The first realization comes to him unexpectedly, uninvited, and completely inappropriately — at one of the work meetings.

After another excellent mission, Miles, for some reason, instead of the usual pat on Paz's back in approval, as he always does with the members of his team, simply puts his hand on her shoulder, visible only under the thin fabric of her sports tank top — for a long, painfully long moment, presses his ring-studded fingers to her back, just under her shoulder blade, and watches as her body shudders in response to his touch, watches with some kind of sick unhealthy pleasure…

…only to come to his senses a moment later and pull away with the same calm face, only burning inside with a mixture of shame and excitement.

A light shiver runs through her body when Paz feels his fingers on her shoulder, the touch that for some reason lingered there longer, than it should.

After he pulled his hand away, she raised her deep dark eyes at him, trying to catch his gaze, but Quaritch was already pretending to listen to Lyle’s report, acting as if nothing had happened between them, so Paz decided, that she was seeing things, and simply shifting her attention back to work too.

His palm still tingles from the feeling of her tan skin under his touch, Miles clenches his fingers into a fist when she looks up at him, and he has to take a deep hard breath to keep a straight face, his heart hammering in his chest, silently cursing himself for what he has just done: he hasn’t even touched her that much, he just put his hand on her shoulder, but the feeling of her body arching under his touch almost gave him a hard on right in the middle of a work meeting.

For the rest of the meeting, he does everything to avoid looking at her, to avoid her all together, his eyes darting around the room and anywhere else but her, silently swearing under his breath: he didn’t anticipate this kind of reaction from her body, or from himself for that matter. His hand is still feeling the burning sensation where just a few minutes ago he touched her shoulder, and the thoughts of what would have happened if he didn’t pull away so quickly aren’t help in any way.

There’s too many people in the room.

And that day, the realization comes to him — he wants to touch her more. His fingers are itching every god damn time she is close enough, all that needs to be done is only for him to stretch his hand slightly and…

Don’t touch, she’s your subordinate.

That thought is basically the only thing that keeps him from admitting his own feelings out loud, but even though he can’t help himself sometimes, when the situation is simply perfect for that.

It seems as though, the more he tries to keep his hands off her, the more he wants to touch her, and the more frequently he does. Whenever he feels like he could reach out and, say, fix the collar of her shirt, or even simply run his fingers through her silky soft hair.

As Paz reads out the progress report, Miles leans forward slightly, pretending to read the notes from over her shoulde — but in reality actually inhaling the scent of her hair with his entire lungs.

Every time this happens, Miles closes his eyes and slowly counts to ten, trying to think about anything, ANYTHING else, but that doesn’t really work. It’s something instinctive, something that his mind has no control over, no matter how much he tries to convince himself otherwise. It is kinda scary, to want someone so much on a level of damn obsession, but Miles can’t help himself, this woman is just too damn perfect, and he’s not even speaking about body level only…

At first, Miles decides to attribute all these strange thoughts to the fact that he simply hasn’t had a woman for a long time. Unlike his subordinates, being burdened with multiple responsibilities he had no time for such things, and that’s why his feelings suddenly struck with such force... long-term abstinence, that’s all. He just needs to distract his thoughts and it will go away on its own.

But deep inside he knows that it is not the case.