Vi set her supplies on the coffee table and plunked down on the carpet facing the door. Jacob assured her he’d escort Jud there as soon as they returned to the compound. He’d run into Nomad to pick up some supplies. Her hands trembled, but she spread the materials out. The thin colored strips of paper fanned out before her soothed the beast within her, the one that sometimes reared its head when an op didn’t quite go as planned.

Two new Arsenal agents had suffered minor injuries. All in all, it had been a successful strike.

Except for her almost losing Fallon’s team. Oh, and the compound getting attacked because she hadn’t thought far enough ahead.

She forced back the thought. For now, she’d reboot her mind, decompress. That’s what this time was about.

The door opened. Jud prowled in. His gaze settled on her immediately. Jaw twitching, he sat beside her on the ground. “What’s all this?”

“Quillery,” she answered. “Most call it quilling today. It’s an art of paper filigree.”

“That’s where your handle came from.”

Curiosity softened his voice to a velvety sound. She spun a red strip of paper into shape and positioned it into the teardrop shaper. A squish and a couple tugs with her tool and she was ready for glue. “My mom taught me.”

Why had she offered the morsel of information? Few even knew she quilled. It was the one connection to her past she maintained.

“You enjoy it?”

She shrugged. “It soothes the beast, helps me decompress when things don’t go smoothly.” She swallowed when his hand rested on her ankle. She’d opted for loose sweats and a baggy t-shirt. Heat spread through her as his thumb raked against the exposed skin just above her ankle. She jerked her foot away, but he held on.

“Touch sooths my beast, Viviana,” he whispered. “We’ve both had a long, bad day. Everything went sideways.”

“Everyone’s okay.”

“But not what was expected,” he surmised.

“The work we do isn’t what you do. We can’t pile up bodies, that undermines us with the alphabet soup and everyone else we’re working to protect.” She smooshed a blue strip next. Another teardrop. The pattern swirled around in her head. She reached for the special pile of papers. The strips she’d made especially for this creation.

“What are you making?” he asked.

“A mandala.”

“Your mom made them?”

“No, she…” Vi shoved back the angry retort, focusing on the glide of his fingertips against her skin. Her pulse quickened. “I started mandalas when I got out of college. They soothed me more. Mom started me on this because my brain didn’t shut down. I’d have a hard time sleeping. I was always thinking, asking questions. Annoying people.”

Annoying her.

The gentle glide stopped. Contact firmed, but she craved the stroke. Like a cat seeking attention, she stretched her foot forward, just enough to get his attention.

“Kids aren’t an annoyance, Viviana. I’m sorry she saw you as one. Inquisitive children are a blessing.” He whispered the statement as he stroked again, this time further up her calf.

She swallowed and curled the first strip of special yellow paper into a ball. Another teardrop, this one smaller. Subtle to disguise its importance. No one ever needed to know the small secret it held, the piece of herself she left behind.

“Show me,” he said.

The second strip of yellow uncurled. She looked up at him. “What?”

“Show me how to do this.” He shifted closer. His hand settled on hers. “May I?”

She nodded. Confusion shook off the frustration she’d carted around, the outright anger she’d directed toward him. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“It’s boring. I’m boring.” She peered up as she squished the yellow paper ball into shape. “Only cat people quill, Jud. It’s a rule.”

He smiled, the molten one that made her insides warm. Firm, confident strokes moved up her calf, an exposed calf. How the heck had he gotten her sweatpants moved up? Real smooth, Jensen. Real smooth. She stifled the amusement and focused on the task at hand.

“It’s important to you, Viviana. Show me why.”

“I don’t share this. It’s for me.”

“Fair enough. Then I’ll watch.” He deepened the contact, shifting attention to her foot.

“Don’t tell me you have a foot fetish,” she retorted.

“I’m tactile. The quillery soothes you. Touch sooths me.” He applied pressure with his thumb on the bottom of her foot and she nearly groaned.

Definitely a masseuse god.

“Whatever,” she muttered, not willing to admit how aware she was of each touch.

They fell into a comfortable silence. Time passed, but she lost track of the seconds, the minutes. All that existed were the strips of paper, important interspersed with bright, bold colors.

And Jud’s touch. Firm, confident and soothing.

“Mom and Dad didn’t like that I was smart. Said I was too smart for my own good.” She bit her lip and offered a bigger morsel, one that had built up in her as important to share. “My brother was a sports jock.”

