Chapter 7: Trap Game
The next morning, the mouse was a professional problem.
Serafena had woken up with a mission. While Igino slept—a deep, motionless sleep on her couch that felt less like rest and more like a system shutdown—she’d researched. Now, a small, clear plastic humane trap sat on her kitchen floor, baited with a piece of apple and a dab of peanut butter. She watched it from a crouch, her chin in her hands.
“You’re strategizing,” Igino’s voice came from behind her, rough with sleep.
She glanced back. He was standing there, having moved so silently she hadn’t heard him approach. His suit jacket was gone, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. The morning light from the window caught the dark stubble along his jaw and the clear, assessing look in his eyes. He looked more real here, less like a sculpture. More tired.
“It’s a tactical operation,” she said, turning back to the trap. “Phase one: lure the target with superior amenities. Phase two: secure the target. Phase three: relocation to a park with a stern talking-to about tenant rights.”
He came to stand beside her, looking down at the little contraption. “You think he’ll go for it?”
“He’s a gourmand. He passed on the cheese last week but went crazy for a stray tortilla chip. This is a five-star meal.” She stood up, brushing her hands on her jeans. “Help me with the placement? I think he uses a route along the wall, behind the fridge.”
He followed her as she shuffled her small kitchen table aside to access the narrow gap. It was dusty, dotted with what she called “mouse sign.” She handed him the trap. “Can you wedge it right there, where the baseboard is chewed a little?”
He took it, his large fingers dwarfing the plastic. He knelt, an act that seemed both natural and profoundly out of place in her kitchen. She watched the muscles shift in his back under the fine cotton of his shirt. He slid the trap into the shadowy space with precise, quiet movements.
“There,” he said, his voice low.
As he started to pull back, his hand brushed against hers where it rested on the floor for balance. It was an accident, a fleeting touch of skin on skin.
But it stopped them both.
His hand went still. The air in the kitchen changed, the hum of the refrigerator growing loud and intrusive. Serafena felt a current zip up her arm, a live-wire jolt that had nothing to do with faulty wiring. She looked at his hand, then up at his face. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes had darkened, fixed on hers.
He didn’t move away.
Slowly, as if drawn by a force stronger than gravity, she let her fingers turn, her palm pressing lightly against the back of his hand. His skin was warm. A little rough. He let out a breath, a silent, controlled thing.
Then, with a suddenness that made her heart hammer against her ribs, his other hand came up. He didn’t grab her, didn’t pull. He simply placed it flat on the floor beside her hip, caging her in as he rose from his kneeling position. He moved into her space, his body a solid, heat-radiating wall, until her back met the edge of the countertop.
She was trapped. Not by the mouse, but by him.
Her breath hitched. She could smell the faint, clean scent of his soap from her shower, and underneath it, something else. Something metallic and sharp, like the air after a lightning strike. Gunpowder. The smell clung to him, a ghost in the seams of his clothes.
He was so close she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the pulse beating in his throat. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then snapped back up, fierce and questioning.
“Tell me to leave,” he whispered. The words were gravel, scraped from somewhere deep and damaged.
It wasn’t a request. It was a test. A chance for her to push him back into the shadows, to save herself from whatever storm was brewing behind his eyes.
She didn’t. She should have. Every sane cell in her body was screaming for her to duck under his arm, to laugh it off, to make a joke about personal space. But she was rooted, captivated by the raw, unhidden want in his face. This wasn’t the careful, controlled man from the coffee shop or the weary visitor from last night. This was something else. Something hungry and dangerous.
So she arched into him instead. Just a fraction. A surrender and a challenge all at once.
His composure shattered.
One hand slid from the counter to the small of her back, pulling her flush against him. The other came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. The touch was shockingly gentle, at odds with the sheer intensity of his presence. He was waiting, still, for her to refuse him.
She rose onto her toes and closed the last inch between them.
The kiss wasn’t soft. It was a collision. A claiming. His mouth was hot and demanding, and she met him with equal fervor, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt. The taste of him was dark coffee and that lingering, indefinable sharpness. It was a kiss that erased the kitchen, the morning, the world outside. There was only the hard line of his body, the solid heat of his hands holding her as if she might break or vanish, and the terrifying, thrilling sense of falling into a deep, unknown current.
A phone buzzed.
It was a muffled, insistent vibration from his pocket, pressed between them. He jerked as if stabbed.
He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers for one searing second. His breathing was ragged. Hers was nonexistent. He took a sharp, full breath, and when he opened his eyes, the man from a moment ago was gone. The mask was back, but it was cracked, the edges raw.
He pulled the phone out, glanced at the screen, and his expression closed down completely. It was like watching a vault door slam shut.
“I have to go,” he said, his voice flat.
“Igino—” she started, her own voice unsteady.
He was already stepping back, putting cool, careful distance between them. He straightened his sleeves with quick, efficient tugs. “The trap is set. He’ll take the bait by tonight.”
He was talking about the mouse, but he was looking at her. The metaphor hung in the air, thick and uncomfortable.
He walked to the door, paused with his hand on the knob, and looked back at her. She was still leaning against the counter, her lips tingling, her whole body vibrating.
“Lock this behind me,” he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order from a man who knew about locks, and about what might try to get through them.
Then he was gone, pulling the door shut with a quiet, final click.
Serafena slid slowly down the cabinet until she was sitting on the floor. She stared at the humane trap, wedged in the shadows. The apartment felt too quiet, too large. The ghost of his touch lingered on her skin, but so did the smell of gunpowder, and the chilling precision in his final words.
She had told herself he was just a man with a complicated job. A little mysterious, a little intense.
Now, for the first time, a cold trickle of doubt threaded through the warmth he left behind. What kind of man carried the scent of a fired weapon on his clothes and kissed like he was trying to escape his own skin? What kind of problem required a resolution that left that look in a person’s eyes?
Outside, a car engine turned over once, purred to life, and faded into the city’s noise. She pulled her knees to her chest, listening to the silence, waiting for the scratch of tiny feet in the walls.