Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters and giving them some guns (again).

Unbeta'd, unedited.

It's somewhere past one when Masen's pace finally slows.

Slick with a fine sheen of sweat, his chest slides across my back as he leans over me. Bracing himself with one hand against the headboard, he sweeps damp strands of my hair out of the way with the other and drags his lips along the top of my shoulder to my ear. Low and strained, just above a whisper, he asks, "Good?"

A quiet, unintelligible moan spills out of me before I can stop it.

Masen's arm circles my waist, holding me flush against the hard planes of his chest and abdomen. But he doesn't speed up like I anticipate. No, he just keeps moving with that same mind-bending languidness and depth. Despite the warmth from the dying fire and the furnace-like heat from the man surrounding me, gooseflesh ripples across my skin. "Tell me," he murmurs. "Does that feel good to you?"

Shoulders shaking, I laugh because he damned well knows it does. He's fucking amazing in bed, not to mention he's already gotten me off with his fingers and tongue once tonight.

Masen asks me one last time, but I still don't answer him. Instead, I respond by threading my fingers through the messy hair at his nape and angling my head to capture his lips. Unlike the forceful, almost desperate kiss when he snuck into my room just before midnight, this one is deep, wet, and sensual, and our mouths move together like they belong that way, joining and parting in time to the slow, rhythmic cadence of his thrusts.

He falters when I arch my back and roll my hips. Humid air punches across my skin as his eyes screw shut, and when I rock into him again, a masculine groan sounds against my lips.

"I don't know," I finally manage. I'm pretty much panting, but honestly, I can't find it in me to care about that, or anything else for that matter, not when we're together like this, and he's absolutely ruining my body for anyone else. "I think I'm going to need a longer demonstration."

He laughs but then turns serious as death itself.

"I'd fuck you like this all night if I could," he says, cursing, and he hits a spot inside me that makes my knees go weak. His forehead tips against my shoulder blade. "Christ, there's nothing better than this."

I don't have to tell him he's right.

Because he is… He is so, so right.

Warmth flares and shimmers in my abdomen, and now I'm the one groaning, even as I grind against him. "Right there… Right fucking there."

"Here?" Masen grins like the proverbial cat. It's a startlingly attractive look on him, too, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees from the ice-cold, bored façade he wears most of the time, and it makes my heart thump and catch at the base of my throat.

I think I nod.

But at this point, I have no fucking idea.

That grin of his stretches wider, but he gives me what I want. Cinching his arm even tighter, Masen pushes into me over and over and over until, I swear, my eyes roll back, and a nonsensical stream of consciousness and wordless pleas pours out of my mouth. Just when I'm on the verge of begging – or maybe threatening – his palm skates across my stomach so he can touch me between my thighs, too. I'm so close that it only takes seconds, and my whole body shudders as I orgasm harder than I have in years.

"Fuck, I love feeling you come," he mutters. The instant I go boneless, Masen's lips trail down the column of my spine, peppering my back with open-mouth kisses as he straightens. He lets me go just long enough to skim his hands down my ribs to the flares of my hips. Strong, sure fingers bracket my waist, and his thumbs dig into my ass.

With one last languid stroke, his thrusts pick up in time, and I can't help myself. My elbows drop to the mattress, and I glance over my shoulder, watching his eyes, bright, burning, and alive, as they travel a repeating circuit from my face to where we're joined and then back up again.

Okay, now it's my turn to smirk because he is such a guy.

It's not like I can blame him.

Between all those carved-out lines and pretty valleys, he might as well be a work of art.

When he catches me watching him, his biceps flex and strain, and his grip tightens. And then he fucking lets go. Setting a hard, relentless pace, Masen drives into me, leaving me damned near delirious and clutching the sheets to keep from sliding across the mattress.

I don't know how long we go like that, but his movements eventually start to turn jerky. He slows just enough to bite out a shaky, "Where do you want me to–"

While I appreciate the courtesy, I think we're past that by now.

When I cut him off and tell him so, Masen tenses, nods with something akin to relief, and curses again. His fingers spasm, holding me down on his cock as he thrusts a half dozen more times before finally stilling.