“Older,” he guessed.

“Yeah, three years. I accelerated past him before he was in the ninth grade. I graduated a year before him, but it should’ve been two.” She curled another yellow and squished. This time she used a different variation of teardrop, one she’d made up. “I went to MIT because they offered a full ride. Mom and Dad weren’t pleased, but having me away helped get attention back on him.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen,” she replied. “Mom hired someone to serve as my caregiver. Exceptions were extended by the school. It was tough, but then I met Mary and things got easier.”

“Jesus, you were a baby,” he muttered. “How old was she?”

“Fifteen. She…” Though it wasn’t her story to tell, she offered a morsel. “She came from a rougher background. School was an escape for her.”

“And for you.”

She froze, startled by his insight. “I had a good upbringing, two parents who loved me.”

“You don’t have to hide behind the facade, not with me.”

And that’s what disturbed her even more. She felt comfortable exposing this small part of her she’d kept tucked away. Her insides ached, as if scraped raw. She scooped up the shapes she’d formed and put them in a small box. She’d finish later, after she’d tended to business. Judson Jensen was a distraction, one that’d be gone soon enough.

“We need to look into what all we found at Jian’s, make sure his ring is down for good. We probably missed some stuff, so I need to get what that was to the Feds so they can clean up the mess.”

“We will, in the morning. After you’ve rested.” He took her hand. “When was the last time you really slept? I’m not talking about in the down room.”

Ages ago. Sleep didn’t come easy, not anymore. But that wasn’t his business. She’d given him too much of herself already tonight.

Oh, and you slept in his freaking arms. God, she was a flaming hot mess.

“Marshall and Dylan want to put you on a team, get you more used to functioning with a team since you’ll be here a while. What happened today can’t happen again. You saved our asses, but you went lone wolf. I heard the calls. You didn’t want Marcus and them anywhere near you because you were worried you’d take them out by mistake.”

His jaw twitched. “You’re right. I was. Old habits are hard to break.”

She and Mary had yet to look at the hard drive, mainly because she’d locked it in a vault and refused. Truth told, she was terrified of what was on it. Terrified it’d change her view of Jud. Terrified of why that view changing even mattered, because it shouldn’t. Jud shouldn’t be a bullet point in her life. Yet he was.

He’d been so certain she’d judge him for what was on the hard drive. She didn’t want to, but her words and actions already did so.

“Today scared me, Jud,” she admitted. “I was so focused on the camps and Dover, I got cocky and didn’t even consider the compound could fall under attack. I failed everyone here. I’m just lucky you were here to pick up the slack.”

“You didn’t fail anyone.” He cupped her face. “No one’s perfect. You and Mary had too much on your plate today.”

“Fallon’s team was almost taken. I still don’t have details, but I had to trust a stranger to keep them safe because I got too wrapped up in the camps and never thought he wouldn’t be okay.” She forced a deep breath. “I can’t get distracted. There’s too much at stake, too many lives relying on me to keep them safe.”

“And you think I’m distracting you.”

Yes. Maybe. “I don’t know. You’re an unknown in so many ways. I can’t take that risk.”

Jud glanced at the form. “Is this about the form, or something else?”

“You know what I mean, Jud. But, yeah. The form is important. Mary and I have never placed an asset on a team or worked with one unless we can fill this out.” She motioned toward the four-page intricate list. “I tried filling this out earlier. I got past your name and was guessing at everything else.”

Jud picked up the list, visibly tightening when he realized what it was.

“Mary and I never work with an operative unless we have at least the first half of this form filled out and verified. The more we know, the easier the op and the higher the likelihood everyone returns breathing.” She locked gazes. “You’re a threat because you’re a phantom, a total unknown.”

“Look at me,” he ordered.

He cupped her face. Despite her best intention otherwise, she complied. “Jud, don’t.”

“Not doing anything, Viviana. Tonight’s about decompression, nothing else. I won’t ever put you or your teams at risk. I’m thankful as fuck you and your crews handled themselves so well through all this. I’m not used to working with teams. I’ll adjust.”

No. That wasn’t the response she wanted, needed.

Adjustment meant he planned to stick around.

“Come on.” He stood and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Bed.”

Anticipation wove with desire. Her hand tingled when he took it and guided her to a standing position.

