heat through steel.
After, she stayed where she was for a moment, straddling me, her hands braced weakly against my chest.
Then whatever strength she had left seemed to leave her all at once.
She folded forward and melted against me, her cheek pressed to my shoulder, her body warm and boneless over mine.
We stayed like that, just skin and breath and the brief illusion that nothing outside this room could touch us.
But it would.
Eventually, we moved. We had work to do.
***
By afternoon, she was out scouting clothes, not just for the dinner but because we’d lost ours. I was walking the frozen edge of a narrow street, new burner phones in my coat pocket. The wind sliced between buildings like it was warning me not to linger.
I passed a shuttered café. A tailor’s shop. A bookstore that looked abandoned from the inside out.
Then I saw it.
A jewelry store.
Frost rimmed the glass. Warm light spilled through it. Inside, rows of rings sat on velvet. Clean, quiet, shining beneath the glow. A sapphire in a halo of diamonds caught the light.
I didn’t mean to stop.
But I did.
Just long enough to picture her hand. Free of the lens, the weapon, the coffee cup, all the things she held like armor. Still. Wearing that ring. Maybe holding mine.
My jaw flexed. I looked away. This wasn’t the time for sentiment. I’d been trained to avoid futures that got you killed, and I was still good at it.
But still, my chest tightened at the thought that I could finally see one.
That was the part I couldn’t categorize fast enough.
Most thoughts arrived with edges. Inputs. Risk. Pattern. Outcome. My mind knew where to put things because it always had. Threats went one place. Variables another. People were harder, but even people had patterns if I watched long enough.
Brynn had never sorted cleanly.
She disrupted every model I built around her, then somehow became the only constant inside the noise.
I tapped the glass toward the one that caught my eye. It wasn’t flashy. Not the biggest or the brightest. But it was old. Solid. Built like something that had survived things. Like her.
A round diamond, held in clawed filigree. The band was silver. Aged. The shoulders were strong, the metal swept into quiet curves. It looked like it had a story. Maybe one that matched ours.
An antique. No frills, no fuss. Just defiance.
My mind kept moving without permission.
Her hand around a lens. Her hand on my chest. Her hand curled in mine in the dark. Her hand with that ring on it.
The sequence formed too quickly to stop.
Not fantasy. Recognition.
That made it worse.
I was already stepping away when I murmured it. “After. After we handle this.”
Then the door creaked open beside me.
I went still.
An older man, mid-sixties, clean-shaven, sharp-eyed, stood just inside the threshold. He said something in Estonian. Polite. Probably asking if I wanted to come in.
I should’ve kept walking.
I answered in Russian. “Русский?”
His face shifted into a smile. He switched without missing a beat.
“Да. Пожалуйста. Проходите. Похоже, кое-что привлекло ваше внимание,” he said, inviting me in and telling me it looked like something had caught my eye.
It had.
And despite myself, I walked in.