Page 51 of Break Me Open
He opens his mouth to deny it, then seems to realise he’s walking into a trap, and scowls instead. “Whatever you’re doing, don’t,” he mutters under his breath. “Joint ops are headache enough without you starting an international incident.”
“Define ‘incident’,” I say. He glares. I pat his shoulder, infuriatingly gentle. “I’ll behave,” I promise.
He rolls his eyes. “You always say that right before you don’t.”
“Tell your pet to stop walking around looking like a kicked puppy, then,” I add. “It’s confusing.”
Niko’s brows knit together. “Is he?” he asks, genuinely worried. “I thought he was just British.”
I bark a laugh. If only you knew, solnyshko. “Don’t worry about it,” I say, moving past him. “If he breaks, I’ll glue him back together.”
Niko looks at me like that answer has not reassured him in the slightest. “Arseny,” he says warningly.
“I’m going to the briefing,” I sing-song, ignoring the way my name always sounds like I’m three and have jam on my face. “Try not to miss me too much.”
I leave him standing there in the corridor, rubbing at his temple like he’s already regretting bringing me within a hundred kilometres of his very serious joint operation.
Good. If I can keep Niko focused on ‘Ari is being a menace,’ he’s less likely to focus on ‘Ari is sleeping with one of your allies.’ Because I am.
Or I will be.
It’s a question of timing, not possibility.
The briefing is mercifully dull. I stand at the back again, absorbing just enough information to function, and translating the rest into mental white noise. The Brits are on the left this time. Caiden’s in his usual spot; his posture is textbook, his eyes are fixed on the front, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think nothing had happened.
His face is perfectly neutral. However, when the CO says something particularly pointless about cohesion, and Niko cracks a joke that ripples the room, Caiden’s gaze flicks sideways, not to my brother anymore... but to me.
For a second, our eyes meet, and it’s like a spark hits me, making my mouth twitch. He doesn’t move, but a tiny bit of colour climbs up his neck, then he looks away quickly, back to the front.
Got you, detka.
You can run out of the room if you want to, but you can’t outrun wanting it.
For the rest of the briefing, I look at the map, at the CO, at my own nails — but I can feel him, like a heat source in the corner of my awareness.
When we’re finally dismissed, the room erupts in movement. Chairs scrape, papers shuffle, and people shove past each other in the cramped space. Caiden is swallowed by his unit’s cluster, heading toward the door in a tight little knotof khaki. I let the crowd carry me the other way, out a side exit, feeling very smug.
By the time lights-out hits the barracks, the adrenaline has ebbed, but not by much. I lie back, fold an arm over my eyes, and the first thing that rises behind my eyelids is his mouth. It’s stupid. I’ve kissed plenty of people.
Men, women, combinations of both. I’ve had sex in alleyways, hotels, and once in the back of a stolen van. I know how this works. I know what I like; none of this is new. So why does the memory of his lips feel like someone’s hooked an electrical charge directly into my nervous system?
Maybe because of how hard he tried to fight it. Or maybe because he’s not some random stranger in a bar; he’s a soldier. Another uniform, another man who knows exactly how dangerous this is and did it anyway.
That might be it.
The mattress springs squeak as I shift out of restlessness. We have drills in the morning, but my body is stuck in some loop of replay — shed, shower, obstacle course, fight in the trees, armoury — his face at each escalation, from annoyed to confused to furious to... that.
Fuck.
It’s not just lust — don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of that. Every time I think about the way his breath hitched when I slid my thigh between his, I have to force my hips not to move.
But underneath is something nastier.
Curiosity, and the sick, sharp satisfaction of being right about him. Of seeing past the polished, promoted surface to whatever messy thing lives underneath. It’s addictive — which is exactly why I have to be careful. I know how this story ends for men like us.
It doesn’t end in houses and warm beds and ‘let’s move in together’ fantasies. That’s not my genre. That’s not my country. It ends in lies and distance if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, it ends like Kolya.
My chest pains just thinking of his name.
