Chapter 16 Shelby
Shelby
My body is still humming with the aftermath of what just happened between us, that raw vulnerability wrapped in pleasure and words I didn’t know I had in me.
I don’t want to get up, but we have to. Otherwise, we risk falling asleep out here on the terrace and giving the staff a scare when they find us naked in the morning.
As we step back into the living room, Serena spots the t-shirt I left draped on an armchair before I started working out.
She grabs it. “May I?”
“Of course.”
She pulls it over her head, and it hits mid-thigh, and my cock stirs back to life. The sight of her in my clothes does something to my chest. It warms me all over. And all I want to do now is take the damn t-shirt off her perfect body and fuck her again and again.
The golden logo of Muse of Darkness shimmers on her chest as she moves. We pass by a mirror on the wall, and she glances at the reflection, noticing the effect. “I like this logo,” she grins at me.
I smile back. “Me too.”
“This is Nick’s band, right?”
I nod, winking. “The black sheep of the family, aka the rockstar.” We laugh. “He gave it to me the last time they played in Boston.”
As we continue down the hall toward our bedroom, Serena’s hand is warm in mine, her skin still flushed, her breathing still uneven. I don’t want to let her go. Not even to sleep.
The master bedroom is done in different shades of white and gray, all modern lines and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city and the harbor.
The massive California king-size bed dominates the space.
The soft gray Egyptian cotton sheets shine under the amber lights.
Serena tugs me toward it, and I don’t resist. I never would.
“Come on,” she murmurs, crawling into the center of the mattress and pulling back the duvet. “We need to get some sleep.”
She’s right. It’s past midnight. My body is exhausted in that delicious, bone-deep way that comes from good sex. But I’m not ready to stop looking at her.
I slide in beside her. She immediately turns toward me, her head finding the hollow of my shoulder, her arm draping across my chest. Her fingers trace lazy circles over my ribs, and I pull her closer, breathing in the vanilla and sex and something uniquely Serena that’s become my favorite scent.
“Shelby,” she whispers into the darkness.
“Yeah, álainn?”
“Don’t run.”
I press a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s a promise I mean with everything I have. For the first time in weeks, I believe I might be able to keep it.
She falls asleep like that, curled into me, her breathing evening out within minutes.
I stay awake a while longer, listening to her heartbeat sync with mine, feeling the weight of her against my side.
This. This is what people kill for. What they die for.
What they’re willing to lose their own life over while protecting.
To my surprise, the realization doesn’t terrify me.
Instead, it feels like coming home.
I’m finally where I was always meant to be.
And I intend to stay here forever. No matter what.
The warehouse smells like rust and desperation, making my skin crawl.
I’m in Moscow. Not the penthouse. Not in bed with Serena. I’m back in that godforsaken warehouse where things went deadly wrong, and my body knows it even as my mind fights the dream logic.
Nikolai is beside me, his Bratva operatives spreading out with mechanical precision. I can hear the echo of my own heartbeat in my ears, like it’s trying to hammer its way out of my chest.
Move, Nikolai’s voice sounds beside me and crackles through comms at the same time.
Weird dream reality.
But I can’t move. Won’t. Something in my gut is screaming wrong, wrong, WRONG, and I’m frozen in place, watching the breach team approach the door.
Then I see her.
A girl, maybe seven years old, stumbling out of the darkness toward the light. Her dress is torn. Her feet are bare. Her eyes are wide with terror and hope, looking right at me like I’m salvation itself.
Go, little one, I try to say, but my voice won’t work.
The gunfire comes next, a staccato rhythm that’s etched itself into my muscle memory. The girl’s eyes go wide. She opens her mouth, she screams for help, and I lunge forward to grab her, to pull her to safety, but someone is holding me back.
“Shelby, let her go!”
No. No, I won’t leave her.
But my legs won’t obey. My arms won’t move. I’m trapped in this moment like amber, watching her body jerk as the bullets find their mark. Watching her crumple to the dust like a paper doll.
Abeera, I want to say, but that’s not right. Abeera was older. Abeera was—
Another shot. A second child goes down. The boy manages to slip past, disappears into the tree line, and that’s the only mercy we’re getting tonight.
“Shelby! Shelby!” Nikolai’s screaming.
