This was the first time I had ever woken up to find my face literally drooling against Mitch's massive bicep. I rubbed my eyes blearily, shifting my weight to find that he was still dead asleep, completely out cold while his phone vibrated furiously on the nightstand. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and started shaking his shoulder, but his giant body remained completely limp.
*God, this is terrible,* I thought, a minor wave of panic hitting me. One day I'm going to end up dead because this man won't wake up from his deep sleep.
Deciding to take matters into my own hands, I traced my fingers down his arm and worked my way up to a specific nerve cluster near his shoulder. Aiming carefully with two fingers, I stabbed sharply into the pressure point. His body instantly jolted awake on pure instinct; within a millisecond, his hands gripped my waist and he aggressively flung me beneath him, pinning me to the mattress.
"Oh, I like this," I giggled, looking up at him.
Recognizing my voice, the rigid tension in his muscles instantly softened. He collapsed heavily against my chest, his head dropping into the crook of my neck as a soft, rhythmic snoring immediately started up again. I smiled, placing one hand on his bare, muscular back as I laid my head down on the pillow. I figured I could just drift back to sleep too, until his phone started ringing a second time—only this time, mine started buzzing in perfect synchronization.
I reached over to the bedside table and glanced at my screen. Irene was calling me. Then I leaned over to check Mitch's phone on the drawer and saw Stan's name flashing. Two simultaneous calls from the brass. It had to be important.
I reached down and pressed the shoulder spot again, harder this time. Mitch jolted awake with a heavy, low groan.
"We're getting calls," I pointed out, nodding toward the phones.
The fog in his eyes cleared as he snapped right back into operational mode. He shuffled his weight, sitting up at the edge of the bed, and snatched his phone off the nightstand, answering it with his usual professional clip.
"Good morning, sir," he said sternly.
I crawled up behind his broad back, wrapping my arms around his waist and hugging him tightly. His posture instantly went rigid under my touch, but I ignored it, tilting my head to leave a trail of small, soft kisses along his shoulder blade.
Mitch cleared his throat, his jaw tightening as he glanced at the digital clock. "I apologize. Good afternoon, sir," he corrected quickly.
I checked my own phone. It was 2:00 PM the next day. No wonder my stomach felt like it was violently eating itself from the inside out.
While Mitch remained engrossed in his stern conversation with Stan, I slipped out of the bed, walked out of the room, and padded barefoot into the kitchen. I stood in front of the refrigerator, staring blankly into it. It suddenly hit me that I hadn't actually opened a single fridge door or cabinet since I'd arrived here.
Scanning the shelves, I saw almond milk, organic eggs, and a few containers of yogurt. Mitch made me breakfast every single morning, and then he either bought dinner or cooked it himself. Every single day. Growing up, this was the absolute dream life I used to fantasize about. I had been working odd jobs since I was fourteen years old, handing over every single penny of my paycheck to whoever happened to be taking care of me at the time. Having someone just provide for me was completely foreign.
"Do not touch the stove."
I jumped at the sudden, deep vibrato cutting through the silent house.
I turned around, trying to play it cool. "Hey, I could definitely cook. Maybe. I mean... I think I can," I defended, though it came out sounding incredibly poor.
"No." Mitch stepped up, his large hand sliding firmly over mine to close the refrigerator door.
He pressed his massive frame flush against my backside, leaning down. "After last night... we need proper sustenance," he murmured quietly against my ear, the disciplined command in his voice sending a familiar spark of heat straight to my core.
But the warmth evaporated a second later when he stepped back, his eyes narrowing into a sharp, analytical gaze. "Furthermore, we are relocating to a more secluded safehouse."
I blinked. "What?"
"Ghost is in the country," Mitch explained cleanly, leaning his upper body back against the kitchen counter. "Director Kennedy suggested a security detail. She places surveillance on the exterior perimeter, and inside the common rooms."
A dark wave of anxiety hit my chest, but I masked it behind a thick wall of sarcasm. "Oh, great. My ex may try to kill me now."
