89. Hendricks
HENDRICKS
There's a protocol after a commission.
There has always been a protocol.
Secure the vehicle. Check the perimeter.
Enter through the east door, disarm the system in under eight seconds, re-engage it behind me.
Weapons to the safe—rifles first, then sidearms, then the blade at my ankle.
Go-bag emptied and restocked. Any evidence of the operation sanitized, cataloged, or destroyed.
Then tend your body.
Adrenaline doesn't dissipate on its own. It has to be managed. A shower helps. Sleep, eventually. And for the better part of a decade, the final step in the sequence was sex—fast, impersonal, reliable. A transaction. I was honest about what it was and so were the women I chose. It worked.
I'm standing in my own kitchen at 0200, systematically dismantling my go-bag and thinking about how little I miss that version of my life.
The difference is upstairs.
I can hear the shower running. I imagine she has the candle lit and she’s using my body wash. Her panties are likely on the floor with the rest of her clothes—though not for long—and she’s probably debriefing her purple poof.
It’s time to make her version of coming down from a mission part of mine.
I head upstairs.
The bathroom door is wide open, and the whole room smells faintly like vanilla. I set my sidearm on the nightstand, strip down to nothing, and grab a condom.
When I enter the bathroom, steam rolls out to meet me. Through the glass, I can see her silhouette—head tipped back, water running over her shoulders. She doesn't startle, which tells me she heard me in the bedroom.
"You coming in or do you need an invitation?" she asks.
Setting the condom on the counter, I step inside and shut the door behind me.
Turning, her eyes track over me quickly, the way they always do—cataloging, assessing—pausing at my erect cock before settling on my face.
It’s her face that needs the attention. The bruise under her eye has deepened. The split lip has clotted. There's a shadow along her left side that makes something in my chest go very still.
I step under the water with her. It's hot—nearly scalding—and I let it hit the back of my neck for a moment, let the last hour start to release.
"You're doing that thing," she says.
I lift my head and gather her in my arms. "What thing?"
"The thing where you're very quiet and very controlled and you look like you're one wrong word away from putting your fist through a wall."
I look at her. Water runs down her collarbone, tracing the line of her shoulder. I reach out and push her wet hair back from her face gently, careful of the bruise. "I heard him hit you.”
She doesn't flinch. Her eyes hold mine, and something in them shifts—not breaking, just opening. "I needed him to stay in the room, and I needed to buy time. I could have ended it sooner."
"I know."
She lifts her chin. "It was the right call."
I nod. "I know that too."
She studies me. "Then why do you look like you want to hit something?"
"Because I knew exactly why you were doing it," I say, "and I still wanted to tear that building apart with my hands."
The silence that follows isn't the defensive kind—not the armor-and-redirect quiet I spent this past week learning to read. This is something softer. She lets it sit.
Then her mouth curves—not quite a smile, but close. Something real underneath it. "I'm not going to break, Hendricks."
"I know you're not." My hands find her face. Careful of the bruise, careful of the split lip, I tilt her head back slightly so she has to look at me. "Where else?"
She shakes her head. "Hendricks—"
"Where else?" I say again.
Sighing, she takes my hand and guides it to her left side, just below the ribs. I press lightly, feeling for give. She exhales but doesn't pull away.
"Sore," she confirms. "Not broken. I know the difference."
“I believe you.” I lower my hand. "I'm checking anyway."
"You're bossy."
"You've known that since day one."
"I find it annoying."
"No, you don't."
Her mouth twitches. "No," she admits, "I don't."
I press my lips to her forehead—the only part of her face that isn't compromised—and stay there for a moment. She goes still under my hands, neither leaning in nor pulling away, just breathing.
Then her hands come up and find my waist. "Hendricks."
"Yeah."
"Stop being careful with me and start being useful."
I pull back enough to see her face. The dark eyes, the split lip, the bruise, the particular expression that means she has decided and she’s not interested in negotiation.
"Your ribs—"
"Are sore, not broken." Her fingers press into my sides. "I survived three rounds with Ashford's hired hand. I think I can survive you." She pauses in thought. "Probably."
I move my thumb over her jaw. "Probably."
She rolls her eyes. "Don't let it go to your head."
I kiss her, soft and careful, and feel her make a small, impatient sound against my mouth that tells me soft and careful is not what she’s looking for.