We collapse in unison a beat later, hot, sweaty, and exhausted, and for a long moment, neither of us moves. No, we just lie there, sprawled out side-by-side in surprisingly easy, companionable silence. Staring up at the trayed ceiling high above, I follow the curving lines of the subtle pattern in the plaster and listen to the sounds of our breathing over the steady drone of the ticking clock.

"So… you were right," I finally say, and as I clasp my hands over my chest, I can feel my heart hammering against my sternum.

Masen's face tilts toward me. While his expression remains carefully neutral, something dark moves in his eyes, and when he speaks, he's so very quiet – too quiet. "Do I want to know?"

I glance back up to the ceiling, sighing. "He's in love with me." My lips mash together. "Or… at least he thinks he is."

A bitter chuckle spills out. "Yeah, no shit."

When Masen doesn't ask me the obvious question, I close my eyes and suck in a slow, steady breath that stretches my chest. "It was close this evening in his office. I managed to plant Whitlock's device, but I was minutes, maybe seconds away from either taking him out right there or having to let him…"

"Fuck."

Tell me about it.

I look at him then, staring at the hard, angled brace of his jaw as he stares back at me with unnerving intensity. "He said he wanted it right there on his desk. Wanted to… fuck away the fury," I say, shaking my head as I replay those few minutes over and over. "But then he stopped himself. Said he was too angry, that he didn't want to hurt me... I didn't expect that."

Masen frowns. "Aro doesn't usually have that kind of self-control." Grabbing another pillow from the pile on the floor, he props his head up. "Doesn't have to." That neutral expression is now long gone, replaced by some blend of rage and impotent fear that bleeds into his voice when he continues. "But that's not what you're asking. You want to know what you should have done if he hadn't stopped."

I nod.

At first, he doesn't answer, and a vicious, angry war plays across his features. Masen scrubs his face with one hand, scratching at the day-old stubble on his chin. "I don't know," he says after a second, and I watch his gaze flit around the room before settling on the Chagall hanging on the wall. "The job says you do whatever it takes. The ends justify the means and all that bullshit. But… fuck."

When I start to respond, his brows slam down, and he makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. "Look, you're the one at risk until we're done here, so it's your call to make. And just so we're clear, if shit hits the fan like that again and you decide you have to… let him." He spits that out. "It won't change a fucking thing between you and me." Masen looks at me, and the level of violence staring back surprises even me. "But I'll be honest with you, I don't know if I'll be able to stop myself from killing him as soon as I find out, job be damned."

I don't reply to that.

I don't even know how to, and once again, I'm floored by the transparency – that this man lets me see this side of him. I like it, maybe too much, and despite the topic and where we are, my stomach flutters, and my lips curve ever so slightly.

We're quiet for a little while longer, but after a few minutes, Masen peeks over. Whatever he sees in my face makes him huff, and then he reluctantly drags one of the cloud-like blankets from the bottom of the bed to cover us. When he starts to roll to his side to face me, he winces, reminding me that despite our earlier gymnastics, he still has a couple of cracked – or at least severely bruised – ribs.

So, I roll into him instead and do what I've wanted for days. I run my fingertips through sparse bronze hair, combing over warm, male skin tanned by years of sun and exposure, and trace the intricate, black and gray lines of the nautical tattoo on his left pectoral and shoulder. When I circle the compass, his skin pebbles, and I register the soft brush of his lips against my forehead.

"You ever had to?" he whispers.

My fingers still. "Ever had to what?"

Masen's Adam's apple bobs when he swallows. "Sleep with a target."

"Never." My shoulders shake, and my cheeks crease as I resume my idle exploration, moving from the crisp lines of the old-world map to the liturgy of names stamped on the right side of his ribcage. "Sure, I've done a little role-playing during surveillance ops. There were even a few times I pretended to be a wife or girlfriend of one of the guys, but, thankfully, where we were…" I snort. "Holding hands was scandalous enough."

Masen looks down his chest and flashes me a row of pearly teeth. He knows exactly what I'm talking about. He's been there, after all, deployed even longer than me. "What about when you were in the CIA?" he asks, lazily looping and unlooping a strand of my hair around a finger. "If you worked directly for Platt, you were on an Ops team, right?"

"I was," I say, drawing it out. "But my assignments were usually more direct, if you know what I mean."

The tiny hitch in his movements gives away his surprise. "Like?"