“Not like that, Viviana,” he whispered. “Your expressions are so readable when your guard is down.”

Hot breath trailed against her cheek when he held her close. She craved the contact.

“You’re dead on your feet. Let’s get you into bed. We’ll figure everything else out tomorrow.”

She watched in shock as he carefully gathered her supplies and returned them to the carrier. He placed it under his arm and guided her toward the hallway. She wandered behind him, suddenly bone tired. Her brain was mush, quiet and silent. She welcomed the blissful numbness crawling through her. He set the supplies beside the bed and aimed her toward the bathroom.

“Do what you’ve gotta do. I’ll turn down your bed.”

He’d turn down the bed. Vi wandered into the bathroom and tried to remember the last time a man had turned down her bed. Never. By the time she headed back out, the overhead light was off. Pale yellow light shone from the nightstand lamp. She crawled beneath the down-turned covers and moaned. A bed had never felt so good.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Sorry, I haven’t slept in a while.”

“Lay on your stomach. I’ll rub you down.”

The temptation was too good. She remembered how good his hands felt on her. She sighed and surrendered to the offer, the comfort. She closed her eyes as he started massaging her shoulders.

* * *

There was a special place in hell for assholes like him. Blood surged southward as Jud massaged his way down Viviana’s back. Her soft moans and sighs kept him focused on the wrong things, but after a shit day he needed this moment—being nothing more than a man taking care of a good woman, one who’d had an equally shitty day. Security was stretched thin, but Marcus assured him it was under control for a few hours. Jacob was monitoring HERA’s readouts and promised to contact him if there was trouble.

“Relax, Viviana. You’re too tense.”

“This is the most relaxed I’ve been in years.” The pillow muffled her words as she relaxed deeper into the bed beneath them. “You’re too good at this. Was this in the assassin training manual?”

“In a way,” he admitted. “The better you know the human body, the better you can be at hand-to-hand combat. Using what I learned like this is a lot more enjoyable, though.”

“It’s hard doing what you do,” she stated.

“Yes. The day taking a life becomes easy is when you should eat a bullet. But there’s a difference between a distant kill through a scope and close contact.”

“How so?” Her voice was soft, but held more emotion and concern than he’d gotten from anyone in a while. More than he deserved.

“It’s more personal, harder to scrub from your mind.” Knives were a weapon he excelled at, but they created their own demons.

Arterial sprays, walking away from a fight with someone’s blood covering you. Though he rarely went into a battle like that unless absolutely necessary, the aftermath was the same. Hot showers and skin scrubs only did so much to wipe away what he’d done—taken a life to save his own. Or someone else’s. Every life taken came with a price, a penance. No one walked away from war unscathed.

Jud accepted the burdens of his chosen life long ago, but that didn’t make it any easier. “When The Collective allowed me to reestablish contact with my family, I was thrilled at first. I’d been in the dark, alone, too long. I was ready to live, savor family and take a hit of the good I worked to protect. Then I realized it was just a deeper layer of hell.”

“Because you weren’t out, not really.”

“No. I was straddling the line and more alone than ever because I wanted to insulate them from what I did. I’d moved away from the really intense work, but the contracts assigned to me were…complicated.”

“Jacob knows more than I expected him to,” she whispered. “He’s a lot like me when I was that age. Curious and head-strong.”

“He’s definitely nosy and stubborn.” Jud chuckled. “He’s why I forced the new deal. Communication with me and my family before then was very rare, but my parents had a contact for emergencies. Jacob hit his rebellious stage early, started hacking and using his skills for personal gain.”

“It’s hard being a teenager and not fitting in. It’s easy to stumble onto the wrong path, especially if there are people around who want you on that path.” She arced upward when he stopped massaging, as if seeking his touch. “Mary and I went into our rebellious stage together, started hacking for the wrong reasons our sophomore year at MIT. That’s how we ran across the pedophiles and assholes we initially targeted with our first version of HERA.”

“I bet they didn’t know what hit them.”

“It took a while to perfect, but we eventually got a good thing going. We could identify just about anyone and provide law enforcement with their identities and copies of everything they had on their system, where they’d been and who they’d been chatting with. One of the last stings we did our senior year was how we got on Peter Rugers’ radar. He recruited us into Hive.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I should’ve known he wasn’t much better than the assholes we were bringing down.”

