Page 6 of Thorne
I step back.
The air between us feels colder when my hand leaves her throat, though the ghost of her pulse lingers in my palm like a burn I can't quite shake.
I drag a chair from the corner of the tent and point to it.
She sits.
No hesitation. No hesitation ever with her.
I pull the second chair to the entrance and drop into it, setting the field table between us. The Glock comes apart in my hands out of habit.
Barrel.
Recoil spring.
Slide.
Frame.
Each piece is laid out in a clean sequence.
I start the cleaning process slowly, deliberately, the way you do when you want someone watching to understand exactly what kind of work your hands are used to doing.
She watches.
Good.
Let her.
She's afraid.
Not the kind of fear people have when they're afraid of the dark. Not the sloppy panic of someone begging for their life.
Something cleaner.
The fear of someone who has already done the accounting. Someone who knows precisely what she's worth—and what happens when her value runs out.
I run the cloth through the barrel.
Don't look up.
Don't look at her.
Because the second I do, my body will remember the shape of her throat beneath my hand. The calm strength of that pulse. The quiet way she stood there and let me touch her as if I owned the space between us.
I refuse to give that thought a place to live.
I focus on the Glock.
Steel. Oil. Precision.
Anything but the woman sitting across from me, who, for reasons I don't want to understand, has my nerves wired tighter than a live circuit.
Twenty minutes in, while I'm cleaning the Glock, she opens her mouth.
"Don't." I don't look up.
She closes it.
