Page 22 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

Every brush of her fingers sends heat through my body. The memory of the alleyway—her climbing my frame, the taste of her desperate kiss—slams back, unspooling the disciplined coils of my control.

She finishes cleaning the wound and reaches for the surgical glue in the kit. She seals the laceration, holding the edges together with steady pressure.

"Done." She steps back, breaking the contact, her cheeks flushed.

The absence of her touch leaves a cold spot I don't examine.

"I need to make a call." My voice is rough.

I turn away, retrieve the encrypted burner phone from the hidden compartment in my rig, and walk back into the main room, pacing in front of the circular bed.

I dial the emergency secure sequence.

The line connects.

"Echo is compromised." I skip the identification protocols.

"Status." Hutch's voice crackles over the line, the silence of the command center echoing behind it.

"Compromised," I repeat. "Consortium hitters were waiting at the coordinates. Task Force 9 has a leak. The operation is blown."

A string of curses erupts from Hutch. A fist slams a metal desk somewhere in Virginia.

"Are you secure?" The fury is gone, replaced by cold pragmatism.

"Negative. We're off the grid. The package is safe, but we're isolated."

"I have a mole in my house." Hutch's voice drops to a deadly whisper. "I need time to root them out. If they have Echo, they have every fallback location on the grid. Don't approach any secure sites. Don't trust any communication outside this burner frequency."

"Copy that, going dark." The decision is final.

"Keep the package alive. I'll establish a blind drop for extraction protocols in forty-eight hours."

The line goes dead.

I drop the burner onto the bedside table. We're alone, hunted by the Consortium, and the agency tasked with protecting us is compromised.

I turn to look at her.

She's lying on top of the black satin sheets of the circular bed. Exhaustion has claimed her. She's curled into a tight ball, her chest rising and falling in deep sleep. The red light casts shifting shadows across her face.

The iron cage surrounding the bed. The black satin. The velvet and the mirrored ceiling. This room is a dark, possessive fantasy made physical, and it caters to the hunger I've spent my adult life suppressing under layers of military discipline.

And she's lying in the center of it.

She's a ballerina. White tulle and ethereal grace. Yet here she is in a gothic dungeon, her hands stained with blood from treating my wounds, hours after climbing my body in an alleyway with the heat of a feral cat.

My training dictates that she's an extraction package. A civilian asset. My sole objective is to protect her, to keep her breathing, to maintain a sterile distance.

But my body is screaming at me to possess her. The blood roaring in my ears demands I cross the room, lock the iron gate, and claim the woman who shattered my control with a single kiss.

I tear my gaze from the bed.

The velvet chair waits in the dark corner. I force myself into it, pick up the scavenged handgun, and run the drill—magazine out, action checked, magazine seated. Cold steel. Familiar weight. The closest thing to prayer I have left.

None of it holds. Four walls designed for surrender, and in the center of them, a sleeping woman who is dismantling my every defense.

My sniper's distance is gone.