Verification Required
The floorboards hum. A vibration, trapped between the mattress and the oak frame. Tyler’s hand slides under the duvet, hunting. His fingers brush lace—Nathalia’s nightgown—then dig deeper. He shifts, exposing his skin to the cold mountain air.
The buzzing travels up his arm as he finds her thigh. Through the purple silk, the heat is startling. Biological. His palm flattens against the curve of her muscle, instinctively pinning it. He finds the phone, the cold glass a shock against the warmth of the bed, but he doesn’t retract. He leans in, the duvet slipping down his waist, threatening to expose the damp evidence on the sheets.
“Calculated obstruction,” Tyler rasps. He doesn’t move his hand. He uses the weight of his upper body to anchor the blanket, hiding himself. “You planted the device to force a proximity breach.”
Nathalia doesn’t flinch. She shifts, hooking her leg over his arm, locking his hand against the mattress. The phone shifts from a dull buzz to the piercing chirp of a Find My iPhone alert. She looks at the bulge in the duvet, then meets his eyes. She offers no denial. She simply waits for him to manage the noise.
She leans into the capture and snatches the phone from his free hand. Her thumbs move with clinical precision, bypassing the alarm and opening the internal Lab Portal.
“If you insist on restraining a colleague, Tyler, the log needs to reflect the infraction,” she says, her voice smooth and detached.
She types: Subject initiated non-consensual hold. Guest Quarters.
She feels him freeze. Her free hand slides up his forearm, reading the tension in the tendons like a graph. She looks down at the duvet, noting the bunching fabric and the dark, damp patch near his hip.
“Subject is also displaying signs of acute physiological distress,” she murmurs, glancing at the screen. “Fluid contamination detected on lower garments. Protocol suggests immediate removal to prevent permanent damage to the asset.”
Her thumb hovers over Submit.
The screen’s white light catches the sheen of sweat on Tyler’s lip. The phone chimes—a high-pitched request for verification. High-Priority Draft detected. Nathalia’s thumb doesn’t waver. The heat radiating from her leg is a direct violation of the cold calculation in her eyes.
The phone chimes again: Auto-Save Complete. Draft synced to Supervisor Queue.
Tyler smiles. It is a sharp, dangerous expression. He moves his hand from her thigh to her wrist, pinning it to the pillow. He grinds his hips forward, forcing her to feel the hardness of him through the layers of cotton and silk.
“You aren’t submitting that report,” he says, his voice a low scrape. “You want to inspect the contamination? Fine. We can process that manually.”
He wrenches the device from her grip. His fingers graze her palm—an electric shock—as he swipes the draft into the trash. The screen glows against his face, then goes black.
“Log deleted,” he says flatly. He looks at the wet spot on the sheets, then back to her, his eyes dark and heavy. “Incident resolved. Do you require further physical verification?”