"Hostage recovery, high-value target acquisition, stuff like that." I pause, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I know that while his count is high, mine's likely even higher. "Mostly, though, I handled preemptive threat elimination… In, out, and done."

A low whistle hits my ears. "You weren't kidding when you said small targets and long distances."

"No, I wasn't," I say. "Everyone has their talents, right?" My shoulders roll in a shallow shrug. "Plus, my size and gender gave me some unique advantages in that respect, and both the Army and the CIA were more than happy to put those advantages to good use."

Long fingers comb through my hair before moving to the stiff muscles in my neck. When he digs into one of the knots next to my spine, it feels so good I want to cry. "How'd you wind up in the Army anyway?"

I glance up, resting my chin on his chest. "Seriously? We're playing twenty questions right now?"

"Why not?" Masen replies, far too innocently, and when he smiles, those gemstone eyes of his glitter in a split-second of boyish mischief. "What else is there to do? I mean, I'm up for another round if you want it, but you'll have to do all the work this time."

I laugh at that, and when one brow lifts, I roll my eyes at his persistence. "Fine." As I drop my head into my palm, I puff out a too-loud breath. "You know about my dad, right?"

His chin ducks in acknowledgment. "Some, yeah."

Looking past Masen to the stone and plaster wall, I count the ancient, misshapen blocks, thinking for a second and debating just how far back in the archives I want to go.

"My dad was a career officer," I eventually say, studying the neatly inked rows of letters and dates. "A good one, too, so when I was growing up, we moved around a lot… Benning, Bragg, Hood. A short stint at the Pentagon. Twice overseas."

I blink at the jumbled-up fragments of memory. Over a half dozen bases in less than a dozen years, all the same, yet not. Thousands of different names, faces, and ranks, all except one. A small smile plays across my lips. "I learned German when he was stationed at Ramstein coordinating NATO support."

Masen's thumb skims up and down my spine in a lazy, meandering path, just on the verge of tickling. "Regular Army brat, huh?"

My smile widens because I was a fucking handful.

"It was mostly just the two of us." Yawning, I roll my neck and shoulders, silently coaxing him for a little more pressure. "My mom left right before I turned three."

Masen's slow, feather-light massage ceases, and beneath my still-wandering fingers, his muscles tense. "And your dad still stayed in?"

"He managed." When I stretch my neck again, he gets the message, and those magic fingers of his climb up my backbone and resume their kneading. "All the bases we lived on had daycares and schools and whatnot, and my Grandma Swan was on-call when he had to deploy. But after Kuwait, that wasn't much of a problem."

He hits a particularly stubborn knot, and I hum in relief. "What do you mean?"

"His deployments were usually short, and he was able to avoid unaccompanied transfers." Flattening my palm over slabs of hardened muscle, I walk down the center of Masen's chest, sliding underneath the blanket to the maze of chiseled lines crisscrossing his abdomen. "That cost him, of course. He'd have probably retired a general instead of a colonel if he'd been more flexible.

"He didn't give a fuck about any of that, though. All he cared about was his soldiers and me." A soft chuckle tumbles out. "When I was twelve, I asked him if he resented having to cart me around… Let's just say, I didn't ask that again."

"I bet not," Masen murmurs, softly enough I barely catch it. "What happened to your mom? You ever see her?"

Taking my time, I shift more to my side and skim my nails along one of the more defined ridges. The muscles there jump, so I do it again and again until he catches my hand in his and mutters, "Stop that. I'm trying to learn all your secrets."

Something warm hits me square in the chest. Before I know it, a wide, genuine smile creeps across my face, and we just… stare at each other.

"Your mom?" he asks, prompting when I don't continue.

"Fine." I let out another little huff. "Renee was young when they married, and they had me soon after." Trailing off, I try to picture the pretty, petite, brown-haired woman I haven't seen in person in years. "From what little I got out of my dad, she loved the idea of being a military spouse a lot more than the reality of it. Thought it would be some grand romance filled with military balls and traveling to exotic places." I bat my eyelashes for effect. "I think we both know how that works.

"Anyway, she floated around for a few years," I go on. "Finding herself, whatever that means. And then, when I was ten, she married a decent enough guy." My forehead folds. "I think they're still somewhere in Florida. She's reached out a few times, but… frankly, I've never really made much of an attempt." My shoulders rise and fall. "Didn't see a point."