The second the word left my lips, Mitch went completely rigid. The heavy atmosphere in the room shifted instantly.
"Ex?" his voice dropped, sounding deeply focused, like an investigator who realized he had misread an entire case file. "My brief stated he was solely a captor."
I froze, realizing my mistake. I had to tread carefully. "No, he definitely did kidnap me... but we started off meeting when he was still working with Stan."
"So you had contact with Vance prior to your extraction?" Mitch's eyebrows shot up.
The tension in the kitchen became suffocating, and it definitely wasn't the fun kind. This was the kind of dangerous friction where a trained operative realizes he just risked a mission and his professional reputation sleeping with an asset he didn't fully vet.
"I've talked to him before, I guess," I mumbled, trying to downplay it as I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the fridge dispenser. "When he saved me from Ghost. A couple of years ago."
"Specify the year." He was quick, his question firing like a bullet.
I tilted my head, trying to turn the tables. "Did they not give you a file on me?"
I looked at Mitch blankly, and he returned a cold, deeply cautious look. Without answering, he straightened his posture, turned on his heel, and walked straight into the guest room—the one he had slept in every single night except last night.
I sipped the cold water, my heart racing wildly against my ribs. I genuinely had no idea what he actually knew about my past. Was he testing me right now? Was he trying to see what I would confess if he pushed hard enough? It felt like a massive mistake to make a careless joke about a global threat to a man whose entire life was dedicated to hunting him down.
A few minutes later, Mitch walked back out of the guest room. He was fully clothed in his standard tactical gear, his eyes completely avoiding mine. The strict, clinical reset button had been pushed.
"I am securing rations. Remain inside. I'll be back," he stated, his voice completely devoid of the gravelly, intimate warmth from just moments before.
He didn't wait for me to respond. He walked out the front door, and the heavy click of the lock echoing through the empty house felt entirely final.
When Mitch finally returned, the shift in his demeanor was jarring. He walked into the kitchen carrying a bag of food, his movements rigid and heavily guarded. He set the containers down on the dining table and sat down, immediately pulling a plate toward himself and eating in absolute silence.
It was bizarre. Watching him sit there, completely blocked off and unreadable, felt exactly like the day we first met. The unhinged man from the bedroom had vanished entirely, replaced by a stoic wall of stone. He kept his head down, speaking only in short, clipped, monotone sentences when absolutely necessary.
I sat across from him, the silence stretching between us until it became unbearable. Pulling a piece of food from my plate, I leaned forward, resting my chin in my hand as I flashed him a slow, highly suggestive smile.
"You know, if you wanted me to stay carbed up for round two tonight, you could have just said so," I purred, my voice dropping into a thoroughly flirtatious, needy tone. "Though I think you used up most of my energy pinning me down last night."
Mitch didn't even blink. He didn't pause his fork, his eyes stayed locked firmly on his plate, and his expression didn't change by a fraction of a millimeter. He didn't reciprocate the flirtation at all—he didn't even look up to acknowledge that I had spoken.
The heavy, cold rejection hung in the air, and suddenly, the residual warmth from last night completely curdled into sharp, burning anger.
I slammed my fork down onto the plate, the loud rattle echoing sharply through the quiet room. "Are you serious right now, Mitch?" I snapped, my voice rising as I glared across the table at his stone face. "We can't just do what we did all last night—you can't completely break me open and hold me like that—just for you to wake up, get mad, and shut down into a completely closed-off asshole."
Mitch didn't flinch. He slowly chewed his food, set his fork down with methodical precision, and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his thick arms over his chest, his dark, unblinking eyes locking onto me, completely detached as he just watched me blow up and go off on him.
His silent, judgmental stare only made my blood boil hotter. "Nothing to say? Fine. Typical soldier bullshit," I hissed. I pushed my chair back violently, the legs scraping against the floor, and spun on my heel to storm down the hallway back into the bedroom.
