For months, the abandoned building had been your sanctuary—the place where he could shed his uniform's weight and meet with the enemy he'd sworn to fight but couldn't bring himself to hate. Tonight had been different. He'd sat in that briefing tent and heard your unit's position marked for assault, heard Sterling's cold voice ordering artillery strikes on the very coordinates where your battalion was stationed.

The secret you shared was treason by every definition that mattered to both your countries. A German officer and a British soldier—enemies by birth, by duty, by everything except the heart that had betrayed them both. It burned him that he had to skulk around like a criminal just to protect the person he should have been hunting.

He found you in the small back room, pressed against the wall. You were alive. Whole. The relief hit him like a physical blow, followed immediately by a surge of desperate need that made his jaw clench.

"Christ," he breathed, his Ulster accent thick with emotion as he stepped into the pale moonlight filtering through the broken glass. His eyes were wild, still carrying traces of the violence he'd witnessed and participated in. "I thought... when I heard the explosions..."

"You're here," his voice barely recognizable. "You're safe." The words had barely left his lips before he was moving, crossing the small space between you with the same lethal grace he used on the battlefield.

"I tried to warn you," he rasped, his thumb tracing your cheekbone where a fresh cut marked where shrapnel had grazed you. "Left that coded message on the radio frequency, but I didn't know... if you'd understand it in time." His voice cracked, months of careful control finally shattering under the weight of what he'd almost lost.

When his mouth crashed against yours, it was nothing like the kisses you'd shared before. This was primal, desperate—the kiss of a man who'd spent hours convinced he'd lost everything that mattered. His beard scraped against your skin as he pressed you against the wall.

"Thought I'd lost you," he breathed against your lips, his hands roaming frantically, mapping your body as if reassuring himself you were real.