Chapter 7: Reid

The kitchen light was soft. Early. Clean. The kind of morning that pretends the world isn’t violent.

I walked in because I needed caffeine and a reason not to think about the fact that I’d stood outside her door last night like an asshole.

And then Alexis Harper turned, barefoot, in a tank and shorts as if she’d stepped out of a dream I didn’t deserve to have.

She nearly collided with me. Her breath caught. Mine did too.

For a second, we just… existed there. Too close. Too quiet. Her hair twisted up, messy from sleep, skin warm from being alive, and my brain did something treasonous: it forgot how to be a commander.

My eyes dragged over her, from head to toe, before I could stop them.

I felt her notice. Felt her body tighten. She wasn’t shy. She wasn’t timid. She went still, as if trying to figure out if she was self-conscious that I was looking or for what had happened last night.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” I said.

She blinked once. “You didn’t,”

Lie.

I almost smiled. Almost.

We stood there, looking at each other, breathing the same air, and the space between us got heavier instead of smaller.

“How’d you sleep?” I asked. Closing my eyes, and realizing that was a stupid question.

Her head tilted slightly. That tiny movement sent electricity below my belt.

Get a grip, Reid. Jesus!

My jaw flexed.

“Fine,” she said.

Another lie.

“You?” she asked. Keeping the small talk going.

“Didn’t,” I admitted.

That came out a little too honest. Too raw.

Her eyes shifted to my face, not a soft stare, more assessing - as if she was taking stock of a man who didn’t look like he should have cracks.

Awkward silence.

I needed something to do with my hands before I did something stupid with them.

I reached past her to get something from the cupboard.

“Sorry, just reaching,” I said, like an idiot.

My arm brushed her side. Barely. A whisper of contact. And she flinched. A reflex so sharp it was ugly in its honesty.

My body froze and my blood went cold.

There it was. The same thing I saw in the file. The same thing I heard in her breathing last night. That involuntary recoil. The nervous system remembering for her. She tried to hide it the second it happened, bu I’d already seen it.

I lowered my arm slowly, controlled, but my attention was locked on her face. Her pulse was visible at her throat. My eyes dropped to her mouth before I could stop them. Her lips parted like she was about to say something sharp. Something defensive. Something that would put distance between us.

My hand lifted. Not to touch her, just… to hover near her cheek. A stupid, reckless instinct. As if I could soothe something I didn’t cause but still wanted to fix.

Her breath hitched. Mine too.

The air between us turned dense, suffocating, like the whole kitchen had become a sealed room.

I was so close to her that I could smell her. Citrus. Something soft underneath that didn’t feel like perfume. It felt like her. Like she’d always smelled like this and my body was finally registering it as fact.

I almost let my knuckles brush her cheek. Almost learned what she’d feel like under my hand when she wasn’t flinching.

Then the back door slammed open.

“GOOOD MORNING, SUNSHINES!”

Boots. Laughter. Noise.

I stepped back instantly. As if my body had been yanked by a leash. Control snapped into place so hard it made my teeth ache.

Evan saw us. Of course he fucking did. He saw her bare feet and tense posture. My nervous demeanor. The way her cheeks were faintly flushed. The way my shoulders looked like I’d been bracing for impact.

His smile widened. “Oh,”

Marcus laughed. “Fuck! We missed it?”

Luke’s eyes shifted between us, calm but interested.

Jonah said nothing. Just watched.

“Briefing in ten,” I said. And then I left.

Fuck.

After Sato left, the room stayed frozen for half a second. Then it started moving again. Chairs, breath, small noises that pretended this wasn’t a turning point.

Marcus clapped his hands once. “This has been sufficiently awkward. I’m going to go be literally anywhere else.”

Evan whistled, amused. “For the record, boss, I have ten bucks on you losing your shit before coffee.”

“Get out,” I said.

They left one at a time. Luke last, giving me that calm medic look as if he knew I was bleeding internally.

But Alexis lingered.

She looked at me, and she looked like she was about to say something. Like she was trying to decide if she could trust me when my men didn’t surround us.

My hands clenched because I wanted to do a lot of things in that moment. None of them was professional.

I wanted to grab her. Yank her against me so hard our bones would bruise. Pin her body with mine. Press my mouth to the pulse in her throat and lick her skin until she trembles, until her nervous system surrenders to my touch.

I wanted to fuck the defiance out of her, punish the part that thought she could walk into hell alone by making her scream my name instead.

I wanted to worship the part of her that I could by spreading her thighs and burying my face between them, making her come until she forgot how to be anything but mine.

But she didn’t speak.