I didn't even get a chance to slam the door.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I felt the heavy shift in air pressure behind me. Mitch had followed me right into the room, his long strides effortlessly closing the distance. He reached back, grabbing the edge of the heavy wooden door, and shut it with a firm, definitive *click* that felt incredibly heavy in the small space.
He stood there, towering over me, the clinical wall finally fracturing into a cold, hard anger of his own.
"You want to discuss last night, Lauren?" his baritone voice rumbled, dangerously low. "Last night, you established parameters for exactly how you wanted to be handled. Every explicit detail. And it raises a relevant question regarding your specific behavioral profile."
I blinked, taken aback by the sudden accusation. "What?"
"A dominant, unyielding figure who takes whatever he wants, operates with aggressive force, and demands total submission—not to mention an individual with intelligence training, which happens to meet my current operational criteria," Mitch stated flatly, stepping deeper into my space, his jaw clenched tight. "An individual like Ghost, or Brandon, or whatever alias he used. The man you just casually classified as your ex. I need to establish whether your psychological alignment rests with his ideals, or if this connection is an active counter-intelligence threat."
The sheer unfairness of the accusation hit me like a physical blow. The name *Ghost* echoed in my ears, and inside my chest, a cold, violent trap door flung wide open.
Suddenly, I wasn't standing in a safe bedroom with Mitch anymore. The air turned freezing, smelling of stale concrete, damp earth, and sweat. My vision blurred around the edges, a familiar, suffocating pressure settling over my sternum. Just thinking about that year made my skin crawl with phantom hands. I could feel the cold tile against my back, the terrifying sound of heavy footsteps down a hallway, the absolute certainty that I was going to die in a dark room. My pulse skyrocketed, hammering so loudly against my eardrums that it drowned out the present moment. A cold sweat broke out along my spine, my throat tight and dry as a phantom choke-hold gripped my airways. I was suffocating on memories.
Forcing myself to anchor into the room, I fought through the paralyzing wave of PTSD, my voice cracking as I pushed the terror out.
"That is so unfair to say to me, Mitch! I wouldn't be here if I was a threat. Irene and Stan wouldn't have cleared me to be here with you if that were true!" I yelled back, tears of sheer frustration and raw, unadulterated hurt stinging the corners of my eyes. "I'm just a girl who got into a completely wrong relationship with a monster, okay? It traumatized me. It ruined a part of my life. I haven't seen him or spoken a single word to him since Stan took me from that place years ago!"
I took a shaky, ragged breath, my hands trembling violently as I gestured between us, desperately trying to push the vivid flashbacks back into the dark. "I don't even know what he's been up to. I don't know his plans, I don't know his location—I don't know anything! All I know is that whatever he is doing out there is bad, and I am terrified of him. I am not his asset, Mitch. I was his victim. I was his victim every single day for an entire year. Forgive me for falling in love with a silly CIA guy that I thought at the worst was selling drugs on the side, not smuggling bombs and committing genocide!"
Tears were running freely down my face now, hot and fast, and I let out a heavy, broken sniffle. The physical toll of the panic attack left my muscles weak.
"Oh, I need to calm down," I muttered to myself, forcing a sharp, trembling breath into my lungs as I fought to snap out of the downward spiral. I wiped my face aggressively with the backs of my hands.
Mitch's rigid expression finally shifted. The harsh stone melted, a flash of genuine, deep-seated worry cutting through his operational mask, though he kept his physical movements controlled. Still, he stayed hesitant, a tight tension in his broad shoulders as he watched me desperately try to claw my way back to composure.
"I was eighteen. I was dumb, and that was like ten years ago," I said, my voice dropping into a shaky but deliberate calm, trying to prove I was stable. "I know better now. And I went to therapy—which the CIA division provided for me, by the way." I let out a small, bitter breath, looking up at him through wet eyelashes, the dark humor my only defense mechanism left. "So please don't choke me and drown me in a bathtub."
