Chapter 7 Cover Story #3
Heat pools low in my belly, and I’m kissing him back with an intensity I didn’t know I possessed. Years of control, of walls, of careful distance—and all it takes is one man’s mouth on mine to make me forget every rule I’ve ever made for myself.
Somewhere, distantly, Pastor Dave clears his throat.
Torque breaks the kiss slowly. Deliberately. His thumb traces my cheekbone once—gentle, almost wondering—before his hands drop and he steps back.
I can’t speak. My lips are swollen. My heart is slamming against my ribs. My hair is disheveled from his fingers, and I don’t care.
“Now that,” Pastor Dave says weakly, “is what I call a kiss.”
The photographer is still snapping pictures. The witnesses are exchanging knowing looks. And I’m standing at an altar in a Vegas chapel, wearing a white dress a stranger picked out for me, trying to remember how to breathe.
Torque offers his arm like nothing happened. Like he didn’t just turn my nervous system inside out.
“Shall we? County clerk awaits, Mrs. Durant.”
The name lands differently now. Heavier. Real.
I take his arm because my legs aren’t entirely steady, and let him lead me out of the chapel, into the Vegas afternoon, toward the paperwork that will make this performance legally binding.
My mouth still tastes like him.
I’m still shaking.
The county clerk’s office is aggressively mundane after the chapel’s rhinestone excess. Fluorescent lights. Government-issue furniture. A bored employee who processes our certificate with the enthusiasm of someone stamping parking validations.
“Sign here.” She points. “And here. And initial here.”
I sign. Sarah Vance. The last time I’ll use that name on a legal document until the annulment.
He signs. Levi Durant.
“Congratulations.” The clerk stamps the certificate and slides it across the counter. “You’re officially married in the State of Nevada.”
Married.
I’m married.
To a man who kissed me like he meant it and then whispered, “For the cameras,” like it was nothing.
Outside, the Vegas heat wraps around us. Torque tucks the certificate into his jacket and turns to face me.
“So.” The keys are spinning again. The mask is back in place. “We’ve got the rest of the day to sell this cover. What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean …” He gestures at the Strip stretching before us. “We can go back to the room. Let Phoenix think we’re doing what newlyweds do on their wedding night.”
The implication hangs between us.
“Or,” he continues, “we can hit the casino. Have dinner. Catch a show. Give Phoenix a whole evening of footage showing how in love we are.” His grin sharpens. “Your call, Mrs. Durant.”
Back to the room means privacy. Safety. Time to process what just happened in that chapel.
But back to the room also means one bed, close quarters, and the memory of that kiss with nowhere to go.
“Casino,” the words slip out. “We should build the cover.”
Something flickers in his expression. Approval? Disappointment? I can’t tell.
“Casino it is.”
The Wynn’s casino floor is a symphony of sound and color. Slot machines chime. Cards whisper across felt. Somewhere, someone just won something, and the excitement ripples outward like a stone dropped in water.
His hand finds the small of my back—warm, proprietary—as we navigate through the crowds. The dress I’m still wearing draws looks. So does he.
“You gamble?” He guides us toward the blackjack tables.
“Not usually.”
“Tonight you do.” He pulls out a chair for me, settles into the one beside it. “High-stakes romance requires high-stakes entertainment. Besides—” He flags down a cocktail waitress. “—watching you calculate odds should be entertaining.”
The dealer distributes cards. Torque plays loosely, instinctively, the same way he flies. I find myself doing exactly what he predicted—calculating odds, counting cards, treating blackjack like an intelligence problem.
“You’re cheating,” he murmurs after my third consecutive win.
“I’m applying mathematics.”
“Same thing in Vegas.” But he’s grinning, and his hand finds my knee under the table. Squeezes once before letting go.
The chips pile up. An hour passes, maybe more. The cocktail waitress brings drinks neither of us really touches. His hand keeps finding excuses to touch me—my shoulder, my waist, my hand as he adjusts my cards. Each contact sends echoes of the chapel kiss through my nervous system.
The dealer changes. A crowd gathers around our table, drawn by the growing stack of chips in front of me.
“Feeling lucky?” The new dealer is a woman with silver hair and kind eyes. “You’ve got quite the streak going.”
“She’s always lucky.” Torque’s arm slides around my shoulders. “That’s why I married her.”
The words land differently now that they’re true.
I push a stack of chips forward. “Hit me.”
The card falls. Eight of clubs. Combined with my thirteen—twenty-one.
The crowd cheers. The dealer pushes another pile of chips toward me. And Torque …
Torque turns my face toward his and kisses me.
Not like the chapel. Not for the cameras. Quick, impulsive, the kind of kiss a husband gives his wife when she does something that delights him.
But then the kiss changes.
His hand slides into my hair again—looser this time, like he’s getting familiar with it. His mouth moves against mine, and I taste champagne from hours ago and something darker underneath. Want. The kind I’ve been ignoring since his lips first touched mine.
I kiss him back. Can’t help it. Don’t want to help it.