Out in my sitting room, the clock quietly chimes two. A light draft whispers in from the nearby window, and when the cooler air hits my skin, a faint shiver runs through my limbs. Without really thinking, I twist around, blindly reaching for the black, wadded-up t-shirt that somehow landed on the nightstand when I'd stripped it off him. When I sit up and yank it over my head, Masen doesn't say a word. No, he just watches me with that same wordless intensity that makes my heart pound, and I wonder how many of my secrets he's going to wind up extracting after all.

"But to your question," I say as l lean against the stack of pillows beside him and pull my knees up. "I spent my entire childhood surrounded by soldiers. Dad tried to give me something close to normal, but he had no idea what to do with a little girl, so when I wasn't interested in dolls or playing house, he was… relieved."

I snicker at that. "The man didn't know how to play tea party to save his life, but he could turn a boring trip to the grocery store into a full-scale reconnaissance mission. He could teach me strategy games and sneak in combat theory all day long. And I could field strip and fire a dozen different weapons better than any cherry by the time I turned ten." Shooting Masen a playful wink, I gesture to the plum-black stain on his ribs. "He also taught me how to throw a mean punch if I ever needed to."

Masen's chest vibrates, taking the whole bed with him. "Why am I not surprised?"

"I told you I'm not apologizing for that."

"And I wouldn't dream of asking."

I give him another quick smile. "But the military was what I knew. It was a natural fit, and I was good at it. And it gave me something in common with my dad." My face screws up. "And, fine, if you were to ask Alice, she'd probably tell you that enlisting let me channel some buried anger and resentment at my mom into something productive." My eyes roll before I can stop them. "Although I'd argue I got most of that out of my system by the time I finished Basic."

"Still, enlisting is one thing." Shoving up, Masen copies my position and backs into the headboard. His gaze laps the room again, resting on the Chagall once more before skipping to the windows and doors on instinct. "Special Forces is something else."

"God, I loved it, though," I say, tilting my head back against the massive panel of carved wood behind us. When I suck in a deep breath, I taste the faint trace of Masen's cologne lingering on his shirt. It's a refined yet understated scent, fresh and masculine and nothing like Aronov's. I could breathe it for days and still want more. "I loved it all… My team, the ops, the purpose and drive, the sheer physicality. That single instant in time when you take down some piece of garbage you spent weeks planning for, and you make the world a slightly better place… I loved everything about it." My lips turn down as my arms lock around my knees, hugging them tighter. "Until one day, I didn't."

Masen angles toward me and softly asks, "What happened?" Shadows from the dim nearby lamps dance in the hollows of his cheeks, telling me he already has his suspicions.

"We were deep in the Korangal Valley. Been out for weeks already, hunting down a very, very coveted HPT. The analysts said he was hiding in one of the networks of caves." My thumb rasps against soft, thick cotton as I speak, and my eyes fall to the blanket and the thousands of tiny, crisscrossing threads. "Somehow, our intel got compromised, and we were ambushed. Before we knew it, they'd pinned us down in a deep bowl with barely any cover, and fuck knows how many rifles were positioned up on the slopes… They threw so many bodies at us it was unreal. Spent three days behind a pile of rocks trying not to get shot… or worse."

Masen doesn't speak, and when my focus slips to the side, it's like I'm staring at a mirror.

"Most of us were black on ammo by the end of the first day," I say, grimacing at the rat-rat-rat echo I can still hear if I really pay attention and listen.

"Where the fuck was your support?"

"Non-existent." I chuff out something resembling a laugh, but there's not a lick of humor in it. "Central Command refused to send in air support because we weren't supposed to be there in the first place. Ground forces were tied up. And then we lost radio reception anyway."

My teeth find the inside of my cheek, and I take another slow breath. Buried beneath the sweet aroma of freshly delivered flowers and Masen's lingering cologne, I scent the unmistakable stench of blood and sweat, cut with the hot, metallic tang of gunpowder.

Hello, old friend.

"By the time we got ourselves out," I say, continuing when Masen doesn't ask. "I'd lost two-thirds of my unit. And that last day, I had to take out one of our guys myself when he was captured." My lips flatten into a hard line. "He'd taken multiple rounds and was bleeding out. They were just going to torture him, and there was no way we could get to him, so…"

"You gave him mercy."