So I adjust.
I walk her back until she's against the tile, careful of her ribs. She sucks in a breath at the cold tile against her skin. I drop to my knees, hands sliding down her sides, tracking every place she tenses so I know what to avoid.
"Oh," she says, looking down at me.
"Problem?"
"Absolutely not." Her fingers thread in my hair. "Carry on."
I press my mouth to her hip, then lower, following the water. She makes a sound that is nothing like her tactical voice—lower, rougher—and her fingers tighten.
I take my time.
I've been managing the last several hours with her comm going dark and her pin on the floor and forty minutes of battery life between us and disaster. This is going to be the direct opposite of that. Slow. Deliberate.
My tongue traces the inside of her thigh, careful around the bruise, then finds her clit.
I lick her, drawing her into my mouth until she gasps—a sharp, involuntary sound.
Her hips roll forward. I work her slowly, tasting salt and water and her, my fingers pressing into the soft inside of her thigh as I suck gently, then harder, reading her body's response and adjusting.
She trembles, her grip in my hair bordering on painful. "Adrian, if you stop right now, I will never forgive you."
I don't stop. I’ll never stop.
She comes with her heel braced against the tile and her fist in my hair and my name somewhere in her exhale—short, wild, real. I hold her through it, both hands steady on her hips, and when she finally goes loose, I slowly stand.
She’s looking at me with an expression I have no vocabulary for. Something that has nothing to do with tactics.
"Turn around," I say.
The unhurt corner of her mouth quirks. "Yes, sir."
I lightly spank her ass. "Don't push it."
But she's already turning, hands braced on the tile, head turned to see me. I press in close behind her. My hand finds her side again—checking, quiet—and she covers it with hers.
"Still okay," she says. Low. Sure.
I kiss her neck. "Tell me if that changes."
"You'll know."
Getting the condom, I roll it on and slide into her slowly, one hand flat against the tile beside hers, the other curled around her hip. She exhales, long and controlled, and then tips her head back against my shoulder.
I survey her. "Okay?"
"More than."
I keep it slow. Intentionally, almost painfully slow. I want her to feel all of it. I want to feel all of it. The reunion of it. She brought herself back to me and I want her to know that I noticed.
My hand slides up from her hip, over the uninjured side of her ribs, and higher. I wrap my hand around her throat. Light. Firm. She turns her head to the side and I feel her pulse against my palm, steady and fast.
"Still with me?" I ask, kissing her ear.
"Obviously," she says. But she turns her palm over on the tile and covers my hand with hers, pressing it in. Permission. Direction.
I keep the pace. Deep, slow, the kind that builds rather than rushes—and I feel the moment she stops managing it and just lets it happen, her breath turning ragged, her body moving with mine rather than ahead of it.
"Hendricks."
"Yeah."
"Don't you dare be smug about this later."
I bite her shoulder. "Wouldn't dream of it."
She laughs, short and breathless, and then it dissolves into something else entirely. I feel her tighten around me, feel the way she presses back into me, and I drop my mouth to the curve of her neck and hold on.
She comes apart quietly, teeth pressed together, breath escaping in a controlled rush, fingers white against the tile. I follow her over in the next moment, my face buried in her neck, one hand spread flat against the wall.
Neither of us moves.
Her hand is still over mine, still pressing it against her throat. After a moment she loosens her grip, and I ease back, both of us catching our breath in the steam.
She turns around and drapes herself on me. I hold her to me, inhaling her.
Then she says, "The poof watched us have sex. The perv. We’re going to have a conversation about boundaries.”
I know the quirk must have originated in captivity, when she had no one to talk to, but it’s a part of her that I hope never changes. Somehow, she came out of hell with pieces of herself they never managed to touch.
I smile against her skin. “I’m not the one who brought him into the shower.”
“Victim perpetrator language.” She pinches my ass. “Nice.”
I laugh.
She looks up at me, and something in her expression changes. “We’re okay,” she says softly.
It’s a question.
I brush her wet hair away from her bruised face. “We are.”
Her arms tighten around me.
And standing there with hot water running over us, her battered body pressed against mine, and a purple poof judging us from the corner, I realize something.
This is the part I never had before.
Not the sex.
The after.
Lifting her chin, I kiss her lips. “Let’s go to bed."