I didn’t remember any of it, but the knowledge of what I did sat like poison in my veins. Men like me didn’t get happy endings. We didn’t deserve them.
I turned away from the bed. From Maeve. From the possibility of something I had no right to claim.
For her to live, for her to find her brother and build something resembling a normal life, she needed to be far from me and the violence that followed in my wake. When this ended—when Brock and the Director and everyone who built Oblivion lay dead—I’d disappear for good. But first, I needed to ensure her safety.
My thumb hovered over Specter’s contact. The one person who might understand what I was about to do. He had broken his own conditioning, after all. Found some way to live with the fragments of who he was.
I pressed call, keeping my voice to a controlled murmur when he answered.
“I need your help.”
Chapter 21
Maeve
I woke slowly, stretching in the warm cocoon of tangled sheets, my body deliciously sore in all the right places. Light filtered through the half-closed blinds, casting a drab, gray pallor that announced rain, but I didn’t care. Everything ached in that perfect way that spoke of passion and abandon. My muscles felt both liquid and bruised, a physical reminder of last night that made me smile into the pillow.
His scent was everywhere—on the sheets, on my skin, in my hair. I reached across to his side of the bed without opening my eyes, wanting to feel his warmth, maybe trace my fingers across the scars I’d kissed last night.
My hand met cold sheets.
My eyes snapped open. The emptiness beside me felt wrong, jarring me fully awake. The indent of his head remained on the pillow, but he was gone.
Last night flooded back in vivid detail. The argument when he discovered who he was. The way his eyes had gone cold, distant, trying to push me away with cruel words about his past. “I’m not someone you want to know, Maeve.”
And then how I’d crossed the room, taken his face between my hands and shut his nonsense with a kiss.
What followed wasn’t gentle. It was desperate and rough, another type of argument. But what stayed with me most wasn’t the way he’d taken me against the wall before we even made it to bed. It was the moment when his eyes met mine, all his guards down, something raw and unguarded breaking through. Everything in me opened up, or more accurately, shattered.
I’d fallen asleep with words prepared, rehearsed in my head as his breathing had steadied beside me. Simple words. Dangerous words.I care about you. Whatever you were before doesn’t matter. I want this—us—whatever it is.
But now his scent on my skin felt like a taunt rather than a comfort.
A low voice drifted from somewhere in the apartment. His voice. Relief washed through me—he hadn’t left completely. Maybe he was just making coffee or—
“—need extraction coordinates now.” His tone was flat, professional. Clinical. Nothing like the man who’d whispered my name against my throat hours ago.
“Location secure,” he continued, voice dropping lower. “She’s still asleep.”
Ice slid down my spine. She must be me. And that voice—it was the voice of Reaper, not Ronan—the assassin, not the man.
I slid from the bed, my body suddenly feeling exposed in a way that had nothing to do with nudity. I found my clothesscattered across the floor, evidence of our frenzy. Each item I put on felt like armor I was building against what was coming.
My hands trembled slightly as I pulled on my jeans. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he was arranging something to keep us both safe.
But I knew better. The resignation in his voice told me everything. He’d made a decision, and it didn’t include me.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Somewhere in this safehouse was a man I’d come to care for, possibly even—no, I wouldn’t finish that thought.
The scene that greeted me stopped me cold. Specter sat at the table, hunched over my closed laptop with the hard drives piled beside it, fingers drumming irritably against its surface. Reaper stood with his back to me, methodically assembling a matte black handgun. Three more weapons lay disassembled nearby, the tableau unmistakably tactical. Gone was any trace of domesticity; this was a war room.
Specter noticed me first, straightening slightly. “Nothing beyond Prima files,” he muttered to Reaper. “Not a goddamn thing about Secunda generation.”
Reaper turned, his eyes meeting mine. Nothing in his gaze hinted at the man who’d held me last night, who’d whispered against my skin as if I were something precious. This was Reaper looking at me—evaluating, calculating.
“You’re up.” Two words, delivered without inflection.
I attempted a casual tone, though my heart thundered against my ribs. “What’s going on?”