She inhaled and said quietly, “Reid.”

My name on her mouth was my undoing.

Then, she turned and left.

And the room felt colder without her in it.

My shadow protocol alerted me to her location.

HARPER: MOVEMENT DETECTED (GYM)

I stared at it. Then grabbed my jacket - because I wasn’t going to let her have one quiet hour without my shadow finding her. Not anymore.

The gym was empty except for her. Early-hour quiet. None of the guys used the gym this early.

I found her at the barbells, with wrapped hands and chalked palms, her sweat making her sports bra stick to her skin. Controlled pulls. Warm-up reps. Waking her muscles as if she had made a habit of fighting herself into calm.

She dead-lifted like she was dragging the past off her back and refusing to drop it gently.

I stood there watching her.

God, she is so fucking sexy. Built like a goddess. My cock was starting to get hard.

Oh no.

She didn’t turn right away, but I knew she saw me.

She finished a rep and straightened slowly.

She turned around and looked at me with those “fuck me” eyes, and I didn’t have a word that didn’t sound like worship.

“Take a picture,” she said, looking at me intently. “It’ll last longer.”

I stepped closer, the memory of her from this morning making me hungry for her.

“What did you dream about?” I asked.

Her shoulders tightened. “How romantic,” she responded sarcastically. “Most men ask for your number first.”

I held her gaze.

“I heard you,” I said quietly.

Her throat moved. She turned away like she could outrun my attention.

I stepped closer. Not fast. I don’t want her to run.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Do what?” she snapped, sharp and bright as if she wasn’t terrified I could see through her.

“That,” I said, eyes dropping to her hand.

Her thumb was rubbing her palm. She froze. Then stopped as if she had been caught stealing.

“What do you want, Calder?” she snapped. Turning around, pretending to set up her next workout. “A debrief? A confession? A bedtime story?”

My jaw clenched.

“I heard you telling someone to stop,” I said. “And then you started choking on air.”

I saw her face fall in the mirror.

The tremor in her inhale and the darkening of her eyes completely ruined me.

“People have nightmares, Calder,” she said.

“Not like that,” I answered.

I reached out before I thought about what I was doing. I grabbed her shoulder and turned her, just enough to face me.

“Was it someone touching you?”

The second the words left my mouth, her breath snagged. And so did mine.

Her eyes started to glisten with tears. It was something that made my restraint begin to slip.

My hands slid to her wrists, fingers curling with a slow, possessive heat. It wasn’t tight, wasn’t painful, but it was firm enough to anchor her—a steady weight designed to prove I wasn’t the ghosts that haunted her.

I lifted her arms, pinning her palms against the mirror. The shock of cold glass against her flushed skin drew a jagged breath from her lungs. I watched her pulse thrash against my thumbs, a frantic, rhythmic surrender that told me she knew exactly who was holding her. I wanted to ravage her right then and there.

Her eyes widened, darkening with a hunger that mirrored my own. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t fight. And that shattered me—because if she were smart, she would have run from the way I wanted to devour her. Instead, she stayed, breathless and waiting.

Breathing hard. Lips parted. Body trembling as if she hated how much she didn’t hate it. Her back arched. Ready for me.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

My voice came out low, rough. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Her voice shook on the edges. Then she broke. Not all the way, but just enough. “That I still have nightmares about the abuse I endured when I was younger? Or how helpless I felt that I swore I’d never be that helpless again?”

The words hit me like a blade to the throat. My hands loosened instantly. Not because I wanted to let her go, but because I didn’t trust myself to hold anything that fragile without breaking it.

My fingers slid into her hair, tangling gently, reverently, like I was touching something holy.

I leaned in until my forehead met hers. And I closed my eyes because if I looked at her while she said those words, I was going to do something violent. Not to her, but to the world that had been so cruel to her.

“When I heard you,” I whispered, voice wrecked, “last night…”

My throat tightened.

“I stood there,” I admitted, barely able to breathe, “and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to fix it.”

I swallowed hard.

“I’ve been in rooms full of screaming men,” I said. “Blood on my hands. Death in my face. And I wouldn’t have flinched.”

My fingers tightened in her hair, possessive and careful at the same time.

“But hearing you… I didn’t know what to do.”

Her breath shuddered.

I pressed my forehead harder against hers.

“I can’t stand the thought of someone touching you like that,” I said, voice low and shaking with control. “Making you feel trapped.”

My eyes opened, and I looked at her.

Her lashes were wet, and her lips were trembling. It took everything in me not to put my mouth on her and erase every memory with new ones.

“I cannot stand that it happened,” I said, “and nobody paid for it.”

