Page 15 of The Vagabond

Her eyes found me. And the world stilled.

There were no monsters outside the door. No cameras. No pretending. Just her. Just us.

She smiled. God, she smiled—and it gutted me. That rare kind of smile that reached all the way to her eyes, like she had never known what it felt like to be owned.

“You found me,” she said, her voice like silk across skin.

“I never stopped looking.”

I crawled into bed beside her, careful. Like if I moved too fast, she would disappear.

Like maybe this was one of those cruel dreams that ended too soon, and I was clinging to every detail before I woke.

She touched my face. Fingertips brushing my jaw, my cheek. Her thumb skimmed my lower lip like she was relearning it. Like she was claiming it. And I let her. Because in this place, in this breath of a world, she was mine.

I pressed my forehead to hers, and we just breathed—her hands curled into my T-shirt, my fingers grazing the bare skin of her spine. I could feel the ridges of her body, soft and warm and real beneath my touch.

“I missed you," she murmured.

I closed my eyes.

“I'm still missing you,” I confessed.

Then her mouth was on mine—slow, deep, familiar. Her lips parted for me like she was made to. Like she had never kissed anyone else. And I kissed her like she was the only clean thing I had ever touched.

Clothes fell away, piece by piece. Quietly. Like secrets neither of us needed to keep anymore. Her body slid against mine, soft curves and heat and everything I had tried so hard to forget.

I buried my face in her neck. Breathed her in. My name slipped from her lips like a prayer, and I lost myself inside her. We moved together, slow and unhurried, like time didn’t exist here. Like we had been doing this forever and this was always our ending.

Her hands framed my face as I rocked into her, her eyes locked on mine. She had no shame or fear. It was just Maxine. Whole. Unbroken. Free.

“Don’t wake up yet,” she whispered.

But I could feel it already. The shift. The pull. The edges of the dream unraveling.

“No,” I whispered back. “Not yet.”

Her fingers tightened.

I kissed her again. Harder this time. Like I could stay if I just held her tight enough. Like maybe if I buried myself deep enough in her warmth, I wouldn’t have to let go.

But the sheets dissolved. The light faded. Her breath pulled away from mine and evaporated like smoke.

I woke up with her name stuck in my throat, like I had choked on it in the night and never quite swallowed it down. My heart was still racing. My cock was hard. My hands ached with the phantom memory of her skin. But she wasn’t there.

Just the cracked ceiling of a safehouse somewhere in war-torn Ukraine, the smell of gunpowder and smoke in the air, and the low static of the comms radio whispering into the dark.

I rolled over, pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, and breathed through the ache. It didn’t work. Because even then, I could still taste her. It had been months. And still—still—she was the first thought in my head every morning. The last one every night. The itch under my skin that wouldn’t goaway no matter how much blood I shed or whiskey I drowned in.

Maxine fucking Andrade.

I tried to tell myself it had been the mission. That the obsession was a side effect of proximity, of adrenaline, of guilt. But I knew better. It wasn’t guilt. It was possession. I had her. In my arms. In my bed. In my goddamn soul. And I let her go. I told myself it was safer that way. That Igor Aslanov had more power to protect her than I ever would. That stepping back meant giving her a real chance at freedom.

But the truth? The truth was I had walked away because I was scared. Scared I’d ruin her. Scared I’d burn down the entire operation, get us both killed, just because I couldn’t stop wanting her.

Now I was halfway across the world, pretending to give a shit about briefings and satellite feeds while every cell in my body screamed for a girl I wasn’t supposed to want.

She had been broken when I found her. Shattered porcelain. And now? Now I couldn’t even check in on her. I couldn’t know if she was safe. If she was eating. Sleeping. Healing. If her nightmares had stopped. If she hated me for leaving.

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