"Yeah, I suppose." I nod because that's precisely what it was, but my voice still sounds hollow. "Most of our guys were married with families back home. They were just told it was a training accident."

Masen opens his mouth to reply, but I just wave him off. "I know. We all know the risks when we sign on, and there's some shit you can't tell the public, but after that, it just wasn't the same. So… when my time came to reenlist, I didn't."

"Let me guess, Platt," he says, flat enough that I don't have to guess his opinion on that.

"Almost," I say, laughing for real when his expression twists into something almost comically sour. "Dad was retired by then, and BSA was growing like crazy. They'd just come out with the .50 LRSS, and there was nothing close on the market." I laugh even harder as I recall Markovsky's dry disappointment. "He offered me a job right off the bat, but Platt swooped in before the ink on my contract had dried, promising me glory and retribution and all sorts of fun things like that."

Masen's head pops against the headboard as he lets out a loud, knowing sigh. "That sounds familiar."

"Needless to say, it wasn't exactly a marriage made in heaven." Now it's my turn to make a face. "If it's not obvious, I'm not a big fan of secrets. Or being told what to do."

"No, I don't believe that at all." Grinning, Masen reaches over to the other nightstand, grabs two bottles of water, and passes one over. "Why didn't you go work with your dad then?"

"He had a heart attack the last year I was with the CIA. His business partner practically begged me to join, both for my name and experience." Cracking the cap, I slug back a third of the bottle, and I don't miss his eyes tracing the shape of my lips and the motion of my throat when I swallow.

He drains his in a single, long pull. "Why didn't you?"

"I thought about it for a while. It sounded good, but I wasn't sure if I was cut out for an office job," I tell him as I mindlessly pick at the label. "Then one night, I was in Arlington and ran into Rosalie and Alice." I take another drink, this one slower, before replacing the cap and chucking the bottle over onto the nearby brocade wingback that'd caught my dress. "We'd known each other from years back. We'd been deployed to the same locations a couple of times. Rose and I had even been on a few ops together. So… we drank too many shots of Jose, and we said, fuck it, we'd just do our own thing. And… now here I am."

"Here you are," he repeats, just above a whisper, and when I turn, Masen's fingers trail across my cheek, following the line of my jaw before stopping at my lips. It's a softer, gentler touch, and that now-familiar tension instantly sparks. Tiny electrical signals shoot through my limbs and arrow deep into my stomach. It's a heady, intoxicating sensation that I'm all too tempted to chase.

But I have a few questions of my own – some secrets that need to be extracted.

"What about you?" I ask, pulling away only to thread my fingers through his longer ones.

Masen's brows climb, nearly disappearing behind the mangled mess of his hair. "What about me?"

I motion to the symbols written in his skin. "How'd you end up in the Navy?"

His eyes drop to the inside of his forearm, focusing on the black and gray lines of his bone-frog and trident. "My grandfather was in Korea," he says after a second, and the look on his face is quiet and thoughtful, maybe even a touch wistful. "He was assigned to a destroyer, and then he spent a few years on a carrier afterward… His older brother served in WWII. Their dad was in WWI. You get the picture."

Yeah, I do.

"A regular family affair."

"That's one way to put it." One corner of Masen's lips curls up. "My grandpa loved the Navy. I swear, that man thought that there was no higher calling on the planet, and when I was growing up, he was one of those old vets who talked about his service with pride and fondness." Scratching his chin, he thinks for a second, and I wonder just how many people know this side of him. If he's anything like me, the answer is few and far between. "He used to tell me all these stories about him and his buddies on the ships. They did some stupid, stupid shit that'd get you discharged or worse these days, but they did a lot of good things and helped a lot of people. That mattered to him. It mattered to me."

Masen pauses as the wind picks up outside and whistles past the window. A beat later, frozen rain or sleet patters against the glass in a faint, softly-pitched staccato.

Without realizing it, I run my thumb over the healing bruises on his knuckles, and he blinks. Giving himself a little shake, he waves at the room and says, "So, yeah, by the time I hit eighteen, enlisting was all I wanted to do. I didn't even consider anything else… Fuck, he was so proud of me, too, and when I made it through BUD/S, I thought he was going to burst."