“Reid,” she whispered.

My name on her mouth sounded like a prayer.

“Tell me who did it, baby,” I said. Not aloud. Not commanding. Ruined. “Please, baby,”

She shook her head. “I’ve let it go.”

Her lie was soft, and her body didn’t believe it.

“I haven’t,” I whispered.

Her breath caught.

“I don’t think I can, Alexis,” I admitted, voice breaking on the truth. “Not when it’s you.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

I brushed them away with my thumb, then pressed my thumb to my lips like I was kissing the proof she was real.

“Don’t go on the mission,” I pleaded, the words tearing out of me.

Her eyes widened.

“We can do this without you going undercover,” I said, voice shaking with restraint. “I’ll find another way, baby. I’ll tear Lisbon apart brick by brick if I have to.”

I leaned closer, mouth hovering, but not touching - the restraint I have right now not to kiss her and claim her was unbearable. But I knew that would be the point of no return, and I was already falling; I could taste the ground.

“I can’t watch you walk into a room where a man like Kovac looks at you and thinks you’re his,” I whispered. “And if he touches you…”

My voice turned lethal. “I will kill him.”

Her breath hitched. She leaned her body closer and parted her lips. Ready for me. I could feel the heat from her body. All I had to do was release, and we would have had a different kind of workout.

That was the moment I realized: This was the beginning of something that would end in blood if anyone tried to take her from me.

“Let me keep you safe, baby,” I murmured, forehead still pressed to hers. “Just let me…”

Footsteps.

“Calder! You in here? You weren’t in your office.”

Marcus. Fuck. No. Not now.

My body snapped back into commander mode so hard it felt like I’d been slapped.

I stepped back, but I let my fingers let her hair go slowly.

I can’t have the men know how I feel about her. Not because I didn’t want her, but because I wanted her too much.

Alexis turned around and wiped her cheek. Quick and controlled.

Luke walked in behind Marcus and saw her first.

“Alexis,” Luke said gently. “Are you okay? Have you just been crying?”

“What? No. Of course not,” she said, too fast. “It’s allergies. I think I’m allergic to something in here.”

She forced a laugh. “Commander Calder asked me the same thing.”

Luke’s eyes darted to me.

I nodded once.

I hated myself for it.

“I see,” Luke said smoothly, accepting it. For now. “I’ll have the vents checked. Increase filtration. Jonas has been saying that it’s a little stuffy in here.”

“Thanks, Luke,” she whispered.

Marcus looked between us, suspicious, but then he grinned. “Glad it’s just allergies and not Calder making you cry. I was gonna kick his ass for you.”

He punched my arm.

I was looking at her, hunger in my eyes.

Alexis laughed again, brighter this time. “Calder? Make me cry? Please.”

And then she looked at me, and all I needed was that one look. I knew what she was doing. She was drawing a line. A boundary. She knew that the man who begged her in private was gone, and Commander Calder was standing in his place.

“No offense, Commander,” she added, cold enough that it stung.

I forced my voice flat. “None taken.”

I watched something in her expression tighten.

Confusion? Conflict? Frustration?

I can see the question form in her head:

Which one of you is real?

Marcus clapped my shoulder, which took me out of my trance. “Come on, Reid. Mission to plan.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay with her and make her scream my name. I wanted to worship every single inch of her body until she’s all mine.

But I knew I couldn’t, so instead, I just nodded.

Because if I spoke, I would have admitted to something I couldn’t afford to say out loud.

That I had already lost.

That was the only time I felt like I could breathe when her body was pressed to mine.

The second anyone entered the room, I became a man I hated.

And the worst part?

I knew exactly why. Because if my team saw how badly I wanted her, how far gone I already was, they would realize that she’s not an asset anymore. She’s now a liability.

She would have become my weakness. She is my weakness.

And in our world, weaknesses get used as leverage.

I walked out with Marcus and Luke. And I saw Evan walking towards us.

“Alexis in the gym?” he asked. His glasses were sliding down the bridge of her nose.

“Yep,” replied Marcus. “Leave the poor woman alone, Evan. You’ve been like a dog in fucking heat ever since she got here.”

I glared at Evan, but I didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, yeah,” Evan said, his hand waving dismissively.

I watched Evan walk into the gym and heard him call out her name.

I could still feel her body against mine. Her eyes looked at me, bewildered. I could still feel her absence like a phantom limb.

As I walked in the hallway, one thought lodged in my skull so deeply it felt like it was engraved in it:

If I do not learn to be the man she saw in the gym.. I’m going to lose her to the version of me that can’t love her out loud.

And that would be the only failure I would never survive.