LOGINStory 3 I Fucked the Man I Swore to Protect Chapter 5 We lasted eleven days before they found us. Eleven days of cheap motels, cash only, burner phones, and roads that never stayed straight long enough to feel safe. Cassian dyed his hair a dull brown that didn’t suit him. I shaved the beard I’d kept for years. We slept in shifts. We fucked in the dark with one ear open for engines that didn’t belong. It wasn’t romantic. It was survival with his mouth on mine whenever the fear got too loud. On the twelfth night the pattern broke. We were in a two-room rental on the edge of a nowhere coastal town, paid through a shell Cassian had set up years ago “just in case.” I was at the window with the lights off when the same black sedan from the private road rolled past twice in twenty minutes. I didn’t wake him with words. I woke him with a hand over his mouth and my mouth against his ear. “They’re here. Two minutes. Maybe less.” His body went rigid, then ready. No panic. Just the sha
I Fucked the Man I Swore to Protect Chapter 4 The twenty-four hours lasted nineteen. I was in the security office reviewing perimeter logs when Victor Rowe opened the door and told everyone else to leave. The two operators on duty glanced at me, then at him, and cleared out without a word. Victor closed the door. He didn’t sit. “The firm recommended rotating you off primary detail this morning,” he said. “Fresh eyes. Less emotional continuity. Standard after two direct attempts.” My spine locked. “And?” “I agreed.” He watched my face with the same calm he used in boardrooms. “You’ll finish the current shift. At 1800 a new lead takes over. You’ll remain on the property in a support capacity until the threat is resolved, but you will no longer be my son’s shadow. Clear?” The contract and the man stepped onto opposite sides of the line exactly as I had known they would. “Clear,” I said. Victor’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “You don’t look surprised.” “I’m not.”
I Fucked the Man I Swore to Protect Chapter 3 The second attempt came two nights later. Not a bullet this time. A car. Black, no plates, engine already screaming when it cut across the private road that led up to the house. I had Cassian on the floor of the SUV before the impact would have taken the rear quarter panel. Glass starred. Tires shredded. My driver—ex-military, good—fought the wheel and put us through the secondary gate on pure momentum. We made it inside the perimeter. Barely. Cassian’s father lost whatever softness he had left. The house went into full lockdown. Extra men on the walls. No more café runs. No more “fresh air.” Cassian was restricted to the main residence and the interior courtyard, and I was ordered not to leave his side for longer than a bathroom break. Victor said it in front of both of us. “You are his shadow until this ends. Sleep outside his door if you have to. I don’t care how it looks.” Cassian’s mouth twitched. I kept my face emp
Chapter 2Extraction was clean on paper.In reality it was four armed men in plain clothes, a black SUV that smelled like gun oil, and Cassian sitting too close to me in the back seat with his thigh pressed against mine like the panic room had never ended. He had borrowed my jacket. It hung on him wrong. Every time the vehicle took a corner I caught the faint scent of sex still on his skin.His father was waiting at the safe house.Not a hotel. A private residence in the hills with gates, dogs, and men who looked at me the way professionals look at someone who might already be compromised.Victor Rowe stood in the foyer in a charcoal sweater and the kind of calm that cost more than most people’s annual salary. He hugged his son once, hard, then held him at arm’s length and checked for blood like a man who had done it before.“You’re unhurt.”“I’m fine,” Cassian said. “Roman got me out.”Victor’s eyes cut to me.“Report.”I gave it. Gallery layout. Angle of the shot. Time to the panic
Chapter 1The first shot hit the concrete six inches from Cassian’s left shoe.I had him moving before the echo finished. One hand locked on the back of his neck, the other already drawing. People screamed. The gallery lights turned everything white and useless. I shoved him through the staff door, down the service corridor, and into the reinforced panic suite the museum kept for exactly this kind of night.The door sealed with a heavy magnetic thud.Silence slammed down after it.Cassian Rowe—twenty-five, trust-fund, mouth permanently set on trouble—stood in the middle of the small concrete room breathing hard, eyes bright, a smear of dust on one cheek. His tuxedo jacket was open. The silk shirt underneath had come untucked. He looked more alive than he had all evening.“Was that real?” he asked.“Yes.”“Aimed at me?”“Yes.”He laughed once, sharp and delighted, like the bullet had been a compliment.I holstered the weapon, checked the internal panel, and ran the secondary locks. Cam
Chapter 5Two weeks after the wedding that never happened, the noise thinned enough for the real quiet to arrive.It was worse.The group chats slowed. The passive-aggressive posts stopped getting as many likes. Mutual friends decided, one by one, whether they were still speaking to us. Some were. Most weren’t. Lena’s sister blocked Julian. Claire never unblocked either of us. Ben sent a short, awkward text that said I don’t hate you, I just can’t be in the middle, and then silence.Julian’s mother called once. She cried. She said she loved him. She also said his father still wouldn’t say his name at the dinner table. Julian listened, thanked her, and hung up with his jaw locked so tight I heard it click.He moved a duffel of clothes into my place without calling it moving in. We didn’t label anything. Labels felt dangerous while the ground was still shifting.On a Thursday evening the last confrontation found us anyway.We were coming back from the grocery store—normal errands, the k
Chapter 2: Bound by the Secret The flash from Damien’s phone burned behind my eyelids long after he lowered the device. My knees still ached against the basement carpet, my lips felt swollen and raw, and the taste of him lingered on my tongue like a brand I could not wash away. I stared up at him,
Chapter 1: Caught in the Dark I never thought I would see my stepbrother like this. The house was supposed to be empty. Mom and Dad had left for their anniversary weekend, and I had planned to spend the night buried in my books, finally getting some peace from Damien’s constant noise. Hockey prac
Chapter 1: Caught in the ActThe bass from Jordan’s speakers thumped through the walls as I slipped out of his room, heart hammering like a damn traitor. The party downstairs was still raging—cheap beer, shitty EDM, and too many people crammed into his parents’ living room. But I wasn’t going back
Chapter 4: Shadows and Surrender The crack outside the cabin window jolted me awake before dawn, my body still sore and marked from Damien’s relentless claiming the night before. I lay tangled in the heavy blankets, his arm draped possessively over my waist, his breath warm against my neck. For a