When we break apart, the crowd is wolf-whistling. The dealer is politely pretending not to watch. And my lips are tingling.
“Nice win,” he murmurs. His voice is rough.
“Thanks.” My voice isn’t much better.
“We should probably cash out.” His thumb traces my jawline. “Unless you want to keep going.”
The question feels like it’s about more than blackjack.
“Cash out,” I manage. “We should—plan. For tomorrow.”
“Right.” He helps me gather the chips, and his hand doesn’t leave my back as we make our way to the cashier. “Tomorrow. Costa. The mission.”
The mission. I’d almost forgotten.
The suite is different now. Same obscene luxury, same floor-to-ceiling windows, same enormous bed—but we’re not engaged strangers anymore. We’re married strangers who’ve spent the past twelve hours touching, kissing, and blurring every line I thought I’d maintain.
My hair is still down. The dress clings to curves I’ve spent years hiding. And my mouth still feels branded by his.
“I’ll take the sofa.” The words are automatic. A claim of territory. Control. Something to claw back after everything I’ve surrendered today.
“That thing?” He gestures at the cream-colored furniture near the window. “That’s not a sofa. That’s a decorative suggestion. You’ll destroy your back.”
“My back. My problem.”
“Your back, our operation.” He shrugs off his jacket and tosses it over a chair. “You’re useless to me, sleep-deprived and aching. Take the bed.”
“I’m taking the sofa.”
Silence. He studies me—reading me the way I read intelligence reports.
“Fine.” Something that might be amusement flickers across his face. “Suit yourself, Mrs. Durant.”
I move to the desk and spread out my materials. Conference schedules. Floor plans. Costa’s itinerary. The familiar rhythm of analysis and planning settles my pulse and gives me something to focus on that isn’t the man now sprawled across the bed or the wedding ring on my finger.
“Gala’s tomorrow night,” I say, forcing my mind back to the mission. “Black tie. Costa will be there.”
“And you can just walk in?”
“I’m the director of the NRO.” I mark approach vectors on the floor plan. “I can walk in anywhere I want.”
“Even after going dark for three days and getting married in Vegas?”
“Especially after.” I tap the map. “My sudden reappearance will be the gossip of the evening. Everyone will want to know where I’ve been. I’ll tell them I eloped—which I did—and Ray will hear the rumor before I even find him.”
“Softening him up.”
“Making him curious.” I mark Costa’s likely positions throughout the evening. “When I approach, he’ll want to hear the story.”
“And if he won’t play ball?”
“Then I’ll convince him.”
“You keep saying that.” He’s sitting up now, watching me work. “But you still haven’t told me how.”
“Six years of trust.” I set down my pen. “That’s what I have. Ray and I have worked together since I was deputy director. He knows who I am.”
“Does he know who you married?”
The question is sharper than I expect. I look up from the floor plans.
Torque is watching me with an expression stripped of mockery. “Because right now, you’re not Director Vance. You’re Mrs. Durant. Wife of some nobody pilot who swept you off your feet. When you walk into that gala, that’s who Costa will see first.”
“The cover supports the approach.”
“The cover changes everything.” He stands and moves toward the desk. Toward me. “Including how people look at you. Including how much they trust your judgment.”
He’s not wrong. The realization settles like ice in my stomach.
“You’re good at this,” he says, and his voice has gone quiet. “The planning. The angles. But tomorrow night isn’t going to go according to plan. It never does.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He’s close now. Too close. “Because when it goes sideways—and it will—I need to know you’re going to trust me. Like we agreed.”
The deal. Made in Seattle. Tested in the chapel. About to be tested again.
“I trust you,” I say. The words are harder than they should be.
Something shifts in his expression. His hand rises, hovers near my face—then drops.
“Get some sleep, Director.” He steps back, giving me space I didn’t ask for but desperately need. “Big day tomorrow.”
He moves toward the bed. I move toward the terrible sofa.
“Offer stands,” he says without looking at me. “Bed’s big enough for a ceasefire.”
“The sofa is fine.”
“Liar.”
I almost smile. Almost. I catch it before it fully forms.
But not fast enough.
“There it is.” Quiet triumph. “Knew you had one in there somewhere.”
“There’s nothing.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
I turn away from him. Arrange myself on the decorative suggestion of a sofa. Close my eyes against the neon bleeding through the curtains.
The wedding ring presses against my finger. His taste ghosts across my lips. The obedience vow echoes in my memory alongside his whispered “in private.”
Tomorrow I’ll find Ray. Tomorrow I’ll ask him to trust me over everything he believes in.
Tonight I lie awake in a hotel room with my husband—husband—and catalog every moment my control has slipped since I walked into Cerberus headquarters.
The hangar. The flight. The dress. The hair. The chapel.
The kiss.
Especially the kiss.
For the cameras, he said. Cameras that were watching when he kissed me at the blackjack table, but couldn’t see the way his fingers threaded through my hair or the way his thumb traced my jaw.
The performance is bleeding into something real.
And I don’t know how to stop it.
I’m not sure I want to.