Page 27 of Sawyer
Dinner,while lovely, is a memory I barely tasted. Vanessa’s texted that she’s safely tucked in at her condo; Riggs is on the night perimeter shift. Edgar retired early. The mansion feels too big, too dark, too echoing with what-ifs. I pace my bedroom suite, replaying every awful scenario this coming week could birth.
A faint knock raps. Sawyer steps in, gaze sweeping, confirming all clear before focusing on me in my oversized Stanford sweatshirt and boxer-short pajama bottoms.
“Hall post secured,” he says. “You should sleep.”
“You too.” I pat the edge of the bed. “Which is why you should sit in here instead of the hallway. That chair—” I pointto a high-backed armchair near the window—“looks marginally more comfortable than a floorboard.”
His jaw ticks. “Cam…”
“Platonic proximity,” I assure. “Guardian-angel chic.”
He hesitates … then nods. “Ten minutes. Then I’ll rotate with Riggs.”
He crosses, drags the chair closer to the foot of the bed, and sits. Shadow pools around his shoulders, the moonlight cutting along his cheekbones. The silhouette alone is a whole romance novel.
I slip under the duvet, but sleep is a mirage. I can feel him watching—alert, heart beating in sync with the pulse thrumming in my ears. The room smells faintly of cedar and linen. That combination is becoming a Pavlovian arousal.
Minutes tick by. We say nothing, yet every second furls the tether tighter. Finally I can’t stand the distance. I can’t breathe.
“Would it ruin your professional reputation,” I whisper, “to lie beside me—just to help me sleep?”
Silence spikes. He shifts, tension coiling. “You know the line we’re dancing.”
“I know you drew it,” I counter. My voice shakes but I keep going. “It’ll be there in the morning. Tonight, I need to borrow warmth.”
His exhale is a ragged cliff edge. He rises—slow, deliberate—and approaches the bedside. “On top of the covers,” he says, as if reminding himself. “Armed.”
“Promise not to steal your sidearm.” My smile is shaky, but real.
He slides in, fully clothed, lying stiff as a board. I turn on my side, facing him. The duvet separates us, yet heat radiates between our bodies like an illicit current. I take one brave inch closer.
“You okay?” he murmurs.
“Not even a little,” I admit. “Someone wants to ruin everything good and colorful. But right now, with you here, I can almost pretend they won’t.”
He lifts his hand, hovers, then cups the nape of my neck, thumb stroking tiny circles. Fireworks ignite low in my belly.
“Itwon’tend like that,” he vows, voice earthquake steady. “I’m walls and doors, remember?”
“More than that,” I whisper. “You’re the reason I keep breathing deep.”
A soft, incredulous sound escapes him. He leans in, forehead resting against mine. We breathe each other’s air. If I angle my mouth two centimeters, I’ll taste him. Every cell begs.
He whispers, “After the gala.”
I nod, but my control snaps. I press the gentlest kiss against the corner of his mouth—barely a brush, a promise etched in air. He trembles, and I feel it. But he turns his head, captures my lips fully with his for a heartbeat—hot, sure, infinite—before pulling back. He never deepened the kiss, yet somehow, it was the hottest kiss I’d ever experienced.
His eyes are molten. “Sleep now, Cam.”
Somehow, wrapped in electric silence, I do. His heartbeat thunders under my ear, and the last thing my mind records isthe safe weight of his arm above the covers, curved protectively around my hip without truly holding, yet holding everything that matters.
11
Sawyer
05:14 —?Dawn drags pewter light across the eastern ridge and finds me on the roof, wind stinging my face while Orange-Team’s newest drone completes its final diagnostics. A month ago I would have relished the quiet click-hum of rotors waking up over a city that still half-sleeps. Today I’m wrestling an entirely different engine—the one idling under my ribs since Cam’s mouth brushed mine last night.
I told herafter the gala.