"What about your parents?"

"They both died in a car accident on I-55 when I was in kindergarten," he says. "Neither one had any brothers or sisters, so I went to live with my grandparents." He peers down at me, his expression fathomless. "I left the busy suburbs of Chicago for an apple orchard out in the middle of nowhere, Washington State."

It takes me a second to process what he just said, but then I stiffen. "Then where the hell did you learn to speak Russian… like a fucking Russian?"

Masen freezes and then abruptly beams at me with his entire face. His fingers tighten around mine, and there's laughter and genuine affection in his bright, twinkling eyes when he leans into me and whispers, "Moya babka."

Well… that explains a lot.

"Seriously?"

"My grandmother was born in a town right outside of Nizhny Novgorod, and then she grew up in Sarov – although, back then, it was called something else." Head tilting, I open my mouth to ask, but he beats me to it. "Her father was a physicist there during and after the war." He trails off for a beat before quietly adding, "For reasons I'm assuming you can guess, they immigrated when she was a teenager, and he worked at one of the national labs for a while."

By immigrated, I'm pretty sure he means defected.

"My grandparents met when she was living in San Francisco and he was there on leave." His eyes dance with both mischief and amusement. "According to him, she was the only thing he loved more than the Navy and the only thing that could have lured him off the boats."

You know, I'm not a romantic person – I've seen too much and done too much for that kind of thing – but at that, my heart swells against my ribs, beating just a little faster and just a little harder, and I can't help but smile at the sweet sentimentality of it. "So, she taught you."

"Yeah, she did." Masen's chin ducks. "When my parents died, my grandma was devastated, but she rarely let me see it." Shaking his head, he lets out a soft breath of a laugh. "She was determined that I would be happy there with them and have a normal childhood – whatever the fuck that is – even though they were older."

A spray of icy, windblown sleet smacks into the window. With an unconscious shiver, I slump against the headboard and lean into him. Masen's arm lifts immediately, draping around my shoulders, and then he tugs me tight into his side. He's space-heater warm, too, and when I press my toes into his thigh, he almost manages not to jump.

"Jesus," he mutters, shooting me a split-second glare. Of course, I act like I have no clue what he's talking about and reposition in search of the warmer spot behind his knees. He doesn't jump this time and just blows out a loud breath before continuing.

"Anyway, as you can imagine, there weren't a lot of other kids my age out in the middle of rural Washington, so she decided she'd be my best friend. Ran around and played like a woman half her age just to keep me busy and laughing." Masen's arm cinches tighter until I snake my arm over his abdomen to resume my previous slow exploration. "When it was just the two of us, she always spoke Russian, and I was a kid, so I picked it up like it was anything else."

He cracks another one of those ridiculous smiles. "But that just turned into another kind of game for us because we had our own special language and secrets since my grandpa couldn't understand a damned word of it… Or, at least that's what he used to say."

My cold, dead heart squeezes again at the thought of a small, rust-haired boy whispering secrets with his tiny, gray-haired, sparkling-eyed grandma.

But now I get it.

I get how there's still a tiny piece of him that remains unjaded, why he's still here, and how he could stomach the horror and desolation of shooting his friend and mentor to save him.

"Did he?" I ask, and my throat dips. "Did your grandfather understand anything?"

Masen shifts beneath me, and when he speaks, his chest rumbles beneath my cheek. "Not much, but he knew the sweet stuff. He used to call my grandma moya rodnaya when he gave her her weekly flowers. She loved it, even though she'd tease him mercilessly about his twangy accent."

"Are they still around?"

He shakes his head. "Nah, they both passed a few years ago."

"Why did you get out of the Navy?"

Masen's lips find my hairline as he whispers, "Like you, I watched too many people I cared about die without being able to stop it." As I run my fingertips down his ribcage and over the names, his skin ripples and flexes. "Op tempo was too high. I'd just gotten out of Syria and was sent straight to Yemen." A low, aggravated sound hits my ears. "God, that was a clusterfuck… Washington officially supporting the Saudis but half of SOCOM thinking we should be backing the Houthis. And then fucking ISIL.