Wait! No, it’s not Nikolai’s voice. It’s softer. It’s a woman’s voice, and she’s terrified. I find her. It’s Serena, under a pile of rubble, and she’s covered in blood.
Something inside me fractures. I’m too late. She counted on me, and I couldn’t save her.
Heaving, I wake up, my whole body is drenched in sweat. For a moment, I don’t know where I am. The darkness is suffocating. My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard I think it might break through bone, tissue, and skin.
I look down and realize I’m on top of Serena.
At some point in my nightmare, I must have rolled over her, my body acting on instinct. I was protecting, defending, or covering. Now, she’s trapped beneath me, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes wide and frightened and too awake.
I immediately roll off her with a low curse. My breathing is coming in harsh gasps. Sweat is cooling on my skin. Adrenaline and fear are apparently effective stimuli for arousal because my cock is semi-hard from the trauma response.
“Shelby.”
Her voice cuts through the static in my head.
“I’m—” I start, but I can’t finish the sentence because I don’t know what I am. Losing it?
Fractured?
Breaking?
I’m probably all of the above rolled into one.
“Don’t.” She sits up, and I watch her in the moonlight filtering through the windows. Her hair is tousled from sleep, her face still soft with it, but her eyes are sharp and aware. “Don’t apologize. Don’t minimize it... Stay here in the moment with me.”
I could run. I could go to the gym, punch the sandbag until my hands bleed. I could drive to the office and bury myself in work, in strategy, in anything that doesn’t involve sitting with my feelings, my regrets.
But Serena is giving me patience, offering understanding. She’s throwing me a rope into deep water when I’m drowning. I do the only thing I can do under these circumstances. I take the rope; I accept what she’s offering me.
I sit up slowly, my back against the headboard. My muscles are trembling. The aftershock of adrenaline still courses through my system, making everything hyper-aware and terrifyingly fragile.
Serena doesn’t touch me. She sits beside me, her presence steady and solid and real in a way that the nightmare wasn’t.
“Syria,” I say, because she deserves more than silence. Because keeping it locked inside is exactly what’s been killing me for years.
She nods as she understands. She doesn’t ask questions. She just waits.
“It was 2014,” I continue, my voice rough, “My team was responsible for extracting an informant and his family. The intel was supposed to be solid.” I drag a hand over my face, trying to wipe away the images that won’t fade.
“In fact, the information was compromised. We got there...” My voice breaks, and I can’t finish the sentence.
My jaw tightens as the memory crashes over me like the fucking building coming down on that family.
I still smell the acrid stench of burning concrete, the copper of blood, and the nauseating sweet-sour smell of immediate death.
I can hear the screams. I see the moment again when everything went sideways.
Serena squeezes my arm, and I lock eyes with her, taking deep breaths to slow down my heart rate.
Swallowing hard, I repeat, “Intel was actually compromised. My best soldier was supposed to sweep for IEDs. He didn’t because we were on a tight schedule.
The fucking thing exploded, and the whole building collapsed during extraction.
” I pause, my hands clenching into fists.
“Then I saw Abeera, the informant’s wife.
She was such a generous woman. Her cookies were the best, and she always had them at the ready for my team and me.
Now, she was reaching for me,” I whisper.
“Her small hand, covered in dust, appeared from under the rubble. I tried to pull her free, but the weight was too much, and the structure was unstable. My team was screaming at me to fall back because secondary explosions were imminent.”
Serena shifts slightly but doesn’t interrupt.
“I was supposed to grab her. Get Abeera and run. That’s the whole goddamn purpose of an extraction team.
We go in, we get the hostages, we get them out alive.
” I close my eyes, but the images are seared on the inside of my eyelids, etched into my soul.
“Instead, I let go of Abeera’s hand.” The confession tears through me like that fucking bullet in Russia.
Except that my actions in Syria created a wound that never heals.
“I fell back. And three seconds later, the secondary explosion buried what was left of her.”
The weight of those three seconds has been crushing me for years.
“In Russia, bullets found a little girl before my hands could.” My voice is barely a whisper now. “And then there was a boy, maybe ten. Same outcome. Different trajectory. Same ending—they didn’t make it.”
Serena’s hand finds mine in the darkness. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t offer hollow platitudes or false comfort. She holds on.