Chapter 6 6

The phone hit the couch cushion with a soft thud, and Ethan was moving toward her, his long legs eating the distance between window and door in three strides. He stopped just short of collision range, close enough that she could smell the cedar of his soap, the faint metallic undertone that seemed permanently embedded in his skin.

"I need you to understand something," he said, and his voice had dropped to that register that vibrated in her chest, that made her want to lean closer even as some part of her screamed to run. "I'm not-I don't do this. Casual relationships. Dating for the sake of dating." His hands came up, hovering near her shoulders, not quite touching. "If we're doing this, it's with purpose. With intention. With-" He stopped, searching her face for something she couldn't name. "Marriage," he finally said. "That's where this leads. That's the only place it can go, for me. If that's not-if you need time, or space, or-"

"Yes."

The word came out too fast, too eager, and she saw him blink, saw the surprise flicker across his features before he controlled it. Kiera forced herself to breathe, to moderate her tone, to remember that she was playing a role even as some treacherous part of her insisted this was real, this mattered, this was everything she'd stopped believing existed.

"I mean-" She reached for his hand, guiding it to her waist, letting her fingers rest against his wrist where his pulse hammered. "I want that too. The purpose. The intention." The lie tasted strange on her tongue, sweet and poisonous. "I want you, Ethan. All of you. Even the parts that scare me."

His exhale was shaky, almost laughable in its relief. He pulled her close, his arms wrapping around her with a force that drove the air from her lungs, his face buried in her hair. "I'll protect you," he murmured, the words muffled against her scalp. "I swear to you, Chasity, I'll keep you safe. No matter what happens, no matter where they send me-you'll never doubt that you're loved. That you're mine."

Loved. The word hit her like a physical blow, and she felt her eyes sting with tears that had nothing to do with performance. She thought of Kayden's casual cruelties, the way he'd never quite said the words even when he'd been saying everything else. She thought of the empty apartment waiting for her across town, the life she'd built from scraps and desperation.

"You're crushing my dress," she whispered, because it was easier than responding to promises she had no right to accept.

He released her immediately, his hands moving to smooth the silk he'd wrinkled, his touch gentle now, reverent. "Sorry. I'm-" He laughed, the sound startled and young. "I'm not good at this. The talking. The-" He gestured between them. "I spend most of my time with men who communicate in grunts and profanity."

"You're doing fine," she said, and was horrified to realize she meant it.

They stayed like that for a moment, close enough to share breath, the afternoon light fading to gold around them. Then Ethan checked his watch-a military habit, she was learning, the constant awareness of time as a resource to be managed-and sighed.

"I have a briefing," he said. "High-level, can't miss. But I'll drive you back first. To-" He paused, and she saw the question in his eyes, the realization that he didn't actually know where she lived. "Where should I take you?"

Kiera's mind raced. Her apartment was in a part of DC that Ethan would recognize immediately as wrong-too small, too old, too far from the embassies and museums where someone like Chasity Cantu would naturally reside. She couldn't risk him seeing the truth of her life, the cramped rooms and secondhand furniture that would expose her lie in an instant.

"The Willard," she said, naming a hotel near the White House, expensive enough to be plausible, anonymous enough to be safe. "I'm staying there. Temporarily. While my-" She improvised frantically. "While my apartment is being renovated."

Ethan accepted this without visible suspicion. He retrieved his keys, his phone, the disciplined mask settling back over his features as he transitioned from lover to officer. But his hand found hers as they walked to the truck, his fingers threading through hers with a confidence that hadn't been there that morning.

The drive to DC was different from the morning's journey. Ethan kept her hand in his, resting on his thigh, his thumb tracing patterns against her palm that made it difficult to think. At stoplights, he looked at her-long, searching looks that seemed to memorize her profile, the fall of her hair, the way her dress rode up slightly on her crossed legs.

"Tell me about your parents," he said at one point, the question casual enough to freeze her blood.

"They're traveling," she said, the lie smooth and practiced. "Europe. They do that-winter in the south of France, summer in the Hamptons. We don't see each other as much as I'd like." Truth and fiction, woven together. Her parents were dead, had been for years, but the rest-the rootlessness, the absence, the constant performance of a life that looked perfect from outside-was real enough.

Ethan nodded, accepting this. "I'd like to meet them," he said. "When they're back. To do this properly. The old-fashioned way."

Kiera's smile felt tight, stretched across teeth that wanted to chatter. "Of course," she said. "They'll be-thrilled."

They reached the Willard too soon, the grand facade looming through the windshield like a judgment. Ethan parked illegally, hazards flashing, and turned to face her in the confined space of the cab.

"I'll call you tonight," he said. "After the briefing. And tomorrow-" He reached for her, his hand cupping her jaw, his thumb tracing her lower lip. "Tomorrow I want to see you again. Properly. Dinner, somewhere public, where I can show you off like you deserve."

"Like your prize?" she teased, because it was easier than feeling.

"Like my future," he corrected, and kissed her.

It was different from the others-deliberate, thorough, a statement of intent that left her breathless and clinging to his shoulders. When he finally released her, his eyes were dark, his breathing ragged, and she felt the power of it, the heady realization that she had done this, had reduced this controlled man to this.

"Go," he said roughly. "Before I forget every reason I shouldn't follow you inside."

She went, her legs unsteady, her lips swollen, her hand raised in a wave she wasn't sure he could see through the tinted glass. She didn't look back until she was through the revolving doors, until she was safe in the marble lobby with its chandeliers and its tourists and its perfect, impersonal luxury.

Through the glass, she watched his truck merge into traffic and disappear.

The smile fell from her face like a mask discarded. Kiera sagged against a pillar, her forehead pressed to the cool marble, and tried to remember how to breathe. Her phone buzzed in her purse-a message, she knew, from the real world, from the life she'd stepped out of to play this dangerous game.

She didn't look. Couldn't look. Not yet.

Instead, she pushed through the lobby, out the side entrance, and flagged down a taxi with a hand that shook only slightly. She gave her real address, the one no one in Ethan's world knew existed, and watched the city transform around her as they drove-the monuments giving way to neighborhoods, the grandeur dissolving into something smaller, more honest, more hers.

The apartment was exactly as she'd left it: small, cluttered, desperately alive in a way that Ethan's sterile quarters had never been. She kicked off her heels, letting them lie where they fell, and reached for her phone with hands that had finally stopped shaking.

The message was from Chasity. Three words, all caps, punctuated by enough exclamation points to convey panic.

WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!

Kiera stared at the screen until her eyes burned. Then she began to type, the story spilling out in fragments and half-truths, the confession she'd never make to Ethan finding its only possible audience.

I met someone. I did something stupid. I need your help.

She hit send before she could reconsider, before she could think about what she was asking, what she was risking, what she was becoming.

The reply came in seconds. An address. A time. A demand for explanation that Kiera knew she couldn't fully provide.

She showered, changed, gathered the remnants of her courage. When she left again, the city had fully surrendered to night, and she was walking toward a conversation that would change everything.

Or nothing. With Chasity, you never knew.