Chapter 51 No Armor Left
Eli’s POV
For a moment I did not know why my chest felt heavier and better at the same time.
Then I looked down and remembered.
Sloane was draped half across me, cheek on my sternum, hair a dark spill over my skin and pillow. One leg thrown over mine, her hand splayed flat on my ribs like she was anchoring herself in sleep. Sun slid in around the edges of the curtains in soft streaks, catching on her lashes and the faint curve of her mouth.
She looked younger like this. Softer. Less like the woman who could eviscerate a boardroom with a sentence and more like the kid who had once cracked her dad’s network for fun and paid for it ever since.
Every professional boundary I had ever drawn was somewhere back on the floor with our clothes. I knew that.
I also knew I did not care in any way I recognized from before.
I lay still and let myself feel it. The warmth of her weight. The way my body had relaxed enough in the night that my hand still rested on the small of her back like it had grown there. The startling fact that I had slept, really slept, with someone in my arms for the first time since a courtyard exploded.
Her eyelids fluttered. She blinked up at me, squinting at the light, then registered our tangle of limbs and the way my chest rumbled under her ear.
“Morning,” she said, voice scratchy.
“Hey,” I answered. My hand moved instinctively, tracing a lazy line up and down her spine.
She made a small sound that went straight to places I should not think about yet and pushed herself up onto an elbow. The sheet slipped down her back, baring skin and the start of a bruise my fingers had left on her hip.
A flush hit my neck. Equal parts desire and the sharp urge to pull the blanket back up and shield her from everything, even sunlight.
“You are staring,” she said.
“Occupational hazard,” I said. “Securing the perimeter.”
“Inside security now, literally,” she deadpanned.
I huffed a laugh. “Terrible joke,” I said. “True though.”
We ended up in the kitchen wrapped in sheets, because neither of us felt like putting on real clothes yet. I made coffee while she perched on the counter, legs swinging, hair in a knot that was losing the battle.
“You know,” she said, watching me fuss with the machine, “I have seen you take apart a Glock in ten seconds. The fact that this filter still confuses you is a comfort.”
“I am choosing to prioritize other skills,” I replied. “Besides, you like me a little incompetent somewhere.”
“Balance,” she said. “Fine. You can protect me from bullets. I will protect us from bad coffee.”
For a few minutes, it was easy. Jokes and caffeine and bare feet on cold tile. Real domesticity. It felt borrowed and wildly, stupidly precious.
Then reality crept back in.
I set my mug down and leaned against the island opposite her. “What do you need from me,” I asked, “to not feel like I am just another person standing over you with a contract.”
She went very still, fingers around her cup. Then she met my eyes.
“I need you to tell me when your instinct to protect me is about me,” she said slowly, “and when it is about Amira’s ghost.”
The name landed between us with the weight of desert air.
I looked away, jaw tightening. “There are times,” I admitted, “when I overcorrect. When I see you move toward a risk and every client I lost, or might have lost, stacks up in my head and you turn into all of them at once. That is not fair. To you. Or to them.”
She let that sit, then nodded. “So we call it out,” she said. “When I feel you locking something down because of a warzone in your head, I will tell you. You listen. You adjust.”
“And when you start treating every relationship like a hostile takeover,” I said, “I will do the same.”
Her mouth curved. “Mutually assured therapy.”
“Something like that,” I said.
We talked London over the second pot of coffee. The summit invite Mika had dug out of Mariah’s archive sat open on my phone. Closed door gathering. Security Research Council affiliates. Noah, Avalon Ridge, state security people. One strategic partner slot reserved for either Mercer or Sentinel Gate.
“We use it,” Sloane said. “I go as CEO. As the security mind they still think they can seduce. We watch. We listen. We find out who is actually steering what is left.”
I hated the idea of dropping her into a room full of people who had tried so hard to break her. I hated more that she was right.
“Your presence is the bait,” I said. “You know that.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am tired of being hunted. I would like, just once, to be the one walking into someone else’s trap with my eyes open.”
Mila joined via video, her face in a little square on the counter between us, hair up in a knot, code glow reflecting in her glasses.
“Guest list is a Who Tried To Kill Sloane party,” she said. “Noah. Avalon Ridge. Two mid level government types we suspect are HERA’s old friends. Security is tight but run by contractors I know how to bribe. Backdoor options exist.”
She flicked to a floor plan. Entrances. Exits. Potential blind spots. “We can get you in as official, Eli as security strategist. I will stay in London ops and scream in your ears if anything looks weird.”
“Define weird,” I said.
“Beyond the basic fact of them existing,” she shot back.
By the time the call ended, flights were tentatively booked and my stomach felt like lead.
That night, sleep did not come easy. When it did, it dragged me somewhere I did not want to go.
Amira’s courtyard blurred with a conference stage. Dust and smoke and applause mixing. She was walking toward the gate again, scarf trailing, and then it was Sloane in a suit, spotlights on her, nameless shooters at the back of the hall. My radio clicked. Comms cut. Cameras glitched out one by one.
I shouted and no sound came. The blast hit. Both of them disappeared in the same white flash.
I woke with a choking gasp, shirt plastered to my skin, heart trying to punch out of my chest.
Light from the window painted the room in faint blue. Sloane was awake, propped on an elbow, eyes wide on my face.
“Hey,” she said softly. “You are here. Not there.”
I dragged a hand over my face. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Did not mean to wake you.”
“You did,” she said. “Good.”
I blinked at her.
“You do not get to be the only one doing the catching,” she said, and pulled me in.
I let myself be pulled. Let my forehead drop to her shoulder, her arms wrap around my back. The tremor in my muscles slowly eased.
“I am terrified of losing you,” I admitted into her skin. The words scraped on their way out. “London. Helix. Your father. Every time you walk into a room full of those people, some part of me is back in that courtyard.”
She stroked a hand through my hair, slow. “I am terrified of losing you too,” she said. “The difference is, I am done letting that fear make all my decisions.”
Silence settled, heavy and oddly gentle.
We drifted back toward sleep eventually. Her breathing evened out first. Mine followed.
Somewhere on the nightstand, my phone buzzed. The screen lit the room for a second, just enough for me to see Lucas’s name and the preview.
We need to talk about London. Council has invited Ward as demonstration partner. This is bigger than we thought.
I stared at it, then at Sloane’s sleeping face inches from mine.
No armor left, I thought.
Good.
We were going to need skin in this game.