“You’re a beautifully brilliant woman, Viviana, smart enough to understand and accept that not everything is your fault. Things are going to go wrong. It isn’t always because you did something wrong or missed something. Even if it is, you’re human. No one’s perfect.”

“You’re a lone wolf. A team’s only as strong as its foundation, and that’s me. If I’m not one hundred and twenty-five percent solid, I weaken their success before the mission is a go. Take today, for example. I should have realized Fallon’s team was in as much danger as the rest of the teams, but I didn’t because he wasn’t striking a camp. A total stranger saved his ass because I wasn’t there to do it.”

“You and Mary had eight teams to coordinate at once in what most would think was an impossible mission. And that stranger was one you recruited, right? You put her in as a contingency because you knew she might be needed. And she was.” He maneuvered from a straddling position atop her and urged her to turn over until she was on her back and looking up at him. “You’re an amazing woman, Viviana. But you’re wrong.”

“I am?”

“The hardest missions are those someone takes on alone. When I’m a lone wolf, I don’t have someone to pick up my slack if things go sideways. No matter what might go down, those teams today had each other. And you.” He cupped her face. “I wish you could see how fucking incredible you and Edge are. You have no idea. I want to punch whoever made you believe it’s your fault whenever something goes wrong, because that’s not true, Viviana. When something goes wrong, you are the one who fixes it. You’re the solution, not the cause.”

“He’s right, you know.”

Jud vaulted off the bed and lunged for the gun on the bedside table. Mary, Rhea, Bree and Riley stood at the bedroom entry in assorted stages of shocked and amused.

“Okay, that was hot,” Riley whispered as she clutched Rhea’s arm.

“Uh huh.” Bree gulped. “I didn’t know anyone who can jump and twirl that fast.”

Viviana sat up in the bed. “What’s wrong? Are you all okay?”

Jud took in the duffel bags and backpacks each woman held and the assortment of blankets and pillows strewn about in the hallway behind them. He growled his frustration. Viviana needed rest. Then he noted Bree’s and Rhea’s widened gazes, noted the way they clung to Mary—who looked like she was one scream away from crawling out of her skin.

Dylan was still en route home.

The teams were gone and the compound had been attacked.

The women’s homes had been attacked.

The frustration in him eased and he set the gun on the bedside table as he looked down at Viviana. “You girls get settled. I’ll grab the gear from the hallway. You all need to rest while you can.”

“Addy will be back in a few hours,” Bree said. “We were thinking we could all crash here, wait until she gets back.”

“That sounds perfect,” Viviana said as she patted the king-sized bed. “Come on. Climb on.”

“Are we getting massages, too?” Rhea asked.

“Pfft, I think that man has one setting and it’s locked to Vi,” Riley responded as she toed her shoes off and crawled onto the bed. “I didn’t do a damn thing today and I’m still exhausted.”

“Shock does that.” Mary cuddled up against Vi and squeezed her tight. “You okay?”

“No, but I will be. You?”

“No, but I will be.”

Jud watched the women nest on Viviana’s bed as he tossed pillows and blankets into the room. Duffel bags filled with snacks were tossed haphazardly into the room. The women whispered and chattered as they huddled close and situated pillows around and between them. He covered them up with a couple of blankets and half-shut the door.

Any doubt he’d harbored about whether he made the right decision to protect the Quillery Edge was killed in that room. He’d keep all the women and everyone in The Arsenal safe because, for once, he was on the right path.

Jud wandered back into the living room and sat on the sofa. Pen in hand, he picked up the form and read through it once. Jesus. He’d be an idiot to even consider sharing that depth of information with anyone.

So why the hell was he already on the fourth empty space?

Because him being an unknown put her at risk. She couldn’t factor him into security plans and trust him if he didn’t take the first step, extend the first olive branch. He’d never shared this much with anyone, let anyone this deep into his world. Each check mark felt like a strike to his soul, the man he’d once wanted to be.

He’s operated in the black, the shadows so long he couldn’t even smell clean, pure air. Until he’d arrived at The Arsenal. For once he felt good about the stand he was making. He’d never be a good man, but he’d be better as long as he was around.

Which might not be long after today. The Collective wouldn’t stop until he was dead.

He glanced down the hall, thinking about the beautiful, brilliant woman sleeping. Trusting him to chase her nightmares away. He would do anything to keep her safe because she’d pulled Danny’s ass out of hell. Again. This time it’d been a hell created because of him.