"I was mostly working with the CIA at that point anyway. Carl was assigned to our team, so I knew him pretty well." Masen's palm sneaks under the hem of his shirt, ghosting along my back and hip, and now it's my turn to tremble. "He was the one who suggested that I go private – fucker. But it didn't take me too long to figure out most of the benefits were for them… They could deploy me off the books, and I could do shit I never could in uniform."

"Like this," I say, pushing up on my elbow to study his face.

Faint gray bruises ring his eyes, but his irises glitter in the darkened room as he looks back at me. Resting on my hip, his fingers spread and press into my skin in subtle direction. Taking the cue, I slowly crawl my way on top of him, and when my thighs spread to straddle him, I don't have to guess if we're on the same page.

"Yeah, just like this," Masen murmurs, and before I can blink, black cotton peels up my body and disappears in a dark cloud over my head. He sits up until we're chest to chest, and when he releases my hip, warm, sure hands drift along my rib cage to my breasts. My body automatically responds, growing warmer and slicker with every touch, and when his tongue licks a lazy, teasing circle around my nipple, my back bows, pushing him to take more.

"I'll have to do all the work, huh?" I ask, threading my fingers into his hair to drag his mouth to mine.

He grins against my lips, groaning when I sink down. "Fine, maybe I have a little left."

Then, for just a few more moments, I forget where we are and why – the mines, the weapons, the wounded CIA operative we have to evacuate.

I forget the complex, murderous tyrant passed out on the other side of the castle and whose bed I'll be in come dawn.

And I pretend the storm blowing outside isn't a sign of what's coming.

.

.

.

Notes:

A note on single parents in the US military: At the time Bella was born (late 80s), the military allowed single parents to enlist. That changed after the Gulf War. Regardless, then and now, parents who become single parents (e.g. due to death of a spouse, divorce, etc) while in the military aren't forced to separate. They just have to have short and long-term child care plans in place in the event that they are deployed or transferred on an unaccompanied basis.

Another note on the situation in Yemen: Yemen has been in civil war since 2014, mainly between the Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi-led Yemeni government (supported by Saudi Arabia) and the Houthi armed movement (supported by Iran), along with their supporters and allies. Most Western sources consider the civil war to be a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The US has officially backed the Saudi-led campaign, but there are several folks in the military who unofficially see a much murkier situation since the Houthis have generally held back Islamic State (IS / ISIL / ISIS) factions.

Russian (transliterated):

Moya babka: babka is a shortened / affectionate form of babushka, so, my grandma

Moya rodnaya: this is a term of endearment that doesn't directly translate into English. It shares roots with the words for kin and motherland, and is a more meaningful and intimate endearment, something one would typically only use for a spouse or a life partner. Anyagal described is as "blood of my blood, bone of my bone"

Glossary:

Benning, Bragg, Hood: Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, and Fort Hood, located in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, respectively, are major US Army bases. Fort Bragg is the largest military base in the world, with over 50,000 active personnel assigned.

Black on ammo: green means you have ammo. Red means your magazine is out and you're changing the mag. Black means you're out of mags and ammo

BUD/S: Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Training is one part of the Navy SEAL selection and training process. BUD/S is a grueling 24-week program. It's meant to develop and test mental and physical stamina, leadership, and ability to work as a team. It includes physical conditioning, combat diving, and land warfare. Only about 10% of those who initially start SEAL training and selection make it past BUD/S

Cherry: slang for recruit still in Basic Training

HVT/HPT: High-value targets (HVT) are individuals an enemy commander considers to be necessary to complete their operations. A high-payoff target (HPT) is a HVT whose loss would significantly contribute to the friendly side's course of action

Korangal Valley: also nicknamed "The Valley of Death" is a valley in the Dara-I-Pech District of Kunar Province, eastern Afghanistan

Op tempo: refers to the pace, speed, and frequency of operations. Maintaining a high op tempo for extended periods of time without breaks and rest periods can burn out troops, physically and mentally

Ramstein: is a US air base, located in Germany. It's the headquarters for the US Air Force in Europe and it provides support for NATO air support. There are a few US Army units assigned there as well

Sarov: is a closed city (meaning, a city in which travel is restricted or regulated) in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (oblast is like a province or state), Russia. After WWII, it became a center for nuclear research and weapons design. Before the early 90s, it was known as Arzamas-16, named after the nearby city of Arzamas

SOCOM: United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is the unified combatant command that manages special operations components of the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force