Chapter 2: The Button Between My Thighs
604 Words
Rae sat alone in her apartment, the lights dim, the world outside eerily quiet—too quiet for someone who had just lied to an entire intelligence unit.
She wasn’t even sure how she made it back. The blast still echoed in her ears, the smell of ash clung to her hair, and her heartbeat hadn’t calmed since she’d pressed the detonator herself—claiming it was Eathan who’d done it. No one questioned her. Of course they didn’t. She was their golden girl. Loyal. Efficient. Smart.
She was also a liar.
Her fingers trembled as she reached into the inside pocket of her coat. The object she retrieved was small, innocuous to anyone else—a simple black button. Smooth, circular, and torn from Eathan’s shirt when she had grabbed him in that moment of chaos. The last physical thing she had of him.
She brought it to her nose.
And inhaled.
That scent—faint cologne, gunpowder, warm male skin. It wrapped around her like a noose and a blanket all at once. Her mind betrayed her, replaying the way he had looked at her in the shadows of the safehouse. His voice low. His hand gripping her wrist. His mouth on hers.
God, that kiss.
It hadn’t been gentle. It hadn’t been planned.
It had cracked her open in a way she didn’t know was possible.
She still felt it—every press, every pull, every way he shouldn’t have tasted like home.
She had dreamed of Eathan since she was a teenager—first as a hero. A symbol. A star.
Then as a man. One she wanted to chase. One she wanted to touch.
She had followed him into the organization straight out of school, heart pounding every time she passed him in the training halls. Back then, he barely noticed her. But she remembered every detail—his gait, the scar along his jaw, the way he never smiled unless he meant it.
So when he vanished last month, labeled a traitor, Rae’s world cracked.
And now… she had kissed him. Heard his breath. Felt his hands on her body.
A groan slipped from her throat as she fell back onto her bed, the button still clutched tight in her hand. Her legs curled up, body hot and restless. The lies, the adrenaline, the shame—it all blended with the ache she tried so hard to suppress.
She didn’t understand why he betrayed the agency.
But she also didn’t care—not enough to give him up.
That scared her more than anything.
Her thumb stroked the edge of the button as her mind returned to his voice, whispering her name like it belonged to him. She could still feel the ghost of his lips against hers, his breath on her skin, his fingers pressing against the small of her back.
“Dammit,” she whispered, burying her face in her pillow.
Rae was a professional. She wasn’t supposed to crave someone like this. Especially not a marked traitor. But her loyalty had shifted, cracked open by the one person she had tried for years to become.
She didn’t leave a trace at the safehouse.
She told HQ that Eathan had planted explosives and vanished in the smoke.
She made sure no surveillance survived.
And now—now she had to play the loyal agent again. Pretend she didn’t want the man the whole agency wanted dead.
But when she held the button close, imagined him above her, whispering things only she wanted to hear—
She knew she’d already made her choice.
And it wasn’t them.
- Writer