The dark joke seemed to cut right through his remaining defenses. Mitch closed the distance between us in a single, fluid stride. Maintaining his professional restraint but acting on pure instinct, he reached out and pulled me firmly against his massive chest, engulfing me.
"More than half your file was redacted," he admitted softly, his deep voice vibrating against my crown as his large hands began to slowly, reassuringly rub soothing circles into my back. "The specific history was withheld. I lacked the necessary clearance to view it."
He kept his arms securely wrapped around me, the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest acting like an anchor while my breathing finally started to level out. He didn't say anything for a long moment, just letting his large hands continue those slow, heavy strokes against my back, absorbing the final tremors of my panic with a quiet, grounding presence.
When he spoke again, the gravelly edge of his voice was laced with an unyielding professional discipline.
"I extend my formal apologies, Lauren," he murmured, his tone steady and entirely sincere against the top of my head. "My intelligence assessment was flawed. I permitted operational security protocols to override my judgment of your character. It was unacceptable to direct that level of interrogation toward you. I intend to rectify this error."
I pulled back just enough to look up at him, my eyes still red and burning, my expression tightly guarded. "Rectify it how? By putting a bunch of armed babysitters in my kitchen and putting cameras in the living room? You heard what Irene said. We're going to be living under a microscope."
A faint, almost imperceptible ghost of a smirk tugged at the corner of Mitch's mouth, though his eyes remained entirely focused and professional. He didn't let go of my waist, instead maintaining his secure grip to keep me flush against his tactical vest.
"The safehouse we are relocating to is situated on an isolated acre of land," he explained evenly, his tone shifting into the smooth, clinical delivery of a mission briefing. "Furthermore, the security detail assigned to the perimeter comprises specialized agency personnel. Every operative on that property has executed a non-disclosure agreement directly tied to this operation."
I shifted my weight, still looking at him skeptically, a stray tear clinging to my cheek. "And what exactly does that mean for me? They're still going to be watching."
"It means they are contractually and legally barred from discussing, logging, or reporting any internal activities they witness on that property," Mitch countered softly, leaning down so his lips were just inches from mine, his professional composure masking a sudden, dangerous intensity. "The sole exception to their NDA mandates reporting only if an action poses an immediate, tangible threat to others, to each other, or to ourselves."
I blinked, my brain trying to process the operational loophole he was laying out, but my face remained pinched and upset. "Okay... and?"
Mitch's gaze darkened, blowing out into that pitch-black, predatory look that had completely unraveled me the night before. His hands slid down from my back, wrapping firmly around the curves of my hips to pin my pelvis directly against his, his voice dropping into a low, commanding rumble.
"It means I can officially execute your directive," he whispered, the absolute authority in his baritone sending a sudden, violent jolt of electricity straight to my core. "Taking you whenever I demand it. In direct view of them. Anywhere I choose on that property. Because it violates no security protocols, Lauren... it's simply a private exercise in discipline."
The sheer audacity of the loophole made my breath catch in my throat. I looked into his dark, unwavering eyes, feeling the fierce protection underneath all that rigid military conditioning. The lingering anger in my chest finally evaporated, replaced by a warm, heavy ache.
"I forgive you," I breathed softly.
Mitch didn't waste a second. He leaned down and captured my mouth in a deep, bruising kiss. It wasn't gentle; it was highly commanding and possessive, his tongue sliding past my lips to claim me completely, cutting off any air I had left until my knees went weak in his grip.
When he finally pulled back just a fraction, his lips brushed against mine, his breath hot and ragged. The clinical veneer was still intact, but the words that came out of his mouth were entirely unhinged, delivered with the terrifying calm of an operative issuing a field order.
"Outstanding," he growled, a filthy, low rasp that made my jaw drop in pure surprise. "Because the moment we breach that perimeter, I'm going to pin you over the porch railing and take you from behind while the guard maintains his watch. I'm going to make you scream loud enough to violate the noise ordinance an acre away, and not a single professional on my payroll will be permitted to say a damn word about